Rural Cultural Identity And Pastoral Care

Abstract

This paper reports on research in the Colombian municipalities of Alpujarra Tolima, Neira Caldas, Marulanda Caldas, Geneva Valle, Zarzal Valle, Quebrada Nueva and Aranzazu Caldas that explored the characteristics of pastoral care in communities in rural areas. Two key research findings are presented. The first is that some specific features that characterize contemporary society, such as globalization and globalism, run counter to the rural identity, and specifically to the exercise of the community activities of accompaniment, education and evangelizing as they are guided by the pastoral care of the Roman Catholic Church. The second finding comes from a study of how the social thought of the Church, which in principle underpins its pastoral activity, has led to the development of arguments that establish a critique of the most visible elements of contemporary society, resulting to some extent in the promotion of the identity of rural people.In other words, this paper seeks to support the hypothesis that, in the context of the cases studied, contemporary society represents a set of complex challenges that extends even to the structural disarticulation of rural cultural identity as well as the very character of the social thought of the Church.

Keywords: Hermeneuticspastoral carerural identitysocial thought of the Churchsociology

Introduction

This article aims to present some of the results obtained within a doctoral research study, using case studies, in order, first, to explore those practices developed by the Roman Catholic Church through pastoral care in Colombian rural municipalities, and, second, to review the major objective characteristics that make up what is called contemporary society or the market society. The aim is to uncover the contradictions that emerge between the identified Catholic features of rural culture and the market society, recognizing that the latter is the sociological expression that defines most of today’s (urban) societies and therefore imposes various challenges for rural identities that become manifest in pastoral practice.

It is necessary to investigate the current main features of the social thought of the Church, since not only do these display the most objective discursive position of all Christian social practice, but also it is true, as Rivas Gutierrez (1988) would affirm, that a correct appraisal of thought (doctrine) supposes a social hermeneutics that takes into account all its expressions, placing each text in its historical and cultural context. That thought is to be found in the extensive Vatican documents that are analysed in the investigation, bearing in mind the context of the municipalities of Alpujarra Tolima, Neira Caldas, Marulanda Caldas, Geneva Valle, Zarzal Valle, Quebrada Nueva and Aranzazu Caldas. In this article, reference will be made to the development of a formal hermeneutics applied in the encyclical Laudato siʹ, which contains the most up to date message that the Church presents to its worldwide community.

Problem Statement

Research Questions

What approaches of the contemporary social thought of the Church (as laid out in the text Laudato si') identify the characteristics of contemporary society as challenges to pastoral practice in rural areas?

To what extent is rural cultural identity at risk of being homogenized within the market society?

Purpose of the Study

In the context of the problem described, the overall objective of this research is to describe the relationship between pastoral and social activities in Alpujarra Tolima, Neira Caldas, Marulanda Caldas, Valle de Ginebra, Zarzal Valle, Quebrada Nueva and Aranzazu Caldas according to the analysis categories present in the encyclical text Laudato si', in order to establish which social challenges are being faced by typical rural communities, as well as the social practice of the Church.

It was necessary then to develop a formal and sociocultural hermeneutic analysis of Laudato si' encyclical, to establish the analytical categories, as well as to characterize the social and pastoral community action in Alpujarra Tolima, Neira Caldas, Marulanda Caldas, Valle de Ginebra, Zarzal Valle, Quebrada Nueva and Aranzazu Caldas.

Research Methods

Hermeneutics is defined as: the art of discovering the discourse of the oeuvre. “Consequently, it is the interpretation of the replica of this fundamental distancing that constitutes the objectification of man in his discursive works, affordable to his objectification in the products of his oeuvres and his art” (Alexander, 1997, p.177).

According to this definition it should be recalled that when hermeneutics is used as a comprehensive method, a number of authors who have deepened our understanding of the term should be kept in mind, among them Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur and Habermas. According to Gadamer (2000), ‘the hermeneutical rule is to understand everything from the individual and the individual from the whole. It is a rule that comes from the old rhetoric and modern hermeneutics has taken the art of speaking to the art of understanding’ (p.182). For this reason, a semi-structured interview method was used with subjects who were linked to the pastoral work that takes place in the municipalities visited. In addition, a formal and sociocultural hermeneutic text analysis was developed for Laudato si', from which emerged a trend that can be called categories of analysis; it is better not to consider this trend as having been ‘created’, but to state that what emerged were the most significant interpretive ideas that run through Francis’s text. Subsequently, a systematization of these trends was developed to discover the explicit message in the encyclical text Laudato si' (Francis, 2015), in order to decipher the social and contemporary message of the Church and how this manifest itself in Colombia’s rural culture. Analytical categories, the most significant interpretive ideas that occurred more frequently in the text, emerged and were consolidated into the following categories:

Criticism of Anthropocentrism (CA). Example: ‘We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will’ (p. 2).

