Valson Thampu

Often it happens that we understand an issue clearly, and less subjectively, when we look away from it. To do so, we must have something similar to regard. Otherwise, ‘looking away’ becomes shutting one’s eyes to the issue concerned. Let us see how this works in relation to the ‘Mass’ controversy.
What is the idea shaping how churches are designed? If this inquiry is followed to its conclusion, we will discover that the shaping idea is not religious, but cultural-political. Leave aside, for the time being, the orientation to the East; only consider the interior design of a church. It resembles the court of a king. In Eastern traditions, a king sat with his back to the wall for the reason that he was insecure. Tyrants knew that their life was in constant peril, because they oppressed their subjects. Governance and oppression went hand-in-hand.
The foremost Catholic cathedral is called ‘basilica’, St. Peter’s Basilica for example. ‘Basilica’ is derived from ‘basileus’, which means king. Basilica is the court of a king. It was natural in the days of monarchy to think of God as king, or the King of kings. Though we have outgrown monarchy and moved into democracy, we retain the monarchic worldview, symbols and attitude in religion. Instead of an earthly king, we have a heavenly King.
Often, what is deemed ‘pious’ by us is imagined and expressed in terms of the demeanour of the subjects under monarchy. Consider an example from the New Testament. We read in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector that the latter did not dare to ‘look up’ to God. (Lk.18:9-14). Verse 13 reads, “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ Typically this was how a subject supplicated his king; especially in the eastern context. This reminds us of how party functionaries used to have audience with Jayalalithaa. They crawled their way towards the seat of the Puratchithalaivi and submitted their concerns with their eyes downcast. It made tyrants in the past feel secure when they sat with their backs to the wall (so that no one could approach them from behind), with people as suppliants approaching them with their eyes cast to the ground.
It doesn’t take great spiritual wisdom to recognize that the ‘face-to-the-people’ vs. ‘face-to-God’ controversy has nothing to do with God or the people. It is purely a political stand-off, mistaken for a liturgical struggle. Surely, it is nobody’s case that God sits somewhere in the east and he cannot be discerned in any other direction. Such an assumption can be valid, only if God is assumed to be an idol installed in a particular spot in the east, no matter where in the world you stand. Such an assumption can be valid at least in part, only we all pool our might and flatten the earth into a giant football field.
The clash of opinions, if it is to be resolved at all, must be counterpointed to an alternate model of understanding the issue in dispute. Fortunately, we have a relevant illustration in the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John. Jews and Samaritans fought bitterly over an issue strikingly similar to the present controversy. Does God sit on Mount Zion or on Mount Gerizim? Now, if you call a reconciliation meeting, giving opportunities to both sides to present their arguments, you will reach nowhere. They will argue ‘till thy Kingdom come’. Jesus knew better. What he did was to direct the attention of the disputants to a third possibility.
What was that possibility? God was neither on ‘this’ mountain nor on ‘that’ mountain. God, being Spirit, must be worshipped in spirit and truth. Controversies that are dressed up as liturgical moot-points may have little to do with worship. Such disputes are, almost always, political in nature. What difference does it make that a priest as the celebrant of the Mass stands facing the people or facing God, if he is incapable of worshipping God in spirit and truth?
In his conversation with the woman of Samaria, Jesus implied a religious revolution. Jesus de-communalised worship. He liberated worship from political metaphors and made it an experience of sincerity between God and human beings. The Jews prided themselves on the splendour and grandeur of the Jerusalem temple; but it did not impress Jesus. Instead, he was indignant that Mammon-worship was in progress in the temple-market. The temple and market had become one. So, when he cleansed the market, the High Priest saw it as an attack on the temple!
Liturgy is never an innocent thing. Like doctrines and dogmas, liturgies too legitimatise and perpetuate ‘as it was before’. Even though we have outgrown monarchy and live in the age of democracy, our religious outlook and conduct continue to be pre-democratic. For all religions, the democratic culture is taboo; though each one of them exists in and benefits from constitutional democracies. This hypocrisy lurks in our religious life as well. We pay lip-service to democracy, but reject it in religious matters. We believe that only old-world absolute monarchy is acceptable to God. We overlook in the process that Jesus, in pursuing his mission to ‘set the captives free’ (Lk.4:18) ‘democratised’ the faith-life of the people.
‘Faith’ in the spiritual vision of Jesus corresponds to ‘one-citizen-one-vote’ principle in democracy. It is in relation to faith that all are equal in the Kingdom of God. Equality in a democracy stands on the equal worth of votes. In no other sense are citizens equal in any democracy in the world. Faith is the dynamics of individuals relating self-empowering-ly to God. So is the vote vis-à-vis democracy; except that faith continues to work irrespective of the material accidents of a person’s life. In contrast, citizens vote and are forgotten. Not so, in the Kingdom of God. The ‘King’, whose Kingdom is not of this world, ‘abides with the people’. ‘Behold,’ Jesus said, ‘I am with you unto the end of the world’.