Abstract

In the face of the multiple and radical changes that have occurred in contemporary society and in the life of peoples, a revisiting of the conciliar teaching is necessary. In this perspective, the acquisitions of the Council Fathers are problematized from an anthropological and cultural point of view. Starting from what still remains valid in relation to the dialogue with the cultures of peoples, a careful rereading, especially of the chapter on the «Progress of culture» of Gaudium et spes, leads to highlighting how in the thought of the Council Fathers it is still present, on the one hand, an universalistic and generalistic approach to the concept of culture; on the other, the uncritical assumption of a typically evolutionary theoretical horizon, from which a typical curvature of Western ethnocentrism consequently emerges, which does not do full justice to the anthropological depth of people’s cultures. Hence the multiple and unresolved consequences in the life of local Churches and in the vast problem of the evangeliza¬tion of peoples and of the West itself.