Comprehensiveness of Transformation (CT). Example: ‘Integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology and take us to the heart of what it is to be human’ (p. 11).

New Paradigm (NP). Example: ‘The throwaway culture and the proposal of a new lifestyle. These questions will not be dealt with once and for all, but reframed and enriched again and again’ (p. 16).

Axiology (A). Example: ‘Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism dressed up in ecological garb, locking us into a stifling immanence’ (p. 119).

Structural Problems (SP). Example: ‘he Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property’ (p. 93).

Ideological Problems (IP). Example: ‘A sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings’ (p. 91).

Propositional Aspects (PA). Example: ‘While the existing world order proves powerless to assume its responsibilities, local individuals and groups can make a real difference’ (p. 179).

Findings

From the categories that emerged as the most significant ideas that are found most frequently in Francis text, Figure 01 gives a graphical display of those more and less frequently found in the encyclical.

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It can be stated that mentions of the new paradigm appear in the text more frequently and are therefore more critical; this should be taken in conjunction with the propositional aspects, as together these make up the features having the greatest presence in the text. This new paradigm understood from Francis (2015) as an individualistic and technical phenomenon that demystifies humanism, the reflection on ecological elements, theological reflections and strength in the spiritual field. It is composed for individuals who are willing to meet consumerism, which, in the terms used by Biagini & Fernandez-Peychaux (2013), enthrones the ego, and respond to individualistic dynamics of the market society.

Regarding the characterization of the social and pastoral activity carried out by the Church: 83% of its activities were focused on helping those most in need (the elderly, and patients with a greater need), purchasing medicines, holding raffles to raise money to give financial aid, and making hospital visits and visits to the homes of the disabled. The remaining 17% of its activity was aimed at developing religious festivals and local arrangements for the community infrastructure. No community projects focused on environmental care were evident. Another notable result was that 83% of those giving social and pastoral care recognized that individualism or an individualistic culture had led to a deterioration in community relations and agreed that the phenomenon coincides precisely with the arrival of the Internet in rural areas.

66% of the parishes claimed to know the text Laudato si' and its overall message, while 34% said that they did not know of it. It is clear that all of the 66% who said that they knew the text thought of it as a text which speaks to all on the environment. It was also found that in 83% of the parishes in the survey there was a perception that many take part in activities for their individual spiritual benefit and not for the benefit of the community. It was also found that in 68% of the parishes people felt that the Colombian electoral system affects community projects, because joint projects depend on whether or not the government gives support.

Conclusion

The Internet is the technological phenomenon that transmits characteristics of the market society to the composition of cultural identity in rural areas. While the logic of consumption is not sufficiently established a context with of poverty and inequality mentioned above, the internet it is the only window in which cultural exchanges are taking shape and through which social actors and pastoral practices are affected. These cultural exchanges are deepening the problem of individualism, which is part of the new paradigm described by Francis (2015) and an objective characteristic of contemporary society. Of course, it would be easy to talk about cultural exchange within the framework of a positive globalization, but to speak of exchange when the globalism mentioned by Baeza (2006) directs the situation towards homogenization, complicates the situation.

The first challenge is to develop an environmental awareness in the community, which may arise from the arguments discussed above on the social and contemporary thought of the Church, which defines the common environment (common home), the planet, and the environment as subjects for which everyone has responsibility.

The second challenge is to define how to understand the impact, in terms of content and significance, of a technology like the Internet in spaces that had been free of the globalist onslaught that characterizes the dynamics of the market society.

The rural culture and the social and pastoral identity of the Church, which exist within a context of poverty and low population density, contain elements that do not favour the full development of characteristics of the New Paradigm such as consumerism or the fetishism of subjectivity. In conclusion, rural identity and social pastoral can be classified as antagonistic niches of the market society, antagonistic niches to globalism. The identifying features of rural culture could be enhanced by the pastoral identity, and vice versa. This practice may encourage the creation of comprehensive mechanisms to meet the challenges raised here, but the common core defining pastoral practice and peasant identity, which does not come from a unity of purpose, is only a coincidence that was found in the context of this investigation

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