New Missal in India
I’m spending my sabbatical in New Delhi, where my wife is working on a Fulbright project. While here, I’ve been attending mass at St. Alphonsa Church, in Vasant Kunj, a neighborhood on the southern edge of New Delhi, very close to the airport. It’s a large, beautiful new church, named after India’s first Indian-origin saint, St. Alphonsa Muttathupadathu, who was canonized in 2008. Appropriately enough, given the church’s name, the Catholic church here feels genuinely Indian, although it lacks some of the more Hindu sensibilities I noticed when I visited Goa many years ago, where Catholic culture seems even more fully integrated into the landscape.
Since English is one of the principal languages in India, the Delhi Archdiocese is also dealing with the new missal. They rolled it out on the Epiphany, which also happened to be the weekend I arrived in India. The archdiocese had printed out very nice cards to go in the pews, similar to the ones we had used back in Trumansburg, to help people learn the new responses.
The confusion the first week was palpable, and a little worse than at home perhaps because English is typically a second language here and because the priest did not offer much by way of explanation for the changes. (I wasn’t here in the weeks leading up to the implementation of the missal, so maybe the parish had prepared people for the change.) As at home, I observed that people here have an easier time with the changes to the longer prayers than to the short replies, most likely because participation in the latter is less conscious. By the second week, more people had adopted “And with your spirit,” though a significant minority were still saying “And also with you.”
Interestingly, conformance to the new missal seems to have declined significantly during the last two weeks. Even the priest has slipped back into some of the old locutions (e.g, “Lord I am not worthy to receive you…”), and “And also with you” has re-emerged as the majority response. He’s also stopped reminding people about the changes. Most people have stopped looking at the cards, some of which have begun to disappear from the pews. (I wonder whether people at home are noticing a similar pattern of relapse.) I suspect that getting people to unlearn the old translation is going to be a longer project in this country.
I live in Kerala, at the south end of India. Here they are yet to implement the new missal and I hear no mention of it either. I doubt that they (the clergy and the laity) will make big deal of it when it is implemented. In the vernacular (Malayalam) version we already use “We are unworthy for you to enter under our roof”. In one of the other rites in common usage here, the Syro Malabar Rite (which is the major rite in Kerala and a Sui iuris church) the response has always been ‘And with your Spirit’. Since many people freely mix the Masses they attend, the change is unlikely to feel strange to them. Also, as Eduardo mentioned, English is only the second language for most people and changes in the language will not resonate so strongly.
Interestingly, conformance to the new missal seems to have declined significantly during the last two weeks.
Perhaps there are people who gave it a half-hearted try, then decided that it wasn’t worth it and said to themselves: “Forget it! I’m not going to make a special effort to learn something that I never asked for and that I don’t see the need for. It’ll either come naturally and effortlessly, or not at all.”
Eduardo–
Though this is a bit tangential, I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind expanding on your comment that you saw more Hindu sensibilities in Catholic services in Goa than you did in Catholic services in New Delhi. Given that Goa was a Portuguese colony for hundreds of years, and that it did not formally become part of the nation of India until the early 1960′s, I would have thought that the Hindu influence would be less prevalent in Goa than it is in North India.
In any event, I’ve been to a few Catholic weddings (all in North India) conducted by either native Indian priests or missionaries where the celebrant incorporated various aspects of the Hindu wedding ritual into the Catholic service, especially the Saptha Padi, where the bride and groom, linked by a ribbon, take turns leading one another seven tmes around the altar, both taking a different vow during each circuit. The vows were Christian in tradition and not the same as those professed by a couple in a Hindu wedding as the latter walk around the “agni,” the altar of fire, but I thought the respectful incorporation of the most sacred part of a Hindu wedding into the Catholic service was beautiful, ecumenical, and culturally sensitive.
William – that is very interesting, and sounds as though it’s a good example of Christian adaptation of culture and tradition. Do you happen to have specifics on the Christian vows that the bride and groom make?
What William Collier describes is syncretism, without which Christianity would not have survived throughout the ages. I wonder if Jim Pauwels knows he is embracing it in his comment, despite his attempt at baptizing it. It goes against Dominus Jesus, Jim.
Professor Mitchell: as described by William Collier, I don’t see that the little actiion that has been adapted and incorporated into the Catholic rite of matrimony constitutes syncretism, and I don’t know of any passage in Dominus Iesus that would forbid or condemn its practice. As it’s been presented here, I’d describe the practice as inculturation. Perhaps inculturation runs the risk of syncretism, but I don’t see that this would fall prey to it.
(I suppose our newish custom of the unity candle could be a different story …)
Do you also consider the Mexican and Filipino wedding customs of arras and ropa to be examples of syncretism? (I’m really curious).
Jim,
I don’t think syncretism and inculturation are the same thing. Syncreticsm is the incorporation of beliefs, customs and practices from one religion to another. Inculturation is the presentation or explanation of a religions beliefs in terms that make it understandable to a culture other than its own. Christianity has practiced both of necessity and neither is a bad thing in my opinion. I believe William Collier’s example is one of syncretism. It may not be explicitly addressed in Dominus Jesus but syncretism respects a religious pluralism that DJ does not. I do not know about the wedding customs you mention so I cannot comment on them.
Hi, Professor Mitchell, I think of inculturation, at least liturgically speaking, as the adaptation that occurs – often enough, rather organically – when the template of Roman liturgy is laid across a specific culture.
FWIW – here is an NCR article on a church dispute over liturgical inculturation in India – in this case, not wedding customs, but rather the familiar topic of the translation of liturgical texts.
http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives/111502/111502f.htm
Istm that the literal (dare I say inflexible?) translation requirements of Liturgiam Authenticam would tend to increase the possibility of liturgical inculturation breaking out in other ways. Roman liturgy doesn’t exist in a cultural vacuum, and the people of a culture quite naturally wish to preserve important cultural expressions within the formal liturgical structures that the church provides.
I’d also note that, as you’ve described syncretism, not all syncretism would run up against what Dominus Iesus forbids. Istm that there are all sorts of possibilities for syncretism that would be benign – that would not threaten to accomplish what Dominus Iesus apparently fears: that the universal lordship of Jesus Christ would be diminished. So I guess I agree with you that there are a lot of syncretic expressions that are good.
The major problem is not the people’s responses – it is within the prayers of the priest themselves. Such obtuse and confusing language! Surely, even Jesus’ ears are offended! We have become a museum church rattling off supercilious prayers and performing ritual actions just for the sake of it. We would all be much better off in Africa with singing and dancing and swaying and ad libbing prayer thoughts randomly to a listening Lord. This new missal will not bring millions back to regular worship. But maybe that’s the plan – we are short of priests anyway…
Bill — My memory of Goa was that there was a kind of Hindu aesthetic in the churches and roadside shrines that is missing here, or at least in my parish (sample size of 1, so I don’t want to make too much of this). In Goa, I remember lots of little roadside shrines to Mary with the statue draped in garlands and with incense burning underneath, almost exactly as one would see in a shrine to Ganesha elsewhere in India. St. Alphonsa, in contrast, is relatively restrained and could be mistaken for a Catholic church anywhere in the United States.
I’m late coming back to this thread. Thanks, Eduardo, for your follow up. I’ve never been to Goa. Someday, maybe. ;)