Bridging the cartesian chasm : A radical empiricist perspective on liturgical inculturation

The process ofliturgical inculturation seeks to form a bridge between the typical editions of the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical books and local cultural patterns and idioms. Following Sacrosanctum Concilium’s call to adapt the liturgy “to the temperament and traditions of peoples,” official Church thought on the liturgical inculturation process was developed more fully in the 1994 Congregation forDivineWorship and the Discipline ofthe Sacraments (CDWDS) instruction Varietates Legitimae. In theory, the process of liturgical inculturation involves inserting the texts and rites ofthe liturgy into the local cultural context so that they can assimilate into themselves something ofthe people’s “thought, language, value, ritual, symbolic and artistic pattern.” Ideally, the liturgical inculturation process enables a “double-movement” whereby the two relations of liturgy and culture “meet and interact so that from their union a new terminus ad quern, a liturgy for the local Church may be brought into existence.” The new local liturgical product fashioned via the inculturation process is by nature close to, but somewhat different from, the liturgical template housed in the typical editions, as it reflects the local culture’s patterns alongside the unchanging central elements ofthe universal liturgy (its substantial unity).

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