Catholic Church: a most welcome change - a rejoinder

R. J. Perera

The comments of the anonymous writer who had written in Tuesday’s Daily News (February 3) could give a wrong impression of Catholics having supported terrorism. This certainly is not so.

Tamils in Sri Lanka are largely Hindu with most of the others Christians, many of whom are Catholics.

Among the other Christian denominations that have a large Tamil following are the Assembly of God and the Church of South India.

It is important to realise that the LTTE deliberately targeted the Sinhala Buddhists in particular. They always identified the Government as a Sinhala Government and made out that there was large scale discrimination and oppression of the Tamils.

Devotees have free access to The Madhu Church liberated by the Armed Forces

Many foreigners believed it to be true particularly after the July 1983 riots.

They were unaware that the communities in Sri Lanka lived relatively peacefully until colonisation created huge economic disparities and post-independence politics made ethnic polarisation convenient.

Sri Lanka’s Governments were not formed on the basis of Buddhism. However, the fact that Sri Lanka has the longest Buddhist heritage in the world with Buddhism being the religion of the majority of the population, justifies State patronage for Buddhism.

Particularly when religious freedom is at the same time enshrined in the Constitution giving sufficient protection for the practice of other religions.

In 2006, a person who attended a service in a Catholic Church in Mullaitivu said that during the service conducted by a Bishop in the Northern province, prayers were offered for President Mahinda Rajapaksa while there were none offered for the LTTE or its leader although two senior LTTE leaders were present at the service. As the Jaycees recite in their creed, ‘Religion gives meaning and purpose to human life.’

All of us should now direct our efforts to building a pluralistic Sri Lanka where we respect human life, religion, and the various cultures that have enriched our country.

To look beyond the boundaries that divide, towards the bonds that could fuse us together as a people living in harmony and prosperity as Sri Lankans.