Author: Paul Watson
Publication: Los Angeles Times
Date: April 24, 2005
URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-india24apr24,0,5304127.story?coll=la-home-headlines
In a mostly Hindu village in India,
one priest presses ahead with his mission to draw more people to Christianity.
Here on the front lines of competing
faiths, Father Joseph D'Mello is a lonely man battling for souls against
the myriad beliefs that make up Hinduism. The Catholic priest senses the
undercurrent of hostility in this mainly Hindu village with each whiff
of raw sewage and rotting trash from the garbage dump next to his small
red-and-white church. Monsoon rains pound the corrugated iron roof like
a drum.
Parishioners D'Mello's 1,500-member
congregation are still frightened three years after a Hindu mob invaded
the church, attacking people with bricks, rocks and clubs.
But D'Mello is defiant. He is causing
friction, even with some of his own parishioners, by insisting on celebrating
one Sunday Mass in English instead of conducting services only in the local
Kannada language. Nationalists are demanding that he speak only Kannada
in church, even when announcing social functions such as picnics, he said.
D'Mello said that the Mass in English draws more congregants because they
feel more comfortable having "their dialogue with God" in English.
In his first major speech, Pope
Benedict XVI, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger asserted the supremacy of
Catholicism and branded other religions "deficient," said he hoped to reach
out to other faiths. Although many liberals applauded the overture, the
58-year-old D'Mello hopes Benedict will enforce Catholic doctrine and not
give an inch to extremists in other religions.
"The Pope should not be afraid.
He should be bold," D'Mello said. "I have faced this trouble throughout
my life. I live with it."
There is a limit to compromise,
D'Mello added. In reaching out to other religions, Catholics cannot lose
faith in their own, the priest said.
"We have learned from the beginning
that there is one God," he added, quoting from the First Commandment: "He
said, 'Thou shall not have strange gods before me.' "
India has long prided itself on
being a secular state, where all faiths are supposed to be equal. But as
the nation's economic and military strength has increased, Hindu nationalists
have argued that "Hindutva," or Hindu-ness, should be the leading force
in Indian culture and politics.
Nearly three-quarters of India's
1.1 billion people are Hindus. The country's 140 million Muslims make up
the second-largest religious group. Christians make up the country's third
major faith, followed by smaller minorities of Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains.
The proportion of Christians has
remained roughly the same for at least 40 years. But Hindus' share of India's
population has declined 3% and the Muslim community has grown by almost
the same percentage, feeding some Hindus' fears that they are under threat.
Some of India's religious fault
lines run through this region in the southern state of Karnataka, where
Catholic missionaries have spread the gospel and provided social services
such as schools and hospitals, for generations.
They made limited inroads in Hinkal.
D'Mello says his congregation has grown slightly in recent years, only
because Catholics have moved to the parish to find work or housing. Hinkal
is a village of several hundred small, cinder-block houses with red tiled
roofs in an industrial suburb of Mysore, a city famous for its ancient
palaces and fragrant sandalwood.
Mysore's bishop bought a small poultry
farm here and built Holy Family Church in 1998. D'Mello joined the parish
in December 2003, with an assignment from the bishop to solve the language
dispute.
As the sun sets on Holy Family,
wandering hogs snuffle and grunt in the sprawling heap of Hinkal's waste,
across a dirt road from the small church's front gate. Thursday was a slow
day, as most are for D'Mello. No one came to confess sins, and only 11
members of his congregation attended evening Mass. He could do little charity
work because the parish coffers had run too low.
D'Mello says it is his calling to
build his congregation, to urge Hindus to place their faith in Christ instead
of the cows, cobras and other beings they revere. But he can't even hand
out "Soldiers of God" comic books - with stories of the rich man and Lazarus,
the pig that attacked and "A Good Cure for the Lazy" - to non-Christian
children without fear of sparking a riot.
In 2002, a mob of about 40 Hindu
extremists, who accused the church of aggressively converting Hindu villagers,
attacked Holy Family with bricks, rocks and clubs while 50 children were
singing hymns and learning about the Bible in catechism class.
At least six people suffered broken
bones, severe bruises and other injuries. A court injunction was issued
prohibiting Hindu protesters from returning to the church, but its congregation
doesn't feel safe.
"It's like fire inside the ash,"
said Mathew Benjamin Suresh, who was assaulted as he tried to shield his
wife and two sons. "Any moment anything can flare up, not just against
this church, but against the Christian community."
Hindu extremists frequently target
Christians, and some of the country's 18 million Catholics have tried to
maintain peace by stressing shared values over divisive theology. But even
Pope John Paul II, who reached out to other religions, told Catholics they
must not compromise on the central tenets of their faith.
During a visit to New Delhi in 1999,
John Paul issued a kind of pastoral guidebook in which he wrote that Christians
had a duty "to proclaim without failing Jesus Christ, who is 'the way and
the truth and the life.' "
To Hindu fundamentalists, John Paul's
exhortation sounded like a new attack against India's majority faith. When
Benedict was chosen, the head of India's militant Hindu-nationalist Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh said the new pontiff was intolerant because he preached
a doctrine that "objected to anyone trying to bring their religion at par
with the Roman Catholic church."
"Such a mind-set . leads to conflict,"
RSS chief Kuppahalli Sitaramayya Sudarshan was quoted as saying by the
state-run Press Trust of India.
For more than a century, social
services have been Catholic priests' best calling cards, but Hindu nationalists
have accused Catholics of using charity work to proselytize.
D'Mello says he will never be afraid
to speak what he believes to be God's truth, no matter the threats.
"Why are you worried about them?"
the priest said. "You worry about your soul."
