Culture and Religious Integration

One of the great joys that comes with being Catholic is the disintegration of barriers between what constitutes one’s regular life and what constitutes one’s religious life. My experience is such that my children attend the local Catholic school, play football (soccer) with their school friends, go to the Friday night ‘junior club’ with the same set of friends, and depending on the year, meet up with those friends yet again for First Communion preparation. In this respect, participation in the Mass must seem to them a mere extension of everything else they do; not an added Sunday morning inconvenience, but part of a holistic world of which family and friends together partake.

I could have dreamt for nothing better back in the days when my long-suffering wife would take the kids to the local C of E school in the knowledge that the religious education program was hardly related to the church, then try to convince them that to attend our parish church was a happy, normal thing to do, when in fact ours were the only kids there, and their mother also happened to be their Sunday School teacher. All of this while we watched our Ukrainian friends get together with other Ukrainians for Ukrainian dancing and music, socializing, religious festivals, cultural instruction, sport, and even for travel. For them, the nearest Ukrainian Catholic Church was just a part of life. From participation in the Liturgy to house blessings and Easter baskets, the Church was simply part of the culture. Best of all, though, the culture was equally part of the Church. It is something we now enjoy ourselves.

I can think of innumerable examples where what we witnessed among the Ukrainians was manifest equally strongly. I saw it among the Mexicans through all the years I spent Christmas in Texas. I saw it among my Greek and Italian friends in Canada. I saw a heavily modified version among the unchurched-yet-still-Catholic Quebecois. (In terms of Quebec, Roch Carrier’s children’s book Le Chandail d’Hockey, aka The Hockey Sweater, illustrates what I am talking about perfectly.) It is a kind of cultural marriage, wherein neither partner is necessarily conscious of what it receives from the other. Each simply gets on with its own business, retaining its own integrity, being the thing each is supposed to be.

The Christological parallels should be obvious.

This relationship reflects both the co-mingling of the human with the divine in Christ, and the movement of the Word through the cosmos in the ‘procession and return’ of salvation.

I think I first noticed this when watching a military tattoo in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The arena in which it took place was packed with spectators, all there to watch men and women in uniforms march to music according to certain protocols and traditions. Once I saw it there, I began to see it everywhere. The rituals at sporting events; the ecstasy of a rock concert; the street greetings of a group of friends: all of these things reveal the humanity of Christ and the procession side of his ‘procession and return’.

By contrast, the Church and her rituals simultaneously represent Christ’s divinity and his return. In this respect, the necessity of the faithful performance of her own liturgies is paramount. It means that if the Church is to hold up its side of the image, it must do what it is meant to do and not try to confuse its role with that of the culture it serves. Having said that, in the examples mentioned above, I think she does.

I opened this comment by saying that one of great joys of being a Catholic is experiencing the disintegration of barriers between so-called secular life and religious life. It says that I can be and do the things I want to be and do, for when I do this in relation to the Church, I am simply manifesting my side of the image. Of course, to be in relation with the Church ideally means availing oneself of her message of grace, which in turn means seeking forgiveness and partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Wonderfully, when I consider my children’s school, what they are learning there in terms of the Catholic religion, and the relation it has to the parish church, I see the image manifest very well indeed.