Pastoral Mission: Culture and Community
It is estimated that 80% of the Catholic Church today, live in the southern hemisphere and nearly all of these people are in developing countries. The exercise of pastoral ministry today, for these people, needs to be a dynamic of collaborative practices which interrelate Mission, Culture and Community.
This is particularly true for all Priests, Brothers, and Sisters of the Asia-Pacific Region. The pastoral ministers of tomorrow must evangelise through a familiarity in and involvement with, the many local cultures which are characteristic of the Asia-Pacific region. In this way, shared beliefs and values are celebrated and communicated in the wider church community through both the church’s central Mission as expressed in the practice of diocesan priestly ministry and through the unique special chasms of its many religious orders. Such ministry is undertaken through an ever-widening network of relationships, which necessitate a very professional level of knowledge. Such knowledge and relationships require a modern day set of language and communication skills, incorporating an essential need for English language usage, at both a personal and a professional level.
The modern Mission dynamic of collaborative practice necessitates an education which will empower future ministers to use a common language for everyday ready information exchange. The modern world has adopted English as that core language of communication and exchange.
