A Comment and Our Response

Comment by a Reader:

I am not against voice. But at times voice go to the extreme to criticize anything and everything that happens and close their eyes and protect some people.

When Anthony achan mentioned about the troubles it was our own American born youth not the CYM. Atleast please have the knowledge of the difference between American born youth (SMYO) and CYM. I am not saying the whole SMYO is trouble. Majority of them are great kids and they do great under the guidance of Jibu. My kid is in SMYO too. But definitely there were some kids who went the wrong way but I know our church was able to bring most of them back to the right track.Recently CYM had been very active under the best leadesrship of John and Lata Koola and now Gills. There are many fine young men and women in that group who are dedicating their time and service for us and our children. Have you noticed how much time they spent to decorate our church for the feast and many other occasions? And also they were spending time on registration process. Please do not discourage them because they have to carry own our ways and traditions. You could have criticized in a very positive manner as a suggestion rather than attacking them. Please see all the sides before you judge people.

When you criticize CYM for putting their name why wouldn't you say something about some big shots who gets away with anything and gets their names mentioned in every occasion. Open the so called souvenir and count how many times these big shots' pictures are repeatedly printed. See the Sunday bulletin and see the advertisement and find out how much money they have given for whole one year for getting the prime spot. Find out the real story about the case filed by Joshy Vallikkulam in our own church rather than twisting the story to protect his CPA brother in law. Very few people know the hateful rift between them. Find out the real story behind VG appointment. Myself and my friends wrote many comments to voice regarding the CPAs just to see how many of them gets published. We noticed whenever long CPA is mentioned, it never gets printed. What is the secret?

So please voice, be the truth finders not the fault finders. Leave our young brothers and sisters alone. I am not sying everyone of CYM members are perfect.Appreciate the work they do and talk about your concerns to the responsible authorities than ripping these young people in an open forum to make them look like group of bad people.

Thank you in advance for publishing this.

Our Response:

You are right. Almost all our posts are critical of our authorities and their actions. As for reporting positive things, sorry to say we haven't seen many.

We state categorically we are not anti-youth. But we sure are disappointed in them to a certain respect, mainly because Fr. Antony has been able to manipulate them and make them his own personal cheerleaders. (And it is our personal opinion that there should be only one organization for our youth. An integrated youth group will be greatly helpful to assimilate our young people some of them born in India and others in the USA.)

There is no question, Fr Antony has manipulated the youth for his benefit. He has used them as his booster club. The admiration is mutual. Fr. Antony has used every opportunity to praise and exalt the youth for every silly thing. So has the youth praised and exalted Fr. Antony. One classic example is the documentary about him produced by the youth.

Fr Antony used the gullibility of the youth to gloss over his life achievements, which if looked at critically, cannot be said to be that extraordinary. Any fool can build a church with over 11 million dollars in hand. But when you consider the sad fact that this brand new church is quite inadequate even for our existing community, that shows his this achievement is a failure and a waste of money as far as the community is concerned.

Any neutral and disinterested expert will tell you, this church does not justify the expense of 11 million dollars. There was so much waste and mismanagement in the construction, that it can only be called irresponsible. No member of the laity has been able to see the financial records pertaining to the construction of the church, even fraud can be suspected. 

As the above writer alleged, we are not in cahoots with the CPA's. We suspect church construction funds have been misappropriated by the authorities with the co-operation of the Core Committee. We dare any one of our community members to request the above said financial records from the authorities and ascertain no financial impropriety has taken place.

As for the legal action taken by Mr. Joshi Vallikkalam, we support his courageous action in this regard. We believe Fr. Antony behaved like the despot he is, to remove Joshi from his position and suspend the lay organization, SMCC, he lead. We also believe Fr Antony had a personal vendetta with Joshi. It is a known fact Joshi was fired by him for organizing a farewell party for his mortal enemy, Fr. Roy Kaduppil. The pettiness of Fr Antony knows no bounds and it is clearly illustrated by his actions in this regard.

But we disagree with Joshi for the fact that he filed the case against Fr. Shassheril, instead of the real culprit, Fr. Antony. It should be understood Fr. Shassheril wouldn't have done anything without the express orders of his boss. 

Again we state, we have no special interest to protect the CPA'sWe want our readers to rest assured their due day will come in the not distant future.