Trading in Culture.

The Second Vatican Council provided a new theological basis for what was termed a process of “inculturating” the Church into local cultures in the non-Western world. This process was understood as a way of incarnating the Divine Word into another cultural context, by using local forms to embody what was understood as being the Universal principles underlying the Gospel. This valuing of cultures other than what characterizes European civilization, led also to the translating of the Bible into many other languages. The process of translation cannot simply be a literal one. Words, like images, carry their own ambience of meanings, and symbolic over-tones, which draw on the memory, and mytho-poetic world from which cultures have emerged.

Second Vatican Council provided a new theological basis for what was termed a process of “inculturating” the Church into local cultures in the non-Western world. This process was understood as a way of incarnating the Divine Word into another cultural context, by using local forms to embody what was understood as being the Universal principles underlying the Gospel. This valuing of cultures other than what characterizes European civilization, led also to the translating of the Bible into many other languages. The process of translation cannot simply be a literal one. Words, like images, carry their own ambience of meanings, and symbolic over-tones, which draw on the memory, and mytho-poetic world from which cultures have emerged.