Introduction

Postmodernism and Mission. An Attempt at Synthesis — Introduction

Postmodernism, as a concept describing the contemporary age, is commonly employed across the different fields of human thought and culture, stretching from movements in architecture and literary currents to circles of philosophical thinking. Naturally, in recent decades this phenomenon has also become an object of interest for theology. Among the various theological disciplines, missiology too must carry out its own reflection on postmodernism, attempting to define missionary activity — its place and its understanding — in a postmodern world. Hence it seemed fitting to take up a study presenting the question: Postmodernism and Mission. An Attempt at Synthesis, whose aim is to present the attempts undertaken so far to define the missionary activity of the Church: its conception and its location within the categories of postmodern thought.

To date, no studies have appeared which address the question outlined above. Within Polish missiology this subject remains, to this day, entirely unnoticed. The situation is somewhat better as regards English-language studies by European and American theologians; yet even in that milieu there are few works dealing directly with the relationship of the Church's Catholic missions to postmodernism. The only publication available to the author which takes up a related subject is the work of the Danish Lutheran theologian Jørgen Skov Sørensen, published in English under the title Missiological Mutilations — Prospective Paralogies. Language and Power in Contemporary Mission Theory. For obvious reasons it considers the question in the categories of Protestant theology, without taking into account Catholic theological thought, still less the documents of the Church's Magisterium in this field. Perceiving this lack, it seemed right to the author — as a member of a missionary religious congregation — to undertake scholarly reflection on this problematic and to present it from a Catholic perspective. A deepened reflection on the phenomenon of postmodern thinking in the context of missionary activity will without doubt be of great help in understanding the challenges and difficulties which the Church faces at the beginning of the twenty-first century, especially in the societies of Western culture.

In presenting the subject, the author has drawn on the work of theologians who have taken up this thematic, as well as on the documents of the Magisterium Ecclesiae concerning the question of mission issued in the second half of the twentieth century. Abundant use has also been made of English-language literature dealing with the realisation of theological thought — in particular questions touching the missionary mandate of the Church — in the postmodern context. Reference has likewise been made to the most recent documents of the Vatican dicasteries, which formed responses to the questions raised in this study as they arose within the Church.

The thesis employs an analytic-synthetic method. The key concepts and assumptions of postmodern philosophy will be subjected to analysis, as will the contemporary theological vision of the mission of the Catholic Church, presented in its development over the last century. A synthesis of the two positions will then be carried out, as it takes place in certain theological approaches which show how the key elements of the Church's Catholic missions are defined in postmodern thought.

The subject is presented in three chapters. The first chapter sets out the principal assumptions of postmodern thought, together with its conception of the human person, the person's ethical points of reference, and the relation to transcendent values. The second chapter presents the development of missiological thought over the past century, both pre-conciliar and post-conciliar, taking into account also the official documents of the Magisterium Ecclesiae relating to this question. The third chapter shows the ways in which missionary activity has been presented in the categories which govern postmodern thought. It also points to the responses of the Church's Magisterium, examining the fidelity of these attempts to the unchanging Tradition of the Church. The third chapter further takes up the most significant challenges facing a missionary working in a postmodern context — especially the problematic of his ecclesial identity and of the manner of conducting missionary activity within the space of the new spirituality created by postmodern culture.

While endeavouring to present the subject undertaken here with all possible reliability, the author remains aware of the enormous diversity of approaches — both within postmodern thought and among the missiological attempts to present the Christian message in its categories — which cannot possibly be contained within a single scholarly dissertation.