Different Cultures of Mankind - Pope John Paul II

Reflecting upon the human situation, one is always amazed at the complexity and diversity of human cultures. Each of them is distinct by virtue of its specific historical evolution and the resulting characteristics which make it a structurally unique, original and organic whole. Culture is the form of man’s self-expression in his journey through history, on the level of both individuals and social groups. For man is driven incessantly by his intellect and will to "cultivate natural goods and values", to incorporate in an ever higher and more systematic cultural synthesis his basic knowledge of all aspects of life, particularly those involving social and political life, security and economic development, and to foster those existential values and perspectives, especially in the religious sphere, which enable individual and community life to develop in a way that is authentically human.  

A culture is always marked by stable and enduring elements, as well as by changing and contingent features. At first glance, in examining a culture we are struck above all by those aspects which distinguish it from our own culture; these give each culture a face of its own, as an amalgam of quite distinctive elements. In most cases, a culture develops in a specific place, where geographical, historical and ethnic elements combine in an original and unique way.

The "uniqueness" of each culture is reflected more or less clearly in those individuals who are its bearers, in a constant process whereby individuals are influenced by their culture and then, according to their different abilities and genius, contribute to it something of their own. In any event, a person necessarily lives within a specific culture. People are marked by the culture whose very air they breathe through the family and the social groups around them, through education and the most varied influences of their environment, through the very relationship which they have with the place in which they live. There is no determinism here, but rather a constant dialectic between the strength of the individual’s conditioning and the workings of human freedom. The need to accept one’s own culture as a structuring element of one’s personality, especially in the initial stages of life, is a fact of universal experience whose importance can hardly be overestimated.

Without a firm rooting in a specific "soil," individuals risk being subjected at a still vulnerable age to an excess of conflicting stimuli which could impair their serene and balanced development. It is on the basis of this essential relationship with one’s own "origins"–– on the level of the family, but also of territory, society and culture –– that people acquire a sense of their nationality, and culture tends to take on, to a greater or lesser degree in different places, a "national" configuration. The Son of God himself, by becoming man, acquired, along with a human family, a country. He remains for ever Jesus of Nazareth, the Nazarean (cf. Mk 10:47; Lk 18:37; Jn 1:45; 19:19).

Love for one’s country is thus a value to be fostered, without narrow-mindedness but with love for the whole human family and with an effort to avoid those pathological manifestations which occur when the sense of belonging turns into self-exaltation, the rejection of diversity, and forms of nationalism, racism and xenophobia.

Consequently, while it is certainly important to be able to appreciate the values of one’s own culture, there is also a need to recognize that every culture, as a typically human and historically conditioned reality, necessarily has its limitations. In order to prevent the sense of belonging to one particular culture from turning into isolation, an effective antidote is a serene and unprejudiced knowledge of other cultures. Moreover, when cultures are carefully and rigorously studied, they very often reveal beneath their outward variations significant common elements.

The Church, looking to Christ, who reveals man to himself, and drawing upon her experience of two thousand years of history, is convinced that "beneath all that changes, there is much that is unchanging." This continuity is based upon the essential and universal character of God’s plan for humanity.

© "Deccan Chronicle" dated August 26, 2002. Reprinted with permission.

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