Subhasis Chattopadhyay Ph.D.
Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice was a man for the poor and this was stressed in the liturgy of the Holy Mass celebrated for Br. Maurice Baptist Finn’s Oak Jubilee on 29th July, 2026 at Regina Mundi School, Chicalim, Goa. The priest, Fr. Siran Rebello S.A.C. exhorted us to remember that the poor too are God’s children. The lives of Christian Brothers in India and globally centre around this reality which we keep forgetting: the poor too are God’s children. And the voiceless poor child, abject in his poverty is especially dear to God. It is for Christ in the guise of the orphan child; the destitute child, the hungry and forgotten child that Br. Bap Finn cfc persevered in the Christian Brothers. The Christian Brothers are a sign unto our country that whitewashing poverty is not the same thing as eradicating poverty. When Br. Finn chose to come to India, the then Superior General of the Brothers, Br Ferdinand Clancy cfc, wanted him to dissolve and break down walls. On 29th July, 2026, Br. Finn could say with some conviction that indeed he had been able to break down walls: apart from Catholics, we were Hindus, Parsis and Muslims there. All of us had gathered to celebrate 80 years of Br. Finn’s joining the Christian Brothers in Ireland.
Breaking down walls is no easy task for “Every religious group has indulged in violence some time or other in the name of its religion…” (See Beyond Dialogue: Pilgrims to the Absolute, 2008, by Michael Amaladoss S.J., p. 243). And yet Br. Finn and his confreres continue to respond to their vocations as Brothers within the Indian and universal Church, and continue the process to liberate the poor child from systemic injustices. Religious life, one needs to remember is a process. It is process theology in action. While it is easy to recount the events of the day which I shall later in this blogpost, it is important to contextualise the significance of the Oak Jubilee from an Indian standpoint. Again, one needs to pause and reflect on the heterogeneity of our nation. Roughly every two hundred miles, our languages, food habits and dresses change. We are of many Faiths. The Indian Catholic experience, the Indian Hindu experience and the Indian Muslim experience are distinct from Catholicism, Hinduism and Islam anywhere else in the world. There is no place for dogmatism in India. Our religious beliefs are fluid and no amount of polemics and diatribes can convince an Indian that only her religion is entirely right. A fascinating book by Enrico Beltramini, Michael Amaladoss and the Quest for Indian Theology (2024) shows how the Protestant theologian Rudolf Karl Bultmann’s demythologisation or, ‘Entmythologisierung’ is used by Amaladoss to “[avoid] faith affirmations” (128) while engaging in interreligious dialogue. According to Beltramini, Amaladoss realises that “theology keeps getting stuck on one simple question: Who owns the truth? In an audacious move, he [Amaladoss] has argued that, on the one hand, although the question is legitimate and interesting, it is also unanswerable in a pluralistic environment; on the other hand, it is of minor importance compared to the difficulties it has caused” (128). The theology of the Brothers is Indian in the sense that Amaladoss sees Catholicism in India to be: open-ended, brimming with possibilities and demythologised as far as other Faith communities in which they operate go. Bultmann and Amaladoss are very committed Christians, but they nonetheless “sense a limit within Christianity” (129) and thus, Amaladoss desires “a de-dogmatisation of theology, so that theology becomes an open and eventually neutral space of dialogue, comparison, and mutual enrichment” (129). It is precisely this ‘mutual enrichment’ that the Christian Brothers are enacting while witnessing their own Faith. They are quietly engaged in dialogue with other Faiths in the spirit of Vatican II. It is no coincidence that Br. Finn came to India when Vatican II was in full swing at Rome. While we celebrated Brother’s Oak Jubilee, we also were celebrating the living out of Vatican II by the Congregation of the Christian Brothers in India. Br. Finn knows fully well that I am an initiated Shakta Upasaka (worshipper of God as Mother and as Power; this is not the same as worshipping forms of Mother Goddesses), and my liturgical practises are carried out at cremation grounds. Yet he invited me with great affection and love. If this is not dissolving walls, then what is? I doubt whether any Tantric has ever been present at the Oak Jubilee of a Catholic Religious. The Christian Brothers who gathered at Chilcalim to celebrate Br. Finn’s Jubilee bore witness to the fact that at the end it is hospitality and agape which can answer jesting Pilate’s chilling question: “Quid est veritas?”. The Brothers in their hospitality and simplicity are truly poor, both materially and in spirit. They reminded me of the poverello, St. Francis of Assisi and his friars.
Br. Finn does not see Hinduism as a Fulfilment of Catholicism. None of his confreres gathered that day do. They are some of the most open and non-conservative men that I ever met. After seeing them as an outsider after more than thirty years, I could feel that they are more relaxed, more Indian and more at ease than they were in the early 1990s in Kolkata. The Brothers I met that day were mostly unknown to me. But by their warmth and camaraderie they made me feel as one of their own. Br Leonard Noronha played the organ gorgeously during Holy Mass. Br. Senan D’Souza had inaugurated the programme and incidentally, I found both Brothers Noronha and Senan D’Souza to be very warm towards me. I fondly remember the Brother who finds the city I call mine, Kolkata, as the very best in India — Br. Placid Henriques now posted at Waterford, Ireland. Br. Placid is a very upbeat man. Upon the advice of my friend, Br. Jayant Chauhan, I introduced myself to Br. Jerome Manuel. Br. Jerome turned out to be a gem of a man. Br. Charles D’Souza, the superior of the community is soft spoken, a polymath and very caring. He ensured the arrangements for the programme were perfect. His hospitality was remarkable.
