Page 1 VOLUME 6 / 17 | SEPTEMBER 1-15, 2015 CHURCH FLOURISHES IN THE MIDST OF SUFFERINGS Bp.Joseph Kodakallil 3 You have been teaching Philosophy for long. On the question of family and the problems it faces in India and outside; what do you think is the core of the issue? Looking at issues of the families especially from a Christian point of view, I think, the fundamental problem is the inability on our part to practise the basic Christian doctrine in terms of the self-giving that Jesus has taught us. We are inluenced and to an extent corrupted by the free market economy wherein we all look for proits or ask the question “what do I get” every time; we are always motivated by our personal beneits. When we look for our personal beneits only, I think we cease to be primarily Christian and from that point of view I don’t think that we would succeed in establishing and nurturing a family. As we fail in this speciic Christian mandate, there is always the chance that our families may not be able to survive on their own. Unless and until this self-giving becomes the necessary foundation for a Christian family, I don’t see any hope for families. If you look into Christianity, the grammar of Christian life according to Levinas is a journey to the other whereas the culture that we live here and anywhere is an attempt to get into oneself, one’s own ego and satisfaction. There is a contradiction between the grammar of the world and the grammar of Christians. Don’t you think that a Christian is bound to fail in this contradiction? What Levinas proposes is an ideal, an ideal that we otherwise have already come across in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. I don’t think Levinas has made any signiicant new contribution apart from what was already available to us in the Bible. But at the same time, Regular Columns on News Youth & Children ........... 8, 9 International ................. 4, 5 As I see It ...................... 12 Asian............................. 6 God’s Own Words ............. 14 National ......................... 7 Family .......................... 14 From the States ............... 10 EROSION OF VALUES AND DOMINION OF SECULARISM IS A CHALLENGE Bp.Jose Kalluvelil 3 Levinas points to us a fact that we experience in our day-today living, where every one of us is primarily concerned about himself. I am concerned primarily about myself and only then I turn and reach out to the other. Only when my basis is assured, I turn to be generous, ing us of the dictum I think, therefore, I am. Levinas says that, that kind of a concentration on ‘I’ and ‘I think’ is some sort of a subordination of all the rest of the world to the ‘I’ and to an egology. Has philosophy become egology? However, Philosophy has no deinite stop at any moment in time. It continues to lourish and move on. We don’t get stuckup with Descartes and I as a teacher or student of philosophy do not subscribe to the theories that Descartes has proposed, because it has an inherent danger and from that point of view, the grammar of the world, seems to invite us to keep our Christian ideal on the one side and, at the same time, to get back to ourselves. We seem to be always turning to our own self primarily, and if that goes on, I think that, though ideally we have a grammar placed for the world and for the Church, none of us takes that grammar seriously into account in constructing our conversations and our relationships. Philosophy has a danger of becoming an egology. I wouldn’t blame Descartes for it. Being the father of modern philosophy, he at least opened up the possibility of a critical thinking, where reason was made to be an instrument. If we just look at the way how Descartes initiated that process, he was standing all alone against the two mighty institutions of the State and the religion of Christianity in particular, and from that point of view, we should certainly appreciate what Descartes had already done. of seeing the world in terms of realities split into two elements and forecloses the possibility of looking at reality as a single whole. This has affected, in the course of time, the perpetuation of an egology as well, where my world has become my own and everybody else is kept out. Descartes is responsible for that kind of a division but, unfortunately, the Church had continued to subscribe to this division, which was already there in earlier. For example, in Augustine, we see that division already. Today Modern philosophy has started with Descartes remind- people say that this division of the world was not necessarily in the Platonic understanding but it was imposed upon, which later became the perspective of Christianity as well, giving the ego a primary thrust. You spoke about consumercapitalistic-market oriented life and its grammar. All over the world there is a resurgence of some sort of fundamentalism and communalism. Do you think there is a corelation between them? Oh! Certainly! Just for a couple of years I did some serious research on fundamentalism, particularly on religious fundamentalism, and to my surprise I realized that this is not specific to any community or religion. Every community passes through this fundamentalist understanding or practices at one stage or the other. Primarily what happens is that, just as a person turns to himself in order to probably safeguard his/her own interests, a community turns back on itself and keeps completely aloof of the rest of reality whereby, though they seem to be having temporary gains, they get completely cut off from the larger reality and, therefore, they fail in facilitating the evolution of their consciousness. As a result, they turn to be catering only to the self-interest of the community, and this is again a danger. If we say that being an egoistic person leads to a dangerous situation and if we say that families fail precisely because of this overemphasis on individual ego, naturally any (Contd. on page 15) We too have a very serious critic on the right wing Hindutva elements including the Modi government, but at the same time seldom we look into our own Christian consciousness and seldom do we understand the inner dynamics which in some also is fundamentalist in attitude and approach. 