In what amounts to the latest failure to resolve an almost 25 year-old liturgical feud, a six-day meeting of bishops of the Syro-Malabar church concluded Saturday without any new consensus on how Mass ought to be celebrated.
Centered in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the Syro-Malabar Church has more than four million followers worldwide, making it the second-largest \of the Eastern churches in communion with Rome after the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine.
Since at least the 1990s, members of the church have been divided over the proper way to celebrate their version of the Mass, known as the “Holy Qurbana.” Historically, some branches of the church celebrated ad populum, meaning facing the people, for virtually the entire liturgy, while others did so ad orientem, meaning facing the East.
In 1999, the church’s bishops agreed on a compromise formula: The Mass would be facing the people during the Liturgy of the Word, and facing East during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. That agreement broke down in practice, however, when some elements of the church refused to accept it, especially the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly, the largest diocese in the church with around a half-million followers,
Pope Francis intervened last July, insisting on a unfirm liturgy based on the 1999 formula, which was supposed to be adopted in August. Efforts to enforce it, however, have been met with resistance including street fights, hunger strikes, the burning of pastoral letters and the burning in effigy of Cardinal George Alencherry, head of the Syro-Malabar Church.
Meanwhile, representing the priests of Ernakulam-Angamaly, Father Jose Vailikodath said they would continue to say Mass facing the people, claiming that Alencherry’s statement creates more problems than it solves.
Father Paul Thelakat, a former spokesperson of the Syro-Malabar synod, told Crux the dissenters would not object if uniformity were being imposed “on a matter of faith or morals.”
“All we are asking is something we were already doing, [which is] to have the complete Mass facing the people,” Thelakat said. “It is only a question of orientation, where there is nothing wrong at all.”
Hindu mob attacks Catholic NGO staff on Indian train
A Catholic priest sought police protection for his non-governmental organization (NGO) in western India a few days after his staff members were attacked by Hindu nationalists on a running train alleging they were missionaries involved in conversion activities.
Seven teachers of a Catholic NGO working in Dhule district in the western state of Maharashtra were assaulted by a mob of around 15 Hindu youth while traveling by an express train.
The team was out on an education tour when the attack took place at Sangli railway station on the night of Jan. 16.
“I was pulled down from the berth and hit on my head with a steel object until blood began to ooze out from a wound,” says Gunilal Pawara, supervisor of a team of 42 teachers including 14 females who work for the NGO named Shirpur Vishwa Mandal Sevashram.
The mob accused the team of trying to convert indigenous tribal people and kept asking for Father Constancio Rodrigues, the director of the NGO, Pawara said.
Father Rodrigues told UCA News on Jan. 20 that he was to accompany his team but could not join them at the last minute.
Tribal factor at play ahead of crucial elections in India
For the first time, tribal people in India are a much sought-after community as nine Indian states face elections this year, ahead of the crucial general election next year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek a third term.
Tribal people can tilt the balance in seven of the nine states going to the polls this year, including Christian-majority tribal states of Meghalaya and Nagaland.
The other tribal heartland states that go to polls this year are Tripura and Mizoram along with Karnataka and Telangana. The term of legislatures in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan—the three other tribal stronghold states—are ending early next January and so elections are expected by the end of this year.
Never in the poll history of India have tribal people enjoyed such limelight. Of the 543 seats in the national parliament, 131 seats or close to 25 percent seats have been reserved for tribal and Dalit people since 2008. Tribal people alone get 84 seats.
Modi’s pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominated Droupadi Murmu — a woman from eastern India’s Santal tribe — as president last year, making her India’s first tribal president.
Indian parishioners stage stir to reopen Cathedral
Some 300 Catholics demonstrated demanding the reopening of a cathedral in southern India on Jan. 26, more than a month after police closed it following a violent clash between rival Catholics over a longstanding liturgy dispute.
Police sealed the St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese in the Eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala last Christmas eve.
The violence on the altar of the cathedral resulted in the desecration of consecrated holy host and wine and police had to intervene, church officials said.
