Fr. Abraham Vellamthadathil
Use God-given Reason
It is time for God-believing enlightened people like the SMC immigrants in the States to think a little in depth and go into certain facts.
After all, reason is God-given while Faith is given and drilled in from our infancy by the Church, supposedly by divine- right authority. It is therefore an equally religious duty to use our God-given reason precisely because it is God-given and therefore a religious responsibility, to exercise our reason. Consequently leaving the responsibility of thinking and being led by reason to a super hierarchy, whatever divine right authority they arrogate, and taking the attitude of “pray, pay and obey” is dereliction of God-imposed obligation and therefore sinful. If any one of any priestly rank asks a God-believing person “Who are you to think when we are here?” the latter should have the guts born of religious enlightenment to answer back: “God is not in any one’s long pocket”. He should own that God is not Christian, nor Hindu nor Islam. God has not created Hindus, or Christians or Muslims, but humans. The religious and denominational differences are priest-poojary creations on the basis of weird rituals, which are themselves the only means of living for these priests and poojaries.
Jesus defined the fundamental tenets of religion in the form of two commandments, reduced into one: love of God, (man’s vertical relationship) and love of other men, (man’s horizontal or socio-civic relationship). This commandment of the twofold relationship, Jesus says, summarizes all the laws and prophets and rituals. This beautiful cross of the two-fold relationship is the sign of Jesus’ discipleship and is to be borne at the expense of the selfish “I-attitude” and in the spirit of the “We-attitude”. I feel this responsible rethinking on the part of the SMC US members is imperative and unavoidable for their peaceful and prosperous survival.
Purifications or Ambitions?
I don’t know what motive prompted the worshipers of the ritual pristine purity to do such hectic exercise and effort for the “rediscovery” of this ritual pristine purity. What made them think that the contact of the Syro Malabar rite with the Latin rite and the consequent changes , if any, it may have received in the process, were impure and feel the need of “purifying” or de-Latinizing it and restore it as they did on July3,1962? Was there any motive worth considering other than their own anti-Latin bias and, I wish I were wrong in saying it, their clandestine and insatiable ambition for hierarchical promotions like higher church autonomy, titles like Arch-Bishops, Major Arch-Bishops and Patriarchs with its concomitant embellishments and insignias?
What are the new “purifications” and “shapes” introduced to rectify the “Latin-infected” Syro Malabar Rite, which was in use for centuries and to which the whole SMC community had got acclimatized to? After all the energy spent for the “Restoration of the Pristine Purity” what has been achieved except the claver cross with the head of the dove-god stuck on top of it on its landing headlong from so far high above there somewhere, the altar-curtain, making the sign of the cross from right to left instead of the “Latinized” left to right, bending the vertebral backbone with two palms shaped into a fist as a sign of veneration in the place of the traditional genuflection with the two palms joined together before the thorax in the shape of a lotus bud?
Whose interest Served?
Jesus said that a tree is known and judged by its fruits. Applying this test to this much belabored and prematurely delivered product of the “Restored Pristine Purity of Rite” we must ask ourselves: “Whose what interest has it served or protected? What fruit has it produced in our value-drained and massively corrupt socio-political affairs, in the field of inter-religious amity, except adding fuel to fire, intensifying the already disturbed social life with further disturbances and divisive tendencies and clashes? It wounded the sentiments and disturbed the peace and amity of the enlightened lay-fraternity of 1960s and they, under the leadership of such eminent lay leaders like Chev. Joseph Pettah, held massive demonstrations of protest and submitted memoranda of complaints to the then Apostolic Internuncio, New Delhi.
It created divisions among the SMC community and the factions spat venom of bitterness and caused much mud-slinging at each other. It caused belligerent atmosphere in several parishes, wasted a lot of money and energy in demolishing existing churches with the traditional crucifixion crosses in order to erect altars with the claver, or what the SMC US members call BJP crosses and altar curtains. As alleged by the SMC US factions, even attempts at murder of possible candidates for the coveted hierarchical promotions like Arch-Bishop Jacob Thumkuzhy of Trichur through acid mixed wine have taken place.