15 (Contd. from page 1) community which also survives on such an egoistic understanding is destined to fail in itself and also it may not be able to fulil the mandate that it has for the larger humanity. If you look at the world, you are terribly confronted with Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. At the same time, India is ruled by a government which is extremely fundamentalist. As a person who has studied fundamentalism, how can these issues be read and understood by a Christian? We need to learn from what is happening around. We have a serious critic on Islam and its fundamentalist tendencies. We too have a very serious critic on the right wing Hindutva elements, including the Modi government, but at the same time, seldom do we look into our own Christian consciousness and seldom do we understand the inner dynamics of a fundamentalist attitude or approach. I usually say as long as we are a minority, we seem to be opening up to the rest of the reality. But the moment we become a majority, anywhere, in any context, we seem to simply forget and bypass the minority realities, and I would go to the extreme of saying that whenever we have a majority consciousness, we simply suppress and even eliminate the minority. We clamour for minority rights when we are a minority, but the moment we are the majority we fail in adopting the same attitude towards others. You spoke about fundamentalism and communalism; Do you think the Church in India is an exception to communalism? Sincerely speaking, I wouldn’t subscribe to that position. We too have been communalists in many instances. Would you elaborate on that? Take the instances of our own educational institutions or any institution for that matter. We do claim the advantages of minority privileges, which we should because our institutions exist primarily for our community. But then we do have a big responsibility for the rest of the world and society and if we cannot cater to the needs of them, I don’t think that we have any justiication for serving exclusively the interests of our own minority communities. When we exclude the wider community to safeguard our own self-interest, we turn to be communal. When we initiate criticism on the fundamentalist tendencies in other religions we are vociferous, but when it comes to looking at our own inner core and our understanding and approach to the other, be at other societies, religions or communities, then we do also seem to have this 2015 September 1-15 Culture of Self-Interest and the Ideal of Journeying to the Other take inspiration from the text and kind of fundamentalist tendencies based upon which we turn to perpetuate our self-interest. Here I have a serious observation, being a Christian or a Christian community, there is a reason or a grammar for the survival of our community only as long as we are able to practise this self-giving. From that point of view, if I see that Christianity is lourishing over and above every other reality as an institution, I think there is a serious law in its fundamental understanding and practice of Christian principles. There are people in India who consider ritual identities as some sort of communalistic identities. How do you look at this situation? Ritual identities can or may turn out to be communalistic aspects. When we are closed in terms of insisting that we have a set of rituals given in the tradition, or God-given traditions as some would call it. If we are not ready to let these traditions and rituals evolve proactively, responding to the given context of the contemporary society, then I think the danger would be of overtaking the possible Christian identity on the one side and the possibility for openness on the other. The phenomenon of Ghar Vapsi is one of going back into history. If we look at the Indian social scenario now, they are trying to restore traditions which were not at all historically prevalent. Do you think the Church also has a temptation very often to go back into history to restore the past? How do you look at this issue of returning to history? Any community or religion has a tendency to look back into its own traditions, because it has reached the present stage after evolving from the practices of the past and the theories that they have made based on them. I would say to a great extent this is useful and we must be doing it, because we need to remain connected with our sources. Now, remaining connected to the sources does not mean that I am enslaved by the sources. These sources should liberate me. I need to look at and study the sources in detail so that I understand the inner spirit of the sources and I must seek the inspiration from the sources in order to respond again proactively to the contemporary realities. How far are future openness and orientation important for any community? If future orientation and openness to the present and to the future are missing, then looking into the past and then restoring the past would be dangerous, because, instead of doing justice to the present and future we are taking the present humanity to the past. Thus we fail to proactively respond and prepare the present reality for the future. Recently, I had an experience of participating in the blessing of a marriage of another Christian community, which I participated so happily, because the bridegroom is known to me and