Keluarga gerejani, an ecclesial family : A catechetical exploration of church-images among Catholics in Java

Abstract

Title: Keluarga gerejani, an ecclesial family Subtitle: A catechetical exploration of church-images among Catholics in Java Author: Hadrianus Tedjoworo (Yogyakarta, 1971)

Abstract: The realness images can evoke in the minds of the believers gives rise to an ‘imagerial’ way of apprehending the reality of the church. Images of the church can be found in the Scriptures and have been taught through catechesis, but there are also images in local cultures that may help to apprehend the church. The so-called ‘cultural’ images are based on the exploratory survey conducted in the two parishes indicating the Sundanese and the Javanese cultures in Java. This book is about a journey of figuring the church through the eyes of the believers.

The author reinterprets the believers’ emerging cultural images of the church and associates these images with the ‘biblical’ images of the church. The cultural images of the church are reassessed, and the images related to the aspects of the church are also interpreted, corrected or enriched in the light of the related biblical images. All these images are a valuable contribution for the construction of the catechetical content about the church in Java. No less than seventeen cultural images are explored.

There are some recommendations concerning the content of catechesis that may help bridge the gap between the more traditional concepts of the church and the believers’ culturally embedded images in Java. Some ecclesiological dimensions of the local church communities in Java are illuminated in the catechetical recommendations and in the various church-images imagined by the believers from within their sociocultural realities. There are catechetical implications that bring up the lay-catechesis and the application of an ‘imagerial’ catechesis among the churches in Java. In this way, the believers’ culturally embedded images of the church are appreciated in the catechetical content on the church and may contribute to a process towards an ‘imagerial’ ecclesiology, a theology of the church from the perspective of the family members.