RBC 2009 - St. Louis, MO - Session Three – Saturday, July 25th

The final session of this conference focused on the statistical evaluation of so many diverse peoples. With Asia as the largest continent and two-thirds of all humanity living there and with the Philippines being the only Christian country in Asia the need to understand the histories of their Catholicism is vital.

Often Hispanics had no way to go to mass and a priest came to them. They learned a way of living their faith without the need for attendance at mass. Some of the other statistics reviewed included the peoples from India as being the most affluent because so many are in the medical field as specialists. Vietnamese priests are a small fraction of the population even though there are about nine hundred of them. Korean Bishops have an understanding with U.S. Bishops, wherein Korean priests come to the U.S., but are not expected to stay. They are flourishing as a group, but feel a certain isolation as they are not included in the Presbyterate.

A Pan-Asian awareness is occurring here in the U.S. around the commonality of faiths, but this is not the case in Asia. An example of this occurred when many Koreans, seeing the plight of Cambodians, who were not well off, offered to help work with them. Filipinos are one of the largest bridge-building groups. They do not live in urban centers or ghettos and represent the more professional Filipinos. They speak good English and do not have a problem understanding the Hispanic approach. Marianism is an important part of their religious practice.

In the world of vocations, many Asian-Pacific individuals are applying. This will cause a reaching out to these groups. Referring to the document Ecclesia in Asia, Fr. Deck emphasized the focus on the need to be a global Church. Pacific-Island peoples are particularly present in areas like California. Chamorro, Samoans, and Tongan groups all illustrate the realization of the importance of Asians in the life of the Church.

The worldwide Church is beginning to acknowledge the shift in population of cultures from Europe to Asia. This brings a new realization that Asia was really the first destination of the missionaries of the early Church. From first century Christianity to the seventh and ninth centuries following the silk route through China. Historians point out the coming and going of Christianity through Asia. Armenia was actually the first Nation to be Christian. From the middle East to the far East many groups are only now beginning to organize themselves and are formally coming together.

There exists a tension over reaching out to Asian religions and their image of God and still emphasizing that all salvation is through Christ. But Christianity is coming into sustained dialogue with established religions.

Chinese Catholic in this country represent many different strains of evangelization. There is the question of national or personal parish. Pastoral centers spring up in lieu of parishes and end up not quite in the inner structure of the Church. There are many desperately poor Asian groups. Generational differences cause anxiety among the elders who see a loss of their traditions as the younger generation becomes more educated. Candidate they be part of the American mainstream and still hold and support their traditional values? It is critical as to where the Church stand on this issue. The feature of Catholicism in Asia is the laity remaining faithful to their faith despite the clergy and Religious being banished by the government. This is a number one priority of the Jesuits in China.

The closing discussion for the Conference focused on the centrality of culture and why it is so important. External expressions through food, music, etc. differ from culture to culture. What is most important for a person is their identity, how they feel about themselves. The Church’s turn to culture is its self-understanding without even being conscious of it.

Part of the American myth is that we can create a world free from cultural constraints. The Church is now a critic of the American culture. References to Gaudium et Spes, Evangelii Lucini, and Cardinal Dulles’ Evangelization for the Third Millennium were suggested as some of the evidence of the need to understand this history of cultural anthropology within the Church.