Human Right Violation Pure & Simple!
Endogamy
fails tests of Christian teaching, UN’s Human Rights & laws of civilized
lands like USA. Given below is substance of keynote address at Knanaya seminar held at St.Thomas
Cathedral Hall, Chicago on Aug.3rd. The other speaker was Sri Chacko
Kalarickal from Detroit, research scholar and author of several books on
renewal.
James Kottoor
“Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain who build it,
unless the Lord Guards the city, they labour in vain who guard it.” This is the
great lesson I have learned for certain, during the last seven decades and
eight years of life and we present here would be toiling in vain like the
apostles at sea, without Jesus to guide
us. So all of us need an awful lot of
humility to bow and prostrate before truth if and when we find it.
We are here to find a way out of the bitterly fought shameful issue of
“Endogamy” -- preserving purity of blood in a mixed up world among the members
of the so-called Knanaya community in the Kottayam Diocese, Kerala. The
practice consists in expelling man or woman marrying into their community from
outside and denying sacraments and membership in parishes even to children adopted from outside.
They are believed to be descendants of 72 families of 7 tribes in todays’ Iraq
who landed in AD 345 at Kodungalloor, led by Knayi Thomman a trader. Now this virus
is being imported also to US via Chicago Syromalabar Diocese.
I have only two very simple, very
basic messages to share with you: 1. what does Jesus mean for you: Son of God,
Son of Man or just a Role Model? 2. What
does church mean for you: 1. The Pope, 2. Bishops & Clergy, 3. Lay People,
4. Your Syromalabar Parish, 5. Your Knanaya Parish?
If you can answer these two questions aright the issue of practising
Endogamy, or living
within such water-tight domestic walls of imagined
purity of blood should evaporate like
mountain of ice before a scorching sun for any thinking person. The issue is as
simple as asking: Is it right to promote Manu’s code on Caste system? We don’t need any Solomon to answer that.
Wisdom of Ages
Just listen to the wisdom of ages: The UN declaration of human rights of
1948 says: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.” It was preceded by
Magna Karta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689), the French
Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) etc. If we go back to our
own roots St.Paul of the Apostolic times says: “There is neither Jew or Greek, there
is neither slave or free, there is
neither male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,”(Gal.3.28)
And what does the prayer “Our Father” mean? Does the word “Our” include only the Endogamous
of Kottayam diocese and exclude all the rest? See the same idea expressed in the age old Indian
thought: “Vasudeva Kudumbakam” (The whole world, the family of God)? Listen also
to the spiritual yearning of the Indian soul: “Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavanthu”
(May the whole world be happy and contended.) Also think of the assertion of
that universal vision by Sri Narayana Guru: “One God, one religion, one caste,
human caste.”
Some 40 years back while discussing this divisive, disgusting church
politics I wrote in the New Leader: “I can never say honestly, earnestly and sincerely
the “Our Father” and mean every word of it, until I break out of all fighting
factions of churches, religions, countries and continents to include in my
embrace the whole of humanity, even unbelievers and atheists excluding none.”
Just
Human Right Issue only
All these must have weighed heavily on late Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil,
when he said often: “This is just a human Right issue only” meaning there is
nothing to say in favour of Endogamy. But then comes a bombshell from the highly placed present Cardinal George Alancherry saying: Endogamy
is inseparable part of Syromalabar Church(SM), and its promotion among Knananites
is part and parcel of SM mission, as reported in Knanaya Media (weekly) and
from those who heard it said. It is like
politicians like Mayavathi now conducting
caste-based political rallies for vote-bank politics and provoking Allahabad
High court to come down heavily on her. Are top officials in SM church
imitating her and playing vote-bank politics for social and financial gains?
The fact is religions, especially organised ones have become carbon copies of
dirty, divisive party politics in all countries.
