Regions 4 & 6 Offer Program on Interculturality & Mission

April 5-7, 2019
Villa Maria Education & Spirituality Center
Villa Maria, PA

This program is intended primarily for members of Religious Orders with women and men from different cultural backgrounds. Facilitating the program will be Father Anthony Gittins, CSSp (pictured right).  

It is about the challenge of living interculturally: that is, with and through rather than in spite of our different cultures. We need to embrace the dignity of difference, but to do so we first need to understand cultural dynamics and what makes people who they are. 

We will proceed systematically establishing a common vocabulary by explaining culture, cross-cultural, multicultural and intercultural -- in a theological context. Then we will examine the apparent paradox that we human beings are both all the same and all different. We will consider the implications of the fact that we can only live our faith culturally (that is, in a culturally-shaped fashion). Consequently, in a community of people of different cultures, we need to take this fact very seriously and respond appropriately. Just as I cannot live my faith through your culture, so you cannot live your faith through mine, and yet we are called to live a common faith. Furthermore, as time passes, our exposure to other cultures should help re-shape our way of living our faith culturally. 

As we work through some of these issues, we will also make time for a good deal of (light-hearted) table-talk and reflection. 

For more information and registration, click on the flyer on the upper left-hand side of the page.