“Our Church is closed and we have to go to nearby parishes for attending holy Mass and availing other sacraments,” says Thankachan Perayil, convener of Basilica Community, a group of cathedral parishioners, who protested.
Perayil blamed Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, apostolic administrator of the archdiocese, and Father Antony Poothavelil, administrator of the Cathedral, for the violence.
Archbishop Thazhath appointed the administrator after he faced a boycott by the majority of priests and faithful in the archdiocese due to his insistence on implementing the uniform mode of Mass in the archdiocese.
The parishioners and priests in the archdiocese want the Mass with celebrants facing the people, and they rejected the Church Synod-approved Mass, in which the celebrant faces the altar during Eucharistic prayer.
Indian-origin Jesuit introduces Vailankanni Mother in Indonesia’s Sumatra
An Indian origin Jesuit priest is credit for introducing to devotion to the Mother Mary of Vailankanni in the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Father James Bharataputra has been serving the Church in Indonesia for the past 50 years. The 84-year-old priest is credited with the construction of the Marian shrine “Graha Maria Annai Velangkanni” in Medan, the capital of the province of North Sumatra.
The island of Sumatra is inhabited mainly by indigenous groups and where traditionalist Islam is widespread.
Father James, as he is popularly known, was born in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He was naturalized as an Indonesian in 1989.
Father James says he nurtured the desire to become a mission since he joined the Madurai province of the Jesuits. He was sent to Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to complete his theological studies. After his ordination in 1970, he visited Medan and the then Capuchin Archbishop Van den Hurk of Medan asked him to provide pastoral care to a small local Tamil-speaking Catholic community.
Women who lived as sex slaves to an Indian goddess
Dedicated to an Indian goddess as a child, Huvakka Bhimappa’s years of sexual servitude began when her uncle took her virginity, raping her in exchange for a saree and some jewelry.
Bhimappa was not yet 10 years old when she became a “devadasi” — girls coerced by their pa-rents into an elaborate wedding ritual with a Hindu deity, many of whom are then forced into illegal prostitution.
Devadasis are expected to live a life of religious devotion, forbidden from marrying other mortals, and forced at puberty to sacrifice their virginity to an older man, in return for money or gifts.
“In my case, it was my mother’s brother,” Bhimappa, now in her late 40s, told.
What followed was years of sexual slavery, earning money for her family through encounters with other men in the name of serving the goddess.
Bhimappa eventually escaped her servitude but with no edu-cation, she earns around a dollar a day toiling in fields.
Her time as a devotee to the Hindu goddess Yellamma has also rendered her an outcast in the eyes of her community.
She had loved a man once, but it would have been unthinkable for her to ask him to marry.
“If I was not a devadasi, I would have had a family and children and some money. I would have lived well,” she said.
Devadasis have been an integral part of southern Indian culture for centuries and once enjoyed a respectable place in society.
Many were highly educated, trained in classical dance and music, lived comfortable lives and chose their own sexual partners.
“This notion of more or less religiously sanctioned sexual slavery was not part of the original system of patronage,” historian Gayathri Iyer told AFP.
Iyer said that in the 19th century, during the British colonial era, the divine pact between devadasi and goddess evolved into an institution of sexual exploitation.
Indian Church hails menstrual leave for girl students
Christian leaders have hailed the move by a communist-led state government in India to introduce menstrual leave for female students in government-run higher education institutions.
They, however, were skeptical of the state government’s plan to provide 60 days maternity leave to students aged 18 and above in southern Kerala state.
“No doubt, the government’s decision to grant menstrual leave to college students is a highly appreciative move,” said Father Jacob G Palakkappilly, spokes-person of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC), the regional bishops’ forum.
The state’s higher education minister R Bindu announced the government order on Jan. 19.
She said the government order also allows a maximum of 60 days maternity leave to female students aged 18 and above.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reiterated in a social media post his government’s decision to ensure “gender fairness” in Kerala.
According to him, the decision would lead to a reduction of 2 percent in the mandatory com-pulsory attendance of 75 percent required for female students.
