A few words about India… and the Syriac Conference in Kerala
Mary Hansbury, PhD
A few words about India. I just stayed 7 weeks in India. Initially there was a Syriac conference in the Syriac center (SEERI) in Kerala where seminarians come to study Syriac. There are various Syriac Churches – Catholic and Orthodox – and since they celebrate the Liturgy in Syriac they must learn it as we Catholics once did for Latin!
There is an international conference every 4 years at SEERI. This time in spite of the terrible flooding in Kerala, 90 scholars came from all over the world. It’s important to have this center in India. In the past a similar conference was often held in Damascus. But this is no longer possible because of the conflict in Syria.
The Syriac Church is divided but there are those working to unify it. It would be wonderful to have greater harmony between the Churches because basically they have the same theology: St. Ephrem (4th cent.), Jacob of Serug (5th cent.), and Isaac the Syrian (7th cent.). And gradually the universal Church is learning the value of the Syriac Fathers. Even in the US many conferences are being given on the Syriac Fathers because they are closer to Scripture than Thomas Aquinas and the scholastic theology of the West.
Pray for the Syriac Church in Kerala. The national leadership under Modi is against Christians and Muslims. His government is fundamentalist for economic purposes. So a profound faith in Kerala, where St. Thomas the Apostle is known to have preached, may have an important effect on evangelization in India.
Of course an important step towards evangelization anywhere in the Church occurred through the 2nd Vatican Council and its document Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church with non-Christian Religions. For the first time in Church history there was acknowledgement that there is truth in other religions, i.e. salvation outside the Church. Those at CPF will remember the discussions of Fr. Sydney Griffith in 2016. He was focused on Islam but similar things could be said about Hinduism. And there are always the words of St. Justin Martyr that God has planted “seeds of the Word” in all major religions which open the path to evangelization. And in the process open up the reality of salvation outside of the Church. What a surprise when Christians get to heaven and find they are not the only ones there.
Of course the major breakthrough of Nostra Aetate was almost blocked by the document of Joseph Ratzinger when he was with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2000 — Dominus Jesus — elaborating the dogma that the Catholic Church is the sole Church of Christ: that there is no salvation outside of the Church, a controversial document. The Church’s commitment to ecumenism was questioned: non-Catholic Christians and non-Christian religions.
In my 7 weeks in Kerala where after the conference I stayed to help seminarians with their Syriac, I would sometimes go to the local Hindu Temple to pray with the people. No one who sees the intensity of their prayer could doubt that God is in their midst.
Mary Hansbury October 2018
Dr. Hansbury, a member of CPF, is a Syriac Scholar and has translated seven books & numerous articles. See CPF newsletter Nostra Aetate (In our time), 12/2015
December 2018
