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Catholics revolt against Rome

A major chunk of the Catholic Church in India has raised a banner of revolt and demanded an Asian and Indian identity for the Church, indigenous and authentic rites, equal status for women including priesthood and an end to domination and centralisation.

The Church leaders, who are agitated for sometime against the domination by the Church of Rome, have come out in the open with strong demands at a time when the Special Assembly for Asia of the Synod of Bishops is in a month-long session at the Vatican. About 20 bishops from India are attending this Assembly.

The leaders made it clear that ''we are willing to pay the price, whatever be the cost in this adventure of faith''.

The Catholic Priests Conference of India and the Forum of the Religious for Justice and Peace organised a consultation in Bangalore for four days last week and adopted a strongly worded statement listing the immediate demands of the Church in Asia, especially in India.

They said the local churches in Asia required only a synodal leadership and governance, democratically constituted and renewed, representing all constituencies of each church, and not a Bishops's Synod.

The working document at the Vatican Special Assembly lacks focus and vision, lacks perspective on the deprived and the oppressed of Asia and on the new, emerging identities and movements of Asian people, they said insisting that any significant deliberation and commitment would have to be of the local churches of Asia.

The Church leaders wanted the leadership to apologise openly for whatever ''negative, disrespectful or disparaging attitudes have been ours in the past towards other religions, their spiritual quest and their symbols'' and also for whatever part the Church has had in the colonial domination of Asian countries, for its failure to denounce domination or to disassociate itself from it .

The Special Assembly in Vatican is a clear case of looking at Asian realities with European eyes, they said. ''We would like to centre attention on the Cross of Christ in Asia, on the millions of Asia's crucified people, the dispossessed, the deprived, the impoverished, the excluded, the despised, the broken, the dalits, the tribals, child workers and bonded labourers and the victims of vulgar tourism,'' they said.

They called for the rejection of the West's favourite economic system of profit accumulation, re-examination of the role of international financial bodies in precipitating economic crisis and turmoil in several Asian countries, cancellation of the debt of oppressed nations and immediate withdrawal of foreign armies from the Asian continent.

''We want to denounce the forces of death which today's capitalistic economic structures and systems are trying to impose on the majority of the people through a dominant mono-culture in the form of globalisation and market economy. We want the Asian Church to help build alternative economic, political and social structures and systems based on a new world vision inspired by spiritual values from the liberative religious heritage of Asia,'' they said.

They made it clear that every local church should be rightfully autonomous and it should be rooted in its own soil and in the lives of its own people. Women should have their place with men in the Church and they should be allowed to take up priesthood, the Church leaders said in a statement.

A relationship of solidarity and support is what we expect from the Church of Rome. It is by mutual love and service that the Church of Rome promotes the growth of the Church Universal and not by domination and centralisation. ''We expect such service be marked by adult-to-adult relationship, recognising the specific identity and legitimate autonomy of the local churches,'' they said.

Pointing out that two thirds of the world's population lived in Asia and that Asia was the womb of the world's great religions, including Christianity, they said, ''Learning from Asia's spiritual traditions, we feel inspired to contribute to the evolution of a new spiritual consciousness, radically active and deeply contemplative.''

The Church leaders expressed their commitment to explore the liberative potential of all Asian religions and spiritualities and the service they could possibly render to the poor of Asia in the ongoing struggle to recover their place and to incorporate into their collection of sacred texts and traditions, the religious traditions and texts of Asian people.

They said they ''would not associate ourselves with any structure which practises class, caste, or gender oppression''. They wanted to identify themselves with like-minded people and movements like human rights groups, progressive and Leftist initiatives and network with themselves to give issue-based collaboration.

They said a similar approach should be followed in the Church so that it became an agent of change. ''We will do whatever is in our power to declericalise the Church, and make the laity, especially the women, partners in sharing faith and decision-making to humanise and feminise the face of the Church,'' they said.

UNI

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