An article by Prof. A. G. Fidalgo CSsR, published on the blog of the Alfonsiana Academy
‘Culture’ is the guiding word for the academic year 2025-2026. It is interesting and can be stimulating. But what does it tell us and how can we put it into practice in the various aspects and dimensions of the academic path? From the point of view of human configuration, it is a basic and integrating element, as well as being a place where our humanity can be manifested and realised in its richest and most genuine diversity.
We can access this invitation through the search for an “academic culture”, a “culture of study and research”, a “culture of encounter”, a “culture of dialogue”, a “moral culture”, an “Alphonsian culture”, an “ecclesial culture”, a “missionary culture”, a “culture of love and peace”, a “culture of care”, and so we could continue to define culture axiologically, highlighting its breadth, diversity and great power to qualify the simplest and most profound human realities, and in this particular case, those that are found and developed in a Roman, local and universal academic context.
Every cultural reality, being a human reality, is full of beauty with its great possibilities for being a place of enrichment and expansion; but, at the same time, it can be a reason for standardisation, places of control, “colonisation” and closure where our humanity can lose its openness to new, expansive alternatives for fulfilment. There are cultures that are very sure of themselves, more concerned with maintaining their fixed and unshakeable identities with an air of superiority, which will never allow other cultures not only to approach them but to demand to be considered with the same equality and dignity of existence and coexistence. This tension can be very evident or only latent, and for this reason we must pay attention, discern and know how to deal with this real, harsh and challenging landscape. Because there are cultures that are “bridges” and others that present themselves as “walls”.
The cultural paradigm is not just a style or a set of experiences that can shape positions and perspectives; it is this, but much more. It is a key that can indicate open or closed horizons, well-travelled and even untravelled roads, places of encounter or conflict, possibilities for better integration or painful disintegration and exclusion. It is a key that includes adaptive and creative elements, the skilful combination of both of which can lead to better human and academic achievements. Within this panorama, we can establish different understandings that are part of our academic environment. Here, we choose only two that seem highly significant to us. 1) Culture as a horizon of inspiration; 2) Culture as a human place of realisation and transformation.
1) Culture as a horizon of inspiration: academic training can enable a culture of exchange based on openness and depth. It would be desirable for the academic path to enable processes that are places where creativity, innovation and personal, social, structural and systemic transformation of consciousness and the very realities in which we live and which we want to serve are stimulated, without anyone having to abandon their respective cultural horizons. For this reason, culture as a horizon should offer knowledge, values and expressions that contribute to broadening our vision of the world and of different human, historical, social and religious realities, always opening up new possibilities for interpretation and realisation. It would be desirable for this first element to be present first and foremost as a relational attitude and then as an inspiring practice in all courses, seminars, assignments, examinations, events and other activities that make up the fabric of our academic life. In other words, making interculturality a stimulating but at the same time structuring reality of all study and research.
2) Culture as a human place of realisation and transformation: from the cultural paradigm, we could support processes in which integral academic training aims, at every step, to offer both theoretical and practical spaces and elements which, taking on both resistance and possible dissent, can give rise to better realisations and understandings, to real transformations in the ways of elaborating what one is and what one can be, from the educational space. This aspect implies giving rise to open and critical positions, capable of undertaking the adventure of sharing in study and in life, knowing that much or everything will not be the same at the end of the process and that, whatever the case may be, it will always be better than remaining with one’s own and what one has always had as the only baggage to continue making history and serving in the perspective of a moral theology in the Alfonsian key. We must have the humility and courage to get our hands dirty by engaging with the most challenging realities, the most intricate and controversial studies, cultivating depth in analysis and always opening ourselves anew to the freshness of the Gospel, which requires us to always listen in order to understand, include, accompany and point to new liberating and humanising horizons. As Pope Leo recently said: “Catholic universities have a decisive task: to offer ‘diaconia of culture’, fewer chairs and more tables where we can sit together, without unnecessary hierarchies, to touch the wounds of history and seek, in the Spirit, wisdom that springs from the life of peoples” (cf Drawing New Maps of Hope, 9.3).
In short, we could summarise what has been said with these warnings left to us by Pope Francis (while we invite you to reread the various references that can give content and foundation to what has been said above):
‘The proposal is to be present to the person in need of help, without looking to see if they are part of one’s own circle. In this case, the Samaritan was the one who became a neighbour to the wounded Jew. To be close and present, he crossed all cultural and historical barriers. Jesus’ conclusion is a request: “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). In other words, he challenges us to put aside all differences and, in the face of suffering, to be close to everyone. Therefore, I no longer say that I have “neighbours” to help, but that I feel called to become a neighbour to others” (cf Fratelli tutti, n. 81; cf. nn. 83; 133-134; 141; 143-144; 146-151; 191-192; 199; 215-220; 224).
“The world grows and is filled with new beauty thanks to successive syntheses that are produced between open cultures, free from any cultural imposition” (cf FT, n. 148).