he hails from Kerala, but is living in Bangalore and uses English mostly. He got engaged to a Japanese girl and the wedding was solemnized in a church, not a Catholic church. This church had the solemnity of the marriage blessing conducted with a text in Malayalam, which even I couldn’t follow properly because that Malayalam is at least more than ifty years old; I mean, the language of the text is a bit archaic. In other words, they have failed in letting the text evolve at the pace the language of the people has evolved. Now, this is a very dangerous situation; especially looking at in the context of that wedding. I felt sad, because the Japanese girl who is the partner in wedding could not follow a single word of the blessing, except for the homily I preached. She did not understand a single word that was said during the liturgical celebration. If we say marriage is a sacrament, then it should facilitate not only the understanding of it but also the participant should be able to experience that grace-giving moment, and if it is celebrated in a language which is totally unknown, I don’t think that consciously I can facilitate that grace. Of course, I believe that God can in spite of my lack of understanding instil grace in me. But then I, as a human being, I should also be participating in that event facilitating, the low of grace; if not, then we fail in that. The same is the problem with other religious communities, Christian and non-Christian. If we don’t let our traditions evolve in the course of time, we are failing to do justice, whereby we fail in facilitating primarily the understanding of the faithful and secondly meaningful participation in religious activities. I am really concerned and worried about the fact that, in Christianity or in Catholic Church, there is a tendency to look back and to go back to the old traditions, especially to the old texts. As a person or as a community living in 2015, we do have our own religious experiences, which must also be captured in our community’s religious celebrations. I am not in any way saying that we should completely abolish old texts, for the old texts do have much of rich heritage to transcribe to us, but then, we should not be merely slavishly following those texts. We should gradually facilitate the evolution of language as well as religious experiences in a manner conducive to contemporary times. Now we are living in a unipolar world and it is no more bipolar. Communism has died and Capitalism is reigning. Communism may not resurrect again in the form it existed as Marxist dialectical violent society. Do you think a world order will emerge from other-centred journey and orientation than a self-centred orientation? I wish that it happens but looking at the way our present day society, be it in India or global reality, it seems to be not that easy especially as we see the inluence of the free market economy. The market has now control over every other major organ of our society, take for example, media. Media is the almighty and this almighty is being manipulated by the market economy. Take the politics and today many people think that democracy is the highest and the inal form of governance available to us. But I have serious reservations on the way democracy functions today. There are a lot of pitfalls that we need to address and looking at the way even the democratic set ups of our political governance functions that also is completely under the clutches of the market economy. Is democracy becoming some sort of a lobbying of clicks, clubs and corporates? Yeah, originally democracy was conceived as the governance of the citizens. Unfortunately, the citizen is now reduced to a concept. Clicks of interested parties are lobbying. Therefore, democracy also is under the clutches of the free market and it thrives, attracting not only the politicians and the ordinary people but also the so-called religionists including Christians who should be otherwise living on the fundamental principle of self-giving or self-gift. Looking at the way it functions today now in our society, I do not think that immediately this would happen. At the same time, I am not a pessimist. I believe that there would come a person or a group of persons who would be able to inspire the Catholic Church and the society. For example, Pope Francis over a period of just two years has become a great inluence in our global society. Nobody would refute the inluence that Pope Francis has brought not only on Catholics or Christians but also on the larger society. If we were to ask why Francis could make such a difference, it is the sheer Christian convictions that he has and the principles that he dares to practise. If this is possible for one person, who is now on top of the administrative and the spiritual structures of the Catholic Church, I am sure it is possible for all, and the future is bright for the whole humanity. Now, if the Catholics or at least a group of Catholics could stand with Pope Francis and begin to practise these wonderful principles, which Jesus Christ Himself had given us and which we profess to practise, I am sure that we will have a day when we would be able to create a new social structure based on this possibility of practising the self-giving that Jesus has given us. We have no other way than getting back on track to this Christian way of self-giving. An exclusive church & devotional article centre www.marlouiskochi.com Statues, Vestments, Candle Stands, Chalice, Ciborium Monstrans, Cross, Rosary, Christian Books.... Since 1921 MarArtLouis Centre e An initiative of Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly k l A amaly l Mar Louis Art and Book Centre Broadway, Ernakulam-682 031 Tel : 0484-2352110, 09387074660 E-mail: marlouiskochi@gmail.com Light of Truth