While it is true that spiritual and religious values have to be
cultivated in personal and community life, it is also a disturbing truth that
organised and aggressively proselytising ones are the biggest threat to peace
and harmony in today’s world. Unfortunately I belong to one of the organised
religions, the Catholic church (not a proselytizing one), due solely to accident of birth alone because my choice is
to be one of the followers of Jesus of
Nazareth alone, not of any of the over 2000 fighting churches. The other
proselytizing one to my mind is Islam.
It is the duty of all of us to be a
good citizen of the country you belong to and to be an honest, upright and
spiritual (if you are a believer) person. For being a good citizen you don’t
have to be part of any organised political party. I am not a card carrying
member of any party, since I see all parties are looters of the people and
public funds in the name of serving the poor. I have always voted for good
candidates --- congress, communist or BJP, but never for parties. Because both
the democracies – the oldest and the largest – they say, have become governments
of hypocrites, by hypocrites and for hypocrites. We can easily substitute the
word “hypocrites” with crooks, looters , or parties, since none of these
parties practice internal democracy and transparency, while they impose them on
others. The very same can be said of almost all organised religions, especially
the proselytizing ones.
So it is my considered conviction that
Jesus never founded an organised proselyting religion. Otherwise, what else
does his outspoken indictment mean: “You
hypocrites! You sail the seas and cross whole countries to win one convert; and
when you succeed you make him twice as disserving of going to hell as you
yourselves are.” Mt.23, 15. You don’t need a Solomon to explain its applications.
In this context, the one religion which meets all the demands of human rights
cited above, to my mind is Hinduism which is not bound up with any creed, book, prophet or even one
God. Believers, unbelievers and atheists and all sorts of honest religious rites
are allowed and no defined doctrine is pressed down in anyone’s thought. In that sense it is more catholic
than any which calls itself catholic.
Publicity and Advertising
What then is the difference
between true and organised religions? It is that exists between Publicity and
Advertising. Jesus gives a very telling easy to grasp example when he says: Do
not light a candle and put it under a bushel, but put it on a lamp stick, so
that it may shed its light on all in the house, so that seeing your good works
people glorify your father in heaven. Something similar is said of USA: the
land of the free, home of the brave and a city seated on a mountain top to
inspire and guide. A lighted lamp expels all darkness without saying a word. It
is like St. Francis telling his followers to go and preach the good news to the
ends of the world, but never to open the mouth, that is, by example. Goodness is enticing, infectious and
contagious like leaven. Truth is a trap. It has magnetic pull. It needs no
embellishing. Hence the maxim: Truth is mighty and will prevail.
The essence of advertising instead
is exaggeration par excellence like presenting oneself as the matchless leader,
as in the case of all political party candidates. Narendra Modi presents himself as the fittest person for the
Prime Minister’s post in India, reportedly also with the help of an American adverting
agency which is handsomely paid. I
myself am living example when they announced me in the notice as “renowned
theologian and noted Journalist. The truth is I am here only in the role of a
Simon of Cyrene, just a passer-by. My
friends here in Chicago have been carrying the heavy, ridiculous cross of
Endogamy for long and falling down repeatedly. They saw me passing by and
begged for help to shoulder it for a while and I am just obliging.
Similar exaggerations are
resorted to sell all goods and services in our age of cut-throat completion in
the world of international marketing. Thus we hear of “The best tooth paste”,
“the tastiest food in the world’s cuisine”, “the only remedy for bald head”
even if it is advertised by a bald man, and “the only means of salvation” the
Catholic Church. Under the onslaught of
damaging criticisms from within and without, of course the Catholic Church is
changing a lot. The sum and substance is, Jesus never resorted to such dishonest
advertising techniques.
Exhibiting Humane Humanity
Then what was Jesus doing if he was
not advertising a new religion? What was Jesus in the raw as seen by his
contemporaries? He was presenting himself as the exemplar of a humane humanity
for others to imitate. For that purpose he presented himself more as THE SON OF MAN,
85 times in the gospels as against SON OF GOD, only 38 times. The message is
resoundingly clear: He was presenting himself the ideal Man (humane human
person) for all places, all peoples, all times, all countries, all cultures
and all climates, an ideal world
citizen in our modern global village. To this day no one has contested that
claim. Didn’t Gandhi himself say: I love Christ, not Christians? Hence we see a
G.K.Chesterton, a protestant become catholic, writing a book: “The Everlasting
Man” and Archbishop Fulton J.Sheen writing his: “Eternal Galilean” and
Vivekananda describing him as the visible human face of invisible God.