Worship God or Rite?
After a lot of hullabaloo it seemed to have subsided in Kerala. But then, from what I gather from Dr. Kottoor’s article on “SMC in US” and from mutually conflicting factions like voice blogspots and faith blogspots , the Rite demon seems to have severely haunted the SMC US community, causing, I fear, divisions, bitterness, venomous exchanges and not mere mud-slinging but stinking excrete slinging at each other. It entered in the garb of lamb-fur of catering to the spiritual needs of the SMC US immigrants. It then turned into “cultivating churches” (palli krishi) for reaping dollar harvest (dollar koithu).
This “pastoral” concern now seems to cause eruption of the lava of controversy over the claver or BJP crosses and altar curtains. The God-believing community should exhibit adulthood in matters religious as well. Should they gullibly pamper to the very unhealthy and narrow-visioned personal ambitions at the expense of their own peace, security, fellowship and prosperity? The faithful should not allow themselves to be perpetual infants in the hands of the church-cultivating and dollar harvesting Hierarchy who arrogate the role of escalator service to these “ praying, paying and obeying” infants.
Jesus has instituted only one priesthood: the royal priesthood of which every God-believing person, informed by divine Grace, is a participant. Perpetual childhood even in religion would lead to perpetual slavery to the Hierarchy arrogating monopoly of jure divino escalatory service to heaven, but all the while really engaged in church-cultivation and dollar harvesting. When persons of petty ambitions who worship Rite rather than God, who is Truth, Justice and Love, sit at the helm of church affairs and gullible perpetual minors are ready to pay, pray and obey, and derelict their God-given responsibility of exercising their thinking capability and leave it to such leaders to do the thinking, events like the consecration of the Coppell church that had to be conducted under police protection, are only likely, nay, inevitable. Dr.James Kottoor once said: Any rite is all right to pray. How true it is!
India Peace Initiative
I have a very special word of deep appreciation and prayerful wish for success to those like Mr. Mathew Abraham N.J., Mr. T.J. Koovalloore etc. who are behind the movement for “India Peace Initiative “, formed in the wake of the dastardly murder of the one Christian minister in the Pakistan Government for expressing his unfavourable opinion on the proposed bill of “Blasphemy Law”. I strongly feel that there is nothing more relevant and meaningful in this era of inter-religious enmities, communal riots and religious fundamentalist terrorism, jihads and counter attacks of religious fanaticism. But let us not forget that the very fundamental cause of such inter-religious rivalry is the blind faith in one’s own dogmatic creed formulae preached and drilled from the very infancy by priests and poojaries.
These creeds are different for different religions and mutually contradictory, and are responsible for the multiplicity of the mushroom growth of religions. Under the circumstances I think that attempts for inter-religious amity under banner of any one particular religion, even Christian, are a contradiction in operation and very unlikely to bear any fruit. This was what I said in the National Seminar on Hindu-Christian religious Amity, held in New Delhi a couple or more years ago under the joint auspices of Rashtriya Jagrithi Sansthan led by Abhay Kashyap, son of former Secretary General of Indian Parliament and the Adenauer Foundation, Germany.
I feel that Natural Human Morality ruled by God the Moral Imperative, who is Truth, Justice and Love is the Religion with a capital R.I think it is this Religion that Jesus preached through his two-fold most important and all inclusive commandment. Jesus’s Religion is this Cross of the two-fold relationship which is universal for all. Christianity is a product of the Church leaders and the Roman Emperors in alliance in synods and is now synonymous with Churchianity. When the German Theologian Holger Kersten said “Jesus’s message has been distorted beyond recognition” he meant this degeneration of Jesus’s message into the dogma filled churchianity. I would humbly suggest my friends working towards IPI to think a little deeper with Kersten and see if a rethinking over the dogma-filled mushroom religions is a need of the times or not.
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