To The Beloved Holy Father of the Church on Earth, from a few clerical members of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI)
cc: Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil, Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli - Apostolic Nuncio to India
Beloved Father, greetings and peace from the Church in India!
We would like to bring once again to your attention that we are deeply concerned for the Church to remain core to the message and person of Christ. Though these matters have been brought to your attention from various sections, however, we are prompted to reiterate them and our concerns.
As it has been communicated to us, you have pointed out that issues of liturgy have to be sorted out amicably at the level of the sui juris church itself. The changes introduced in the Liturgy in the past few decades are indicative that this can be done and that there is no such absolute untouchability to the text or the rubrics, than what is beneficial to the celebrating faith community as decided by the synod (in a synodal spirit; not necessarily by mere majority).
We are all for the unity of the Church, and those of us who had been in the practice of celebrating the Eucharistic Liturgy ad populum for the past many decades, have not felt any lack of unity, when we had to celebrate the Eucharist in the Chaldean way when the celebrating context was such. We have never felt that such uniformity is required to maintain Christian unity. If that were the case, we would not feel unity with the Holy Father or the very many neighbouring church communities who celebrate the mass in the Latin rite.
We feel that the test of accepting a form of the ritual should also take into consideration how that communicates with the community of the faithful concerned. The Latin rite liturgical form adapted for children gives us the confidence that in the Church, such flexibilities are possible. In this case, some matters appearing very trivial and highly ritualistic are raised as matters affecting unity, howsoever rich in symbolism they are purported to be - a) turning towards the altar and away from the people; b) having a separate table (Bema) for the liturgy of the word!
When the Holy Father sets a Christian example in trying to reach out to people considered to be in 'sin' - e.g., those in same-sex marriage or partnerships, those who are not married as per church regulations - to threaten almost 600000 people including their validly ordained priests with the medievalist and unchristlike Excommunication threat, for the simple reason of not following the synodal decision of celebrating the Eucharist ad orientam, appears appallingly against the Spirit of Christ.
There has been a clever manipulation of two principles of Catholic Christian life bordering sentimentality - (i) communion with the Church and (ii) obedience (including, obedience to the Holy Father). We feel the apparent intolerance to differences/diversity and blind adherence to ritual vestiges of an archaic tradition is a graver danger than the insistence on a tradition that has taken root in this region over the past six decades or more - with the majority of the present-day priests and the faithful having been born into it, and trained in it, and accustomed to it.
Our humble requests to the Holy Father are:
1. Permit the variant of the Eucharistic Liturgy as practised in the Ernakulam region as a valid Eucharistic celebration, till further consensus is reached on the issue.
2. Instruct the synod and the episcopal leadership to avoid unchristian threatening language in eliciting compliance from the believing community.
Looking forward to your paternal intervention,
Your sons in Our Lord,
1.
2.
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