The best and briefest description
of Jesus is: “He went about doing well. No one could accuse him of sin.” It was
long after his death his followers were called Christians in Antioch. By that
time St.Thomas must have brought Christianity to Kerala. But his followers were
not called Christians, but Margam Koodiyavar (Those that tread the path
of Jesus) which I think is the only right description and I want to be one
among them only. In concrete what did he do? Unlike us scribes, he never wrote
anything, but preached. Similarly unlike his present followers, he never built
any church or temple, never ordained any priest or claim to be a priest, never
went to any temple either to offer sacrifice or even to pray.
I am sharing here with you, not
just my petty or crazy ideas, but what I have learned also from very reputed
scholars like Prof. Herbert Haag
of the Catholic Universities of Tuebingen and Lucerne quoted by Prof.Jose
Mattam sj founder of Jesuit theologate in Gujarat, its dean for many years and
a constant invitee to Europe and Americas for theological lectures. According
to them all sacraments, including priesthood were creations of man after the
third century. Read: Clergy-Laity divide in the Church, Forget Priesthood, No
biblical base, etc. in website: http://sites.google.com/site/jameskottoorspeaking/
Jesus builder of Living Temples
Although Jesus was not interested in temples of brick and mortar, his
disciples were fascinated by grand concrete structures as we today are by Burge
Kalipha in Dubai. For the disciples Jerusalem temple was such a structure then.
So pointing to it they told him: Look master what a huge stones they used for
that marvellous temple and his reply was: “Not a stone upon a stone will be
left.” We know how it was raised to the ground during Roman invasion and how
similar man-made churches in brick and mortar are either destroyed or are left
abandoned today. Let us hope that doesn’t happen to our Syromalabar Cathedral
although some want to bring Syromalabar ventures to Zero in US.
True Jesus never asked anyone to build churches, but this carpenter of
Nazareth was indeed terribly busy at work all through his three years of public
life building churches, not of brick and mortar, but living temples of God –
reviving or reconstructing humane humans. That was what he did when he raised
the dead to life, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, cleansed lepers,
fed the hungry, comforted the broken hearted and pardoned sinners and
prostitutes and reconstructed his own temple by rising from the dead. It is
such living temples Jesus wants his followers to build in homes (domestic
churches) and in the Villas of Miseries (Shanti tows of the poor) as Pope
Francis says.
Did he ever claim to be priest? How could he, after using such
defamatory, vitriolic language against Priests or God-men of his times? If you
can’t beat someone join him, they say, is the American policy and point out our
good philanthropist, Bill Gates who appointed as CO of his company the one who
managed to burst his computer. If Jesus acted like him, he would be called a
double dealer and time server for personal gain.
He never offered any sacrifice in any temple
either. But he had something very thought provoking and pertinent to tell us
about sacrifice. He told us to go and get reconciled to your brother who has
something against you first, before offering your bloody or un-bloody sacrifice
which shows that sacrifice was of no significance at all for him compared to
mercy and reconciliation. It looks Jesus never went to temple even to pray. My
God, what can you think of it? What else are temples for, if not to offer
sacrifice and pray? But Jesus went to mountain tops to pray in silence. He
moreover told us also to pray in silence and not shout like heathens as if God is
hard of hearing.
But he did go to temple to drive
out buyers and sellers who made the house of God into a den of thieves. Nay he
even went violent like a wild bull before a red flag in a bull fight, and he
turned down cash tables and took up a whip. I don’t know if or how many got a
taste of his whip and therefore I honestly don’t think it right even to present
Jesus as the embodiment of non-violence. Doesn’t Gandhiji deserve that praise
better? Excuse me for talking like a doubting Thomas. That is my incorrigible
weakness and I fight with my Lord too often
with these kind of honest doubts and I have too many.
