KERALA (UCAN): “We have called on apostolic administrator Bishop Bosco Puthur in the Archbishop’s House on June 10 and asked him to vacate it on or before June 14,” said Riju Kanjookaran, the spokesperson of the contentious Archdiocesan Movement for Transparency [AMT], in the crisis-hit Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly, of the Eastern rite Syro Malabar Church in Kerala, India.
Kanjookaran claimed that lay leaders, who met on June 10, urged the priests not to pray for Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil or any other bishop of the Church during the Mass from July 4. However, they would include Pope Francis’ name.
Major Archbishop Thattil, who is the head of the Eastern-rite Syro Malabar Church, and Bishop Puthur, the apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly, issued a circular on June 9 stating that priests who do not follow the Synod-approved liturgy by July 3 will lose their clerical faculties, and the sacraments they administer will be considered invalid.
Kuriakose Mundadan, representing the archdiocesan priest’s council, told the media on June 10 that the archdiocese’s 450 priests and 500,000 Catholics want to become an “independent metropolitan Church” directly under the Vatican.
…priests who do not follow the Synod-approved liturgy by July 3 will lose their clerical faculties, and the sacraments they administer will be considered invalid
Defying the Church leaders’ demand, the priests will not read the [June 9] circular in their parishes on Sunday, June 16. They will also ignore its warnings and ultimatum because Mundadan claimed the circular “was issued fraudulently.”
In a June 3 communication to 65 bishops, Archbishop Thattil said a special virtual meeting of the synod would be held to resolve the dispute. It said the Church’s online synod is scheduled for two hours on June 14.
The dispute stems from the persistent refusal of most priests and lay people in the Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly to follow a synod-approved rubric for the Mass that requires celebrants to face the altar during the Eucharistic prayer. They want priests to celebrate the Mass facing the people.
The archdiocese is where close to 10 per cent of the Church’s five million followers live.
The synod assumes significance for the future of the Syro-Malabar Church, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome, as the liturgy dispute threatened to divide the Church.
The dispute stems from the persistent refusal of most priests and lay people in the Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly to follow a synod-approved rubric for the Mass
In the first week of May, a delegation of lay Catholic leaders from the troubled archdiocese called on Pope Francis in the Vatican, seeking his intervention to allow them to continue with their traditional Mass.
A week later, the bishops of the Permanent Synod of the Church and the archdiocese’s apostolic administrator met the pope and discussed the disputes in the Vatican.
The pope wanted the dispute to “be amicably solved without any coercive action,” said a Church source.
“We are aware of the special synod meeting, but there is no change in our stand,” said Kanjookaran. “Our position is very clear. Let the synod take action against one priest or all the priests, we will not dilute our demand for traditional Mass as priests and the laity are together in this emotive issue,” Kanjookaran insisted on June 5.