“It will be a big relief for female students who otherwise had no choice of seeking condonation of their absence from classes,” Father Palakkappilly told on January 23.
Indian Left party demands action on anti-Christian attacks
The attack on Christians in central India is part of a political agenda and not linked to religious conversion, says a communist party delegation after visiting the violence-hit areas of Chhattisgarh state.
Not a single case of forcible religious conversion is reported in the central state, where Hindu nationalist mobs are using it as a handle to unleash violence against tribal Christians, the delegation said.
“The propaganda of forcible conversions is not borne out by facts. According to officials, there is not a single case of forcible conversion reported,” a delegation of the Communist Party of India-Maxist (CPI-M) stated in a memorandum to the state’s Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel.
The memorandum said that there clearly seemed “a political agenda behind these attacks, given the schedule for elections to the state assembly later this year.”
The CPI-M delegation led by Politburo member, Brinda Karat, visited the violence-hit areas of Narayanpur, Kondagaon and Kanker districts on Jan. 20-22, and met victims of the violence, besides police and district officials.
The delegation found “unimaginable torture of victims,” especially women who were “stripped and beaten up” in public and bla-med the Congress government ruling Chhattisgarh for its inaction.
Cardinal Tagle to attend India’s Latin rite bishops’ plenary
Cardinal Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, head of the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization, will attend the 34th plenary assembly of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI), the national association of the country’s Latin rite prelates.
The January 24-25 annual plenary at Bengaluru’s St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences will address the theme, “Telling the Story of Jesus in our Context: The Synodal Way.”
On January 23, Cardinal Tagle, a Filipino prelate, visited leaders of other religions in Bengaluru city, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore and vicars general Monsignors S Jayanathan and C Francis accompanied the prelates.
They met Usman Sharieff, secretary Jumma Masjid Trust Board and other leaders of the Muslim community at Khadriya Masjid, Millers Road, under the Management of Jumma Masjid Trust Board.
Their next stop was at the ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) Temple at Rajajinagar where they exchanged pleasantries and matters of mutual interest with Madhu Pandit Dasa, temple president and chairman of the Akshya Patra.
At both places the Catholic prelates prayed for interreligious harmony, solidarity and fellowship, according to a press note from J A Kanthraj, the spokesperson of the Archdiocese of Bangalore.
Earlier on January 22, Cardinal Tagle was accorded a warm and affectionate welcome at the Bangalore international airport by a team led by Archbishop Machado. Others in the team were Fathers Stephen Alathara, CCBI deputy secretary general, Vignan Das, associate director Communio, Gabriel Christy and Vivek Basu.
The CCBI accounts for 132 of India’s 174 dioceses. It has 190 bishops, both active and retired, as members. It was set up as canonical national episcopal body to help India’s Latin rite bishops to exchange ideas and information, deliberate on the Church’s broad concerns and take care of the pastoral needs of the faithful.
Remembering the Asian theologian of ‘bits and pieces’
Filipino Jesuit Father Catalino Arevalo, whom many consider the “Father of Asian Theology,” died at the age of 97 on Jan. 18.
The Jesuit brought his own method into conversation with other theologians in the Philippines, recalls Vincentian Father Daniel Franklin Pilario, a theology pro-fessor in the Philippines. In the following tribute, Father Pilario provides excerpts from a 2004 article he wrote on the theology of Father Arevalo:
Theologians need to have a concrete grasp of the country’s main political and economic move-ments, so as to act on them in the spirit of the Gospel. This intrinsic connection of theology with time and historical circumstance can be discerned in Filipino Jesuit Father Catalino Arevalo’s theolo-gical method of “reading the signs of the times,” a term introduced by Vatican II.
Somewhere in his writings, Father Arevalo wrote: Ours is “a theology of bits and pieces gathered and scotch-taped together in hours of doing and suffering, in dialogue and confrontation, in reflec-tion and prayer, in emptiness, in confusion and paralysis — in all the times and seasons of Qoheleth, it would seem — in struggle, sometimes in anguish and despair, sometimes with the shedding of real blood and tears.”