PANJIM: It’s going to be a Christmas like few others. Conversations around the Christmas lunch table on Sunday will probably take a political angle, and as the week slips towards the New Year, there will be Catholics who will be waiting to listen to what Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao has to say when he delivers the customary address at the Christmas reception he will be hosting three days later.
It is not just that an election is coming up, but there are are lot of discussions around Diocesan Society of Education Secretary Fr Zeferino D’Souza’s meeting with Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar ostensibly to discuss education-related issues. And the debate is out there in the open on social media.
A post by Dr Francisco Colaco on Facebook raised a flurry of questions on the meeting and drew a number of responses. Dr Colaco asked, “What was d purpose of d meeting? What transpired after d meeting? Can they come out with a press note to pacify devout Catholics like me?”
Dr Colaco lives across the street from Margao’s Holy Spirit Church and wakes up every morning to the sound of church bells ringing. His questions raised a few alarm bells among Catholics, and there were others who were more direct in their comments, as was Advocate Cleofato Almeida Coutinho who wrote, “The pulpit may be again abused to bring BJP.”
This, perhaps a reference to the oft-repeated allegation that the 2012 BJP victory could not have come about without Church support, which leads to the question: Does the laity do what the clergy asks of it? Albert Colaco, not the doctor’s brother, wrote, “We can exercise our franchise after due diligence. Fortunately, we are not bound by any fatwa!”
But there’s more brewing that the Church will have to handle. Gandhi Henriques of Vasco wrote: “A priest fought to save our Goa’s environment and had to face the criticism from the Church when he contested the last election.”
It’s all out there. After the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India Secretary General Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas’ ‘simple request’ to politicians to give Catholics what the Constitution guarantees, the Church has been drawn into a political whirlpool, and Christmas 2017, while being merry, will also be fraught with polemics of a very political nature.
