By chhotebhai.
A roller coaster ride can throw one upside down or side to side. Not meant for the faint hearted. After my daughter was born 38 years ago, this was probably the first time that I was travelling out of my hometown Kanpur for more than 10 days. It was a roller coaster ride through three coastal states that took me through 10 cities in just 15 days.
My family, quite rightly, thought I was mad, and wondered if I could make it. At the last point of call, when a young lady heard of my itinerary, she appreciatively remarked that I must be 18 years old. Though flattered, I told her to multiply that number by 4.
Also read: Coastal Collateral: A Sequel to ‘Roller Coaster’
This trip to Goa, Kerala and Karnataka was occasioned by a family event. My wife and I did most of the circuit together, except for a 6-day parting of ways in between. Our first port of call was to our daughter in Goa.
Her six-year old daughter asked me some challenging questions about Jesus, his disciples and God; especially about Jesus’ death and resurrection. She wanted to know how humans had a beginning and an end, but God didn’t. He just existed. Shades of Young Sheldon’s existentialist profundity.
That night I stayed awake seeking a cogent answer to my grand-daughter’s very legitimate query. I said that human lives were linear, like a line with a starting and ending point. But God was like a circle, without beginning or end. Noted astro-physicist Steven Hawking had a similar hypothesis about the universe that was circular, without a beginning or end.
His purely physical observations may have been correct; except that he used that to argue that if creation had no beginning or end, then there could never have been a creator God. This was like using a tailor’s measuring tape to check one’s temperature. The wrong tools for analysis would naturally lead to erroneous conclusions.
In Goa I met an elderly religious sister (for the first time). Her father had worked in UNESCO in Palestine, as she too did later. I shared her angst at the brutal and unrelenting assault on the hapless people of Gaza by the mighty State of Israel. Unfortunately, many “good Christians” believe that the modern State of Israel is synonymous with the biblical Promised Land of the Israelites. Like Hawking, they too were drawing erroneous conclusions.
In Goa I conducted a programme on Vatican II and Synodality, organised by the All India Catholic Union and the Catholic Association of Goa. I cannot stop telling people that the collegial and fraternal eclesiology of Vatican II is the Catholic Church’s best kept secret, to keep the laity ignorant and suppressed. The better off and educated laity of the Konkan coast seems most averse to Vatican II. I can understand this conservative attitude among older people, but I was aghast to find this among relatively younger people in Goa.
Small wonder then that when Pope Francis was asked about the possibility of convening Vatican III he bluntly said; “First implement Vatican II”. Had this been done in both letter and spirit there would have been no need for the present Synod on Synodality. It is for this reason that I have grave apprehensions on the outcome of the Synod. It cannot be imposed from the top, unless it is simultaneously implemented from the bottom up. Decrees and encyclicals cut no ice, if the hierarchy and clergy are frozen in a time wrap.
From Goa I visited 4 cities in Kerala, in as many days. They were personal visits, as I had not visited Kerala for 30 odd years. With shadows lengthening as they are, I wasn’t sure when I would visit again.
In Trivandrum I met the former Principal (again for the first time) of the most prestigious Christian college in India. I was aware of the pressures and criticism that he had faced because he stood for Christian values and moral principles. He told me how the representative of a billionaire builder came to him asking for “one seat”. He was willing to pay Rupees Two Crores in cash. The Principal took a principled stand and gave him the royal boot.
My host in Trivandrum belongs to the Syro-Malankara Rite. Being a Sunday I was looking forward to attending the Qurbana (Eucharistic Sacrifice) in that Rite, but they don’t have evening services. He did confirm to me that it was celebrated in the pre-Vatican II liturgical form, with the celebrant facing the altar, not the congregation.
Leaving my wife behind in Trivandrum I proceeded to Kottayam/ Palai, one of the bastions of Christianity in Kerala. I visited a Syro-Malabar village church. Yes, the curtain was there, separating the “sacred from the profane”. Had they not heard of the curtain being rent when Jesus died on Calvary, so that “sinners”, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, could now enter the Holy of Holies (cf Mat 27:51)?
Ernakulam was next. I visited St George’s Forane Church in Edapally. It was ornate, majestic and aesthetic, except for the guilded angels on the spires. I recalled that the opening of this multi-crore church building a few years ago had drawn flak for wasteful expenditure. Cardinal Allencherry had inaugurated it on his own birthday. Quite a birthday gift, compared to the manger in Bethlehem. Where is Jesus in all this, he who had said of himself “The son of man has no place to lay his head” (Mat 8:20)?
I now moved north to Payanoor, where I attended the evening Mass in the Latin Rite church. As in many other places in the south, men and women sat separately. I find this practice obnoxious. “What God has put together, let no one put asunder” (Mat 19:6) doesn’t apply here. Double standards, where traditions ride rough shod over faith. I further noticed that the altar servers were all male. Gender prejudices seem deeply entrenched. Someone did say that the Church in the north was more people friendly and bishops were not so sanctimonious. Hence it would be a good thing if priests from the South were sent to serve in the North for three years of “exposure”!
A quaint practice in this church was a devotion to St Joseph the Dreamer. There was a larger than life statue of St Joseph in a sleeping posture that the congregation venerated. This is because God spoke to St Joseph in a dream. Thankfully, where I live, we have a church dedicated to St Joseph the Worker, not Dreamer.
It was time to leave the dreamers in God’s Own Country as I had work ahead in Mysore. I was affectionately welcomed by the clergy of the diocese as, over the last three years, I had been helping them in heir struggle for justice against their bishop, since removed. I now helped them strategise for the future. This was a complete reversal of roles; an unlettered layman advising the clergy on Canon Law and Vatican II.
The next morning one of the priests celebrated a private Mass for me. I timed it – 15 minutes. We then visited Anjali Ashram, the Samadhi of Swami Amalorpavadas, the great champion of the laity. When challenged about the democratisation of the church he had famously said: The Church is more than a democracy, it is a community.
My last stop was at Bangalore where we had a full day session on Vatican II and Synodality, arranged by the local chapter of the Indian Catholic Forum. Speakers included Sri M.G. Devasahayam IAS (Retd), the ever dynamic champion of democracy and secularism; and Verghese Joseph, Chief Editor, Indian Catholic Matters, who spoke on the importance of the media.
At Bangalore, my wife and I attended Sunday mass at a parish run by the Franciscans. Though an overflowing congregation it was a simple and meaningful celebration, where an usher even helped us find a place to sit. The only incongruity was what looked like a gold crown placed on the tonsured head of poor St Anthony.
The Parish Priest also thanked the parishioners for donating Rs 23 lakh for the training of the friars. I wondered, how much would the laity cough up for its own training? Brainwashed again.
One last take away from this roller coaster. In all the churches in Kerala the people removed their footwear. In Bangalore half the congregation did so. Then what happens when these same people come up north? Do they forget this Indian culture when they assume positions of power and pelf?
We need to discard a lot more baggage than our footwear. After this roller coaster we also need to choose between Joseph the Dreamer and Joseph the Worker; as also the correct tools for discerning God’s plan for us, both collectively and individually.
Because of the sensitive nature of some of these observations most names have been withheld. The writer may be contacted at [email protected]