PANJIM: Inculturation was the common theme which speakers picked upon during a symposium on the topic ‘Church and Political Discourse in India’, organized by the All India Catholic Union on Friday. They also called upon the Church to support those fighting fundamentalism.
Speakers went back into Church history to show how Christianity adapted to cultures. “Christianity was always inculturated. During its first phase, the teachings of Jesus were incorporated into the Jewish culture and Christianity was treated as a Jewish sect. Thereafter, when St Paul took it to Europe, Christianity assumed the Greco-Roman culture. Christianity has existed in India from the time of the Apostle Thomas who supposedly came to Malankara in Kerala in AD 52. Thomas Christianity merged into the Indian culture. In Kerala, Thomas Christians celebrate the Onam festival just like the Hindus there,” said former union minister Eduardo Faleiro opening the symposium.
He added that it was only ‘during the colonial period that Christianity was clothed in the European culture and ignored the local cultures’.
John Dayal, a member of the National Integration Council and past president of the AICU speaking on “The age of Francis: Challenges before the Church in India”, said the Second Vatican revolution is not really so evident in India. “The Church in its leadership becomes an instrument of power and control, using even pastoral instruments and sacraments as whips to bring the faithful in line. All too many published experiences of marriage training and the painful process before it getting permission, and in some cases even of baptism and burial show us this control,” Dayal said.
He said there is ‘hardly any effort at educating the laity in theology, or evolving a theology for the lay faithful’. He called for the Church to be seen as ‘supporting those fighting fundamentalism, be with the victims of intolerance, as also with the victims of an unbridled pandering to the greed of corporates’.
Another former AICU president, Chhotebhai, speaking on the topic of “The Christian response to the rapidly changing political scenario”, said what is required is a mature and informed leadership and spokespersons, which is lacking. “The latest faux pas is the bishops’ support to the Missionaries of Charity to surrender their licences for adoption. This was a tactical blunder, just what the BJP wanted. They roared and we panicked in an irrational manner. Instead, we should have stood our ground and fought it out.”
On conversions he said, “Statistics apart, there is no need to be apologetic, without being foolhardy. If companies can propagate toothpaste and undergarments, what’s wrong in out sharing what is most precious – our faith? There is also urgent need for authentic inculturation. If we are truly Indian we are easily accepted as Christians.”
Dr Mimi Menezes, another former president of the AICU, said that while the Church has given ‘careful consideration to the paramount importance of education and its growing influence on the social progress of the age, when we try to evaluate the progress we have made in India, we see a bleak result’. She said that the Church in India ‘has played a prominent role in the proliferation of English medium schools, but the main beneficiaries of the English medium schools have been the rich and the middle class’.
Referring to the current situation in the country and the promise of good governance, Menezes said, in education this should mean teachers observing high standards of discipline and having the required knowledge, skills and interest to teach. “The HRD Minister, Smriti Irani, instead of getting a better understanding of the quality of education in the schools, she resorted to insignificant issues like making the study of Sanskrit compulsory in centrally run kendriya vidyalayas.”