When Jesus took up the whip, I think he was just following Indian wisdom
exhorting to follow the four-fold path of: Samam, Danam, Bhedam, and Dennam.
But what about the moral violence he exhibited and the whole list of “woes”
contained in Mt.23? Had he used such defamatory language against the high
religious leaders like Pope, bishops or other revered religious heads today,
won’t he be arrested and jailed? If we find this conflict in the life of Jesus
it is, I believe, because we concentrate often only on the convenient aspect of
his character: “Sweet Jesus, meek and mild”, and not enough on the “Bitter
Jesus rough and wild.” Both are complimenting aspects of the character of Jesus.
Scripturally, his mission was not to found a new religion but: 1. to
bring back the lost sheep of Israel on to the right path. For that didn’t he
say: I am the way? 2. He was to drive the prodigals back into their father’s
home. For that didn’t he say: I am the
door? 3. He came to recreate the lost paradise with a humane humanity. For that
didn’t he exhort us to build God’s Kingdome “here on earth as it is in heaven”,
in the prayer “Our Father”?
In short one thing that was very
special about Jesus was, from the moment he was born in a cattle shed, to his
end on Calvary he was constantly with the cattle-class, in Shasi Tharoor’s
language, constantly mixing with the low castes, outcastes, untouchables, pavement
dwellers, the sullied sections of society, drunkards and prostitutes with
impure, polluted or tainted blood and never with the palace people, with noble
blood, blue blood, royal blood, sacred blood or undefiled endogamous blood
people. If He could find no room in the Inn at first Christmas
perhaps the Inns, I suspect, were all occupied by ancestors of Knanayas with
pure blood, blue blood or royal blood. The message is: You can’t just sup with
Jesus and sleep with the Bhraminic lot. You can’t run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds, least of all with the Hound of Heaven, Jesus.
Resurrect Church Citizenship
Another thought I want to share
is what I consider the real, original idea of Church as fellowship of faithful
with unity, universality, equality and fraternity without any clergy-laity, Melalar-Keezhalar
divisions of hierarchical ups and downs. Historically Jesus turned upside down
his own Jewish pyramidal religious structure with high priest at the very top, when
he washed the feet of Peter and laid the foundation for a domestic church of
perfect equality. Nay he did more. He called upon the highly placed to come
down to vie with others to take the
lowest place.
Since the first Christian
community had all things in common there was no one in need or want. So outsiders were compelled to say: “How they
love one another.” Since the community enforced the principle: “To each one
according to his needs and from each according to his capacities”, the first
communist society was also helped to sprout and flourish. Fulton J. Sheen
described it saying: “Christian communists said: all that is mine is yours
while present communists say: all that is yours is mine.” This was the heyday
of the Domestic church. It went into catacombs in Rome during persecutions from
100 to 300 AD. All this time the head of
the family, male or female, presided over all prayer meetings and table
fellowships in different homes because the priestly class was non-existent
then.
Then came the Royal Imperial Church with the conversion of Emperor
Constantine in 312 AD and the domination of the palace and princely culture
ruling roost to the time of Pope John XXIII. He presided over the dawn of the
Church of collegiality and co-responsibility in theory, not in practice due to
constant resistance by successive popes. Now they are being implemented bit by bit by Pope Francis. What is to be
buried is the hierarchical structure which developed with Constantine, the
“Holy Father Church” and the church of
the Clergy with various grades which ended with good Pope John XXIII.
What is to be resurrected is the assembly of the
people God consisting mainly of the laity who are not only the forefront of the
church but constitute the church according to Vatican II. It still remains to
be implemented as the laity are still nowhere in the decision making and leadership roles in any sphere --
spiritual, moral, social and administrative -- of
the church. The laity even today is condemned to a “Sudra” status in the
caste-like hierarchical ladder with a pejorative meaning of incompetence,
inexperience and ignorance attached to that term “laity”. So it is now being
replaced by the more dignified phrase “Church Citizen” conveying the
meaning they are to be second to none in dignity in the church. This is the
challenge facing the laity today.
