The author makes an attempt to discuss the issue of the possibility of intro¬ducing the products of the contemporary music pop-culture into the liturgical ceremonies of the Church. As the starting point the author accepts the fact that Christianity, following the missionary order of Jesus „Go and teach all the nations," throughout the centuries took its roots in the culture of the nations being evangelised, at the same time benefited from the richness of the cultures, accepting those elements which were not contradictory to the teaching of the Gospel. This phenomenon, thus obvious, did not find any reflection in the official teaching of the Church. It was only during the Second Vatican Oecumenical Council that, in the constitution Sacrocanctum Concilium (1963 it was officially made possible to introduce some elements of the local, cultural tradition into the liturgy of the Church. However, the term „inculturation" was first used by the Pope, John Paul II in the encyclical Slavorum Apostoli (1985), and in the encyclical Redemptoris missio (1990) its definition was given, according to which inculturation is based on the integration of the values of the local cultures and the Christianity and it is also the rooting of the Christianity in various cultures. The problem of inculturation, taken up by the Pope John Paul II found its development and explanation in the instruction Roman Liturgy and inculturation published in 1994 by the Congregation of God's Cult and the Discipline of the Sacraments, which sets the norms referring to the adjustment of the liturgy to the character and the cultural tradition of various nations.
According to the instruction in the process of inculturation three rules must be obeyed: 1) it must be purposeful 2) it must retain the essential unity of the Roman ceremony, 3) it must be conducted under the supervision of the proper Church authority. The subject of inculturation might be : 1) the language - as the main means of communication among people, 2) music (singing) which expresses the soul and spirit of the nation, 3) such gestures and the position of the body which, in the culture of the given nation, express the prayers and our (human) position towards God. In such context a new problem arises, which the author puts in such words: since the contemporary global civilisation created its own culture, sometimes called the mass culture (pop- culture), one question should be asked, whether the music heritage of the mass culture should be „incultured" into the modern liturgy of the Church? And if yes, what are the limits to this inculturation and who should set them? The author tries to answer this question, characterizing first the most distinctive features of the mass culture: its being „mass, mediumistic, its being schemat-patterned, homogenous and standardized and he claims that those features of the mass culture in the very nature of things are alien to the liturgy. For that reason the author postulates -following cardinal Ratzinger - the necessity of „the courage of the ascetism" and „the courage of the opposition" to those aspects of the music mass culture which are clearly contradictory to the spirit of the liturgy and the sacrum sphere.
Usually there is a lack of such „courage". It refers mainly to this part of the priestly activity which tries to make the liturgy attractive", while „attractiveness" as it is commonly understood should be alien to the liturgy. Therefore, the answer to the

question of the limits to the inculturation referring to the music pop-culture is not easy as the problem itself is rather complex. The attempt to set such limits may, however, be found in the Council's constitution of the Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium. It points out three conditions of the properly understood inculturation, which might also be applied in reference to the contemporary musical pop-culture, namely: 1) retaining the accordance with the authentic spirit of the liturgy, which is a very special area of prayers, 2) retaining the dignity of the temple as the sacred place, 3) the concern for the spiritual good of the congregation... The author describes those conditions illustrating them with the controversial examples taken from the Polish reality of the Church (the concerts of the rock music, dancing during the liturgy, ideological justification of the musical trash in the liturgy, etc.). The author concludes his reasoning citing the words of John Paul II taken from the message to the musicians in 1985 during the International Year of Music, when he said that the music of the liturgy should be „the authentic work of art directed towards the sacredness of the cult".

(Translated by Marzena Tatarczuch)