Sometimes a brass bowl is just a brass bowl. But because it has been introduced explicitly as an import from another faith tradition, especially under these circumstances, it may fairly and reasonably be judged in light of the liturgist’s intentions, which in my opinion are pretty clearly syncretistic.
To lump this together with the “use of a bell or other instrument” is to cloud the issue, because if it boiled down to that, there would be far fewer cultural distinctions around the world and far greater diversity within cultures. This singing-bowl thing has its own cultural and religious context that it grew out of, and the liturgist must have known this because she wouldn’t have gone out of her way to preserve the exact method of ringing it and to promote its use as bookends to a meditation period. It is not being imported into our liturgies just as an innocent method of signaling when to start and stop your post-communion meditations; it’s being imported out of a failure to appreciate cultural and religious differences for what they are.
Excusing the use of Tibetan Singing Bowls on the basis of their function, their *functional * similarity with western bells, is the same kind of thinking that underlies all sorts of culture-destroying confusion from artificial insemination to gay marriage. After all, as long as the egg and sperm are from the two parents, what difference does it make if they are brought together outside the context of marital relations? IVF serves the same
function, doesn’t it? Or take marriage itself, it’s essentially a committed relationship, and if two people of the same sex are committed, well why not get married? It serves the same
function, doesn’t it?
Take bread and wine as another example. If we can use Tibetan Singing Bowls because they serve a similar function in the context of Buddhist meditation, why not use pizza and coke for the college Newman Center masses instead of wheat bread and real wine? Or in the mission diocese of Fairbanks Alaska, seal-blubber and hot tea? Because for them, seal-blubber is their bread, and tea is their wine. If cultural and religious differences are so unimportant, then why aren’t they using smoldering bundles of sagebrush in the cathedrals of Europe instead of our traditional incense? Because for North American Indians, sage is their version of incense and serves the same
function. Because it’s the *function *that makes it licit. Right? Or is there something missing here?
Educated westerners especially in the last century or so have the tendency to be a little more excited about the trappings of foreign cultures and tend to forget that we have our own ways of doing things that are just as appropriate and that grew organically in the context of our heritage.
This discussion reminds me of a story where an American kid learned about Japanese culture and decided he would do a little importing himself. So at the end of dinner he let out a wall-shaking belch. When his mother chastised him for bad table manners, he retorted that in Japan it means a compliment to the chef. Whereupon his dad reminded him that in Japan, parents cut the heads off disrespectful children with a sword. He never belched again at the table.
So anyway, if you still want chapter and verse:
adoremus.org/doc_inculturation.html
