Catholic Church - a most welcome change

Evidently the political landscape of Sri Lanka is changing whether by understanding and conviction or by expediency. Even the TNA is beginning to dissociate itself from the LTTE. The UNP has started praising the victories of the forces.

While the Christian Churches as such do not appear to have made such statements so far, at long last the official Catholic Church appears to have started to adopt a broader and inclusive perspective on the national situation.

Valiant Forces

In the public prayers of the Catholic Church, for many years we never had a prayer for our valiant forces. Prayers were always for “Peace” and against “the War”. We never had a report of the Catholic Church being involved in a campaign to at least collect some bottles of water for those in the Armed Forces.

Those reading the Catholic weeklies were often exposed to columns by the likes of Jehan Perera. Photos linked to news reports about the participation of people like Jayalath Jayawardana and Ravi Karunanayake at Church related events were not uncommon.

Those abroad also saw how international media interpreted in pro-LTTE manner and highlighted comments of Catholic and Christian leaders of Sri Lanka.

One can of course see some context. The vast majority of the Catholics are concentrated on the Western coastal belt. Tamil people are an integral part of the Catholic community whereas they aren’t in the Sinhala Buddhist community. The Christian intelligentsia and those with access to power may also be associated more with the metropolitan urban setup and the political leanings of such.

It is however true at the same time that people generally expect from Christian leaders, who are assumed to have gone through rigorous training, comments and criticisms that are well-reasoned out and as needed nuanced.

The pattern appears to be starting to break. Even though the international media did not really show it as hitting the nail on the head, at the end of January the Bishop of Jaffna at last made an appeal “We are urgently requesting the Tamil Tigers not to station themselves among the people in the safety zone and fire their artillery ... at the Army.

This will only increase more and more the death of civilians thus endangering the safety of the people”.

This Sunday 1st February for the first time in many years at least in the Churches of the area circled by the Kalutara, Avissawella and Negombo areas a message from the Archbishop of Colombo was read. For the first time we heard phrases such as “victory over the militancy of the separatist LTTE” and an invitation to prayer for “all those who suffered in this war, particularly for the deceased and maimed soldiers, their bereaved families, those innocent victims who died or got injured trapped in battle and the displaced who are still suffering without any solace”.

Statement

Another problem is highlighted too. There is of course reference in the statement of the Archbishop to some groups “preparing to bring explosive legislation to create another crisis with religious discord”.

The Archbishop admits “We do not deny the problem of so-called ‘unethical conversions’ by some new sects. We are perhaps the worst affected. But to say the least, the effort to remedy it this way would make the cure worse than the disease”.

For many decades, many ordinary Catholics too have seen unethical conversions as a problem. Given that the Gospels report the words of Christ such as “He who is not with me is against me” and “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” and that to those who claimed they had prophesied in His name and driven out demons, His plain answer was going to be “I never knew you.

Away from me, you evildoers!” many Catholics do in fact think that it is time to call a spade a spade ... that is that the “Fundamentalist Sects” are not Christian and are ‘heretics’.

Protests by the Catholic leadership have existed in the past.

At the time of the Schools takeover it was in the name of the fundamental right to Catholic education. There was some value in the protests but I believe that the Catholic Church realised some years later that that had to be interpreted not taking the “extra-privileged situation of the minorities” (i.e. particularly of the Christian and Tamil communities) during the colonial and immediately post-colonial periods as the standard but in the context of a more democratic and plural Sri Lanka.

One cannot ignore the fact that there were no protests from the Christian communities during the social upheavals and the Southern rebellion of the late eighties.

But the leadership was involved in protests for example when the Kandalama Hotel was planned. Anyone visiting Kandalama today, realising that it has won international environmental awards and that not a bit of waste from it goes to Kandalama Tank can be happy that the protests did at least contribute to a better solution for the people.

Deplorable

As a Catholic I am happy about the latest developments and am hoping that on the religious issue accepting the fact that unethical conversions and highly deplorable activities of desecration (e.g. getting people to put religious statues on the ground and trample them etc) have sadly been promoted by fundamentalist sects ... that religious extremism on both sides of the divide would be equally condemned and that through a process of negotiation one can move towards a society where the rights of the very ordinary people (not necessarily those with access to power already whether through politics, money their own or foreign funding, media whether local or international, thuggary and the rest of it) but those innocent civilians in all parts of the country irrespective of race, religion and cast who are really the powerless in our society.

Let the religious leaders bring in pressure to change what really needs to be changed.

A ‘hopefully’ devoted Christian and Catholic