Even weeks before the Christmas season rings in with the classic carol tunes like ‘Hark the Herald’, it is sad that it is no longer the angels that sing. The marketing agents have taken over with attractive Christmas sales and deals! In the place of the real stable where Christ was born, the real smells that must have surrounded the newly born, the deodorizing products and branches of artificial trees now decorate the cribs open to competitions which enhance the sales and profits for the markets.
We have come a long way from the times of Jesus Christ thanks to the material progress of humanity, but this progress is sadly accompanied by a corresponding moral regression in terms of values that the Christmas message brought to mankind, namely a call to meet the humans around each one and be ready to sacrifice one’s life prospects and the life itself to the well-being of those marginalized by social structures and with no hope to sustain them in life. That
is not among the market offers, and the end result of such option draws resistance, threats and even death. The Goan society has witnessed something of it and there may be more in store.
Christians form only a part of the mankind, and in many countries like India it is a small minority, often viewed with distrust and as a fifth column of the foreign powers, particularly the West, which took it around the globe and used it as a convenient tool for its colonial exploration. The Goan history is part of that process and under the Portuguese “Padroado”, a system of Crown patronage of the Church, through which the Portuguese expansion got the blessings of the Popes.
It mattered much for the politics of pre-modern Europe, when the Papacy was threatened by the loss of large numbers of its faithful to the rich countries of Northern Europe which were adopting Protestant Reformation. Loss of faithful meant loss of income. The Renaissance Popes resorted to a generous distribution of blessings in exchange of bringing into its religious fold fresh converts from the newly “discovered” lands by the Iberian nations.
The fading authority of medieval Popes was still recognized by the poor South European nations which remained faithful to their Catholic traditions. This enabled them to put aside their differences and gain exclusive monopoly rights in the markets of Asia and Latin America. The Church saw no problem in authorizing holy wars against the Muslims who had occupied the Holy land, or in ignoring the abuses of African slavery on a massive scale, or in collaborating with anti-semitism through the tribunals of Holy Inquisition.
However laudable the recent post-colonial repentance of the Church authorities for such a past, its impact on the lives of many sections of mankind cannot be erased or forgotten. It lives on and influences some of the tragic events of the contemporary politics. Christmas message was vitiated by the very Church that presents itself as the guardian of that message. All justifications in the name of human frailty and definitions of the Church as made of sinful people seem lame. They provide no guarantee that any lessons have been learnt and past
abuses will not recur.
The political manipulation of the Church goes back to the early times of imperial Rome, a few centuries after Jesus was born. The so-called Constantinism and Caesaro-papism replaced the humble cribs of nascent Christianity with basílicas worthy of imperial might. From there to the medieval Christendom ruled by the Canon Law of the Church was the next step favoured by the needs of Europe after the colapse of the Roman empire.
Even though Christ was born in Asia, the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in Rome was sufficient for theological manipulation to justify its choice as the capital of Christendom. So it will continue as long as Western politics find some use for it, even though in the contemporary globalized world there could be many other choices for the administrative centre of the Catholic Church. It did not appear ridiculous to Europeans to recognize a sovereign Vatican state with a place in the United Nations. It is part of their past, but makes little sense to men of good will and other religions elsewhere in the world.
As a typical feature of the Western politics, following the decolonization, the Vatican became aware of the feelings of newly independent countries and the association of the Catholic Church in their minds with the colonial past. A Vatican Council was convoked to redefine the Church and the colonial mission churches were recognized as local churches, presented as a return to the local churches of the time of St Paul, a classic manager of the early church and whose letters are read at Masses throughout the liturgical year. It was a master political stroke for preventing a political backlash in the decolonized world where most of the practicing Christians now live.
To conclude this brief historical survey from the first Christmas to the Christmases that provide us a yearly season for merry-making, the harking herald may need to sing a revised version of his message, more atuned to the political economy that controls our lives and increases the bondage of mankind, crying for a Saviour who is not himself bonded to the interests of any institution.
(Teotonio R. de Souza is the founder-director, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa (1979-1994).
