Liturgical Inculturation: Decolonization or Decolonialization? Examining Misa ng Bayang Pilipino

Abstract

AbstractRoman Catholic eucharistic worship is steeped in Western traditions and law. Since Vatican II there has been permission for the inculturation of worship, including the Eucharist. This study will explore to what extent such inculturation is true decolonization while continuing to be a faux decolonialization. The thesis being tested here is that inculturation as a form of liturgical decolonization returns the “sacred land” or liturgical terrain—for example, language, architecture, vesture, music, and so forth—to various indigenous peoples, societies, and even countries. Such decolonizing, however, is not necessarily a decolonializing. The epistemic frameworks and European (even medieval) imagination foundational for the legal and theological frameworks that officially define Roman Catholic Eucharist are seldom if ever challenged, much less changed. The underlying question is whether Roman Catholic Eucharist can ever achieve true decolonialization.