Incarnating the Christian Message

Throughout its history, the Catholic Church has continuously mediated between the universality of the Christian message and its cultural representations with some unease, producing various missiological models about how to incarnate the universal Christian truth within diverse contexts. Chapter 4 discusses concepts developed over the last decades of how the Christian message can become part of local contexts, from early twentieth-century missiological concepts to contemporary contextual theologies. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Apostolic See has relied on a neoconservative variety of inculturation , which promises continuity of ecclesiastical doctrine, tradition, and rites, and the protection of their supercultural message while allowing for careful translations and adaptations to be made to implement them on the local level. This policy is not without its problems. It relies mostly on top-down communication, is resistance to change, has a focus on aesthetics, and tends to be blind to the issue of power involved in cross-cultural exchange.