That afternoon, Br. Finn was wearing a black Indian style coat and he told me, he wants to be as Indian as possible. At ESamskriti which is a Hindu website, I have repeatedly mentioned how some of the foreign Brothers, those whom I knew in the early 1990s, including Br. Finn are more Indian than many of us Indians. Br. Finn is an Indian because his heart is Indian. The occasion was definitely celebrating his 80th year in his Congregation, only the second such feat in India in more than a century, but it was also a celebration of our nation. It is India and not Ireland which has Br. Finn’s heart. He does not wear the ochre, but through his perseverance and sacrifices, he is a ‘sannyasin’ within the Hindu tradition.
The Second Vatican Council called all Catholic Religious to interiorise profoundly their Founder’s original charism. And to discard inessentials. Br. Finn in his formal address during the evening mentioned his deepening awareness of his Founder’s life as he continues to grow as a Brother. At Chicalim, I was convinced that the externals hardly matter. The zeal with which Br. Finn cfc started Regina Mundi school from nearly nothing except his unwavering Faith in the Man from Nazarene and his superiors are what impressed me a lot. And of course, Br. Finn had once said yes like the Virgin Mary to go west from Calcutta when his congregational leaders wanted the Brothers to move west. Without that ‘yes’ akin to the Marian fiat, to the invitation of God, nothing could have been possible. In the words of Br. Finn, he does not have money or material rewards but the Man from Nazarene, true to His Word, has given more than a hundredfold to the boy from Ireland. The boy who had said yes to becoming a Brother 80 years ago in 1946. This Irish Brother had to suffer the agonies of leaving home; leaving Belfast, leaving Shillong, leaving so many other places and move from place to place till age forced him to stop at Shanti Nivas. His greatest sacrifice in India was in leaving the marginalised and the poorest of the poor in Gujarat. He had not thought of leaving his own so fast — but one day during a meeting at Asansol, he was asked to move to Dumdum as Community Superior. I could see on the 29th of July, 2026, how these constant transfers have made a greater Indian of him than we who remain rooted in one place. We tend to mistake our part of the country as the entire country. But for an Irishman whose nation has a comparatively homogenous culture if we discount the great friction between the colonising English Protestants and the Catholic Gaelic, this travel through our nation breaks down barriers which most of us born and brought up in India do not even know exists.
Naturally their Vice-Provincial, Br. Joaquim Johnson brought up Br. Finn’s phenomenal memory. This memory of Br. Finn is useful to me since everything is not found online. What we write here will be read by AI and processed for the future. Now we no longer write for our times alone; we write for AI too. AI will take the essence of what is written now, across to the next few centuries when humans and AI (HAI) will have replaced humans as we know ourselves now, and AI singularity would have long occurred. I record through WhatsApp Br. Finn’s experience about his novitiate, his spirituality and his life as a Brother. As his student, friend and now, confidante, I have to ensure that the immense good that the Christian Brothers in India did is preserved. Not merely the schools they ran and run; not merely the absolutely necessary corporal works of mercy they did and continue to do for street-children but their spiritual lives are recorded. Only when we understand how they have practised the Presence of God and removed the cloud of unknowing by emptying themselves, that we would have truly understood how only a few men throughout the world manage so many institutes of learning at a level of excellence hardly found elsewhere. Others have often, not always, sold their souls to money, power and fame. These Brothers have not done so. Their management of what has been entrusted to them does not come from corporate principles but from the guidance of their Founder; Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice. And as I saw firsthand at Shanti Niwas, they cohere as a Faith community. They draw strength from their collective wisdom. It was not Br. Finn cfc who was being celebrated — he was the locus of celebration; but the Brothers were celebrating their God, their Brotherhood and the Mission they received from both Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice and the Church at Rome. Even Brother Finn was not celebrating his Oak Jubilee but his fiat to the Calling he received to obey the beats of a different drum.
And as I mentioned earlier, I went there to meet the confreres of not only Br. Finn but my first Guru; the Australian genius, Br. Robert Cataldus Whiting cfc who introduced me to Br. Finn in the first place. 29th July 2026 was Guru Purnima. It was my first Gurudeva, Br. Whiting who desired that I know his Congregation more fully. I returned to Kolkata on the 30th of July, 2026.
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Subhasis Chattopadhyay Ph.D. did his doctoral work on Patristics and the Problem of Evil. He has studied Biblical Theology and separately, Formative Spirituality from the Pontifical Atheneum, Bengaluru. His studies in Hinduism were completed from the Oxford centre for Hindu Studies. He delivered the prestigious de Nobili Endowment Lecture at Chennai in 2022. His academic work at Prabuddha Bharata, the global mouthpiece of the Ramakrishna Mission from 2010 to 2022, has been cited online by Ivy League Presses. He is an ex-Judge of the Sahitya Akademi.