A conversation between Grand
Inquisitor and Jesus in jail, in the novel Brothers Karamazov describes best
the emasculated sad plight of laity today as headless chicken in the church. In
the novel Jesus had come to visit his flock in the church in Seville, Spain
where he did some miracles similar to the ones narrated in the gospels. It created a hue and cry for
Christ-came-back and against the cruel Inquisitor cardinal. Sensing instant
danger to his throne the cardinal had already locked up Jesus to be burned at
stake the very next day. But fearing serious consequences he now visits Jesus in the prison by night to
persuade him to go back to heaven. In the cell he tells Jesus that the biggest blunder of
his life was not to heed to the three temptations of the devil in the desert.
Even the devil must be given his due!
Christ not only refused but also
taught his followers to disobey such orders of the devil, nay to resist such
temptations. In contrast the grand inquisitor doesn’t allow Christians under
him to act on their own but to be remote controlled by him. All moral decisions for them are taken by the
Inquisitor and his minions while the faithful are exploited like slaves using
the mantra “Pray, pay and Obey” to mesmerise and the promise of a heaven of
fabulous joy in the next world as reward to prevent them from murmuring. So
everything in the church of the Grand Inquisitor moves quite smoothly, orderly
and dignified way. Hence he tells Jesus, not to disturb this perfect order and
discipline in the church under his royal dispensation. The church does not need
Jesus any more. So to escape being burned at the stake, he advises Jesus to go
straight back to heaven as he came and so he does. The principle is: “Anyone
who can appease a man’s conscience can take all freedoms away from him.”
Church Citizens or Headless Chicken?
The moral of the story is that Laity is neither ready nor allowed to
take decisions on moral and leadership issues even today in the Church. They
are simply led by the nose by the clergy so they just do what is pleasing to
the clergy. For example, you have a bishop as the president of the lay association
which means lay people in the in the SMC at least is a headless chicken. And recently why was there resistance on the
part of the hierarchy to accept the elected office bearers even of the
Syromalabar Catholic Congress (CMCC) held in Detroit on June 30th? What is
strange, that was the first election allowed in the rather long history of CMCC?
It is high time laity or rather Church citizens stop being
weaklings hanging on to the apron
strings of the clergy and start becoming
full-fledged citizens electing their leaders from top to bottom based on
merit and charisma. Didn’t Pope Francis
say: In the Church if one is holy, let him pray for the rest, if one is
learned, let him teach others and if prudent let him govern? The cry for the practice of endogamy
in Kottayam diocese and elsewhere, to my mind, is due mainly to a staggering theological illiteracy about what it means to
be a follower of Jesus and member of his
church. His church, no matter whatever name it is called, has to be a gathering
committed to, Christian practice, human
rights and rules of the land.
Jesus always stood for the underdog, the last, least and lost. Hence the
universal church of late speaks of its preferential option for the poor. The
present Pope is yearning for a poor church for the poor. The endogamy issue in
the Knanaya community is just tempest in a tea cup as it is just a spec in the
universal church which cannot and should not compromise on this human right
issue. The basic Christian teaching is to be all inclusive starting with the
cattle class at the bottom. According to latest reports Pope John Paul II at
the fag-end of his life had set up a commission to study and settle this issue
once and for all. That commission according to reports had recommended even to
suppress the Kottayam diocese, in case it still refused to implement Christian teachings
but could not get it executed as the Pope was in his dying days. So it is in
the best interest of Knanaya community everywhere to reform itself following
Jesus’ example of becoming humanely human and all embracing, lest they meet the
fate of a sinking ship from which over 500 reportedly are leaving every year to save
their faces and souls. May good sense
prevail, we all shall pray.
The writer can be contacted at: jameskottoor@gmail.com
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