The article explores the urgent imperative for the Church in Goa to pursue genuine inculturation amid contemporary realities. It begins by framing inculturation as carrying an existential thrust not a superficial adaptation, but a profound, life-transforming insertion of the Gospel into the concrete existence of Goan people. This thrust demands vigilance against the dangers highlighted in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, where the promise of rational liberation devolves into new myths of domination through instrumental reason, technocracy, and dehumanizing systems.
In today’s Goa, this dialectic appears vividly in the rise of secularized culture, consumerism fueled by tourism, and the pervasive influence of science and technology. These forces often prioritize efficiency, profit, and innovation over relational depth, wonder, and transcendence, risking the reduction of persons to mere data points or economic units. To counter this trajectory, the Church is called to root its mission in the divine declaration “Dilexi te” (“I have loved you”), drawing from papal exhortations that emphasize love for God as inseparable from concrete love for the poor.
Care for the poor emerges as constitutive of evangelization and inculturation alike. Without this preferential option, any cultural engagement remains superficial or even complicit in exclusion. In Goa’s context of religious plurality, this principle takes on special significance. The state’s heritage of harmonious coexistence seen in shared feasts, syncretic traditions, and interfaith respect provides fertile ground for dialogue. The Gospel can enter into and elevate Goan values of hospitality, family solidarity, and community without losing its distinctive identity. Yet authenticity requires that this dialogue actively includes and prioritizes the marginalized: the slum dwellers, migrant laborers, rural poor, and those economically displaced across religious lines.
Evangelization gains credibility in pluralism precisely when Catholics stand in solidarity with Hindu, Muslim, and other neighbors in confronting shared sufferings poverty, unemployment, housing insecurity, and environmental degradation. The poor, in their vulnerability, become evangelizers themselves, calling the Church to humility, conversion, and a renewed identity as truly a “Church of the poor and for the poor.”
Engaging secularized culture and the dominance of science and technology requires a balanced, discerning approach. The Church affirms the dignity of human reason and the legitimate fruits of scientific progress—medical breakthroughs, sustainable innovations, digital tools for education and communication that can serve the common good and alleviate suffering. Yet it must prophetically critique distortions: when technology widens inequality, erodes human dignity, harms creation, or fosters a technocratic paradigm that supplants God and neighbor.
Inculturation in this setting proclaims that science and technology fulfill their purpose only when placed at the service of love, especially love for the vulnerable. Parishes, schools, and diocesan initiatives can promote ethical formation in technology, support eco-friendly development, and create forums for fruitful dialogue between faith and science. In doing so, the Church demonstrates that revelation and reason are complementary paths toward integral human flourishing.
Renewing the mission in Goa therefore involves concrete steps:
i) Strengthening outreach through Caritas Goa, parish social ministries, and community programs that make care for the poor central to worship, formation, and daily life.
ii) Fostering interreligious collaboration around justice issues—poverty reduction, ecological stewardship, migrant support—thereby witnessing Christ’s inclusive love.
iii) Equipping youth and families to navigate secular influences critically, blending scientific literacy with Gospel values through Catholic educational institutions and youth ministries.
Ultimately, authentic inculturation sidesteps the self-contradictory traps of an enlightenment that ends in domination. It unleashes the liberating power of the Gospel: an encounter with the God who loves first (“Dilexi te”) and invites us to extend that love preferentially to the least. Only when care for the poor constitutes the core of evangelization can the Church of Goa credibly proclaim Christ in our richly pluralistic, increasingly secularized, and technologically advanced context—becoming a genuine sign and instrument of hope, justice, and transformation for all people of goodwill.
