The Syro-Malabar Church’s liturgy dispute flared again Sunday as lay people restored the bust of a cardinal to Major Archbishop’s House in Ernakulam, southern India.
Members of the organization Almaya Munnettam (Lay People to the Fore) placed the bust of Cardinal Joseph Parecattil on a wooden pedestal beneath an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, flanked by portraits of Pope Francis and Syro-Malabar leader Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil, at the headquarters of the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly.
Parecattil, the Archbishop of Ernakulam from 1956 to 1984, attended Vatican Council II and promoted the celebration of the Holy Qurbana, the Syro-Malabar Eucharistic liturgy, facing the people (versus populum), rather than liturgical east (ad orientem).
By reinstalling the bust, which was reportedly relegated to a storeroom, the protesters expressed their commitment to maintaining the versus populum liturgy and their opposition to a new uniform liturgy.
The India-based Syro-Malabar Church is the largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome after the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Synod of Bishops — the Syro-Malabar Church’s supreme authority — appealed in August 2021 for the universal adoption of the uniform mode, in which the priest faces the people during the Liturgy of the Word, turns toward the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and then faces the people again after Communion.
Thirty-four out of the Church’s 35 dioceses worldwide complied, with the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy alone witnessing mass opposition to the new liturgy from priests and laity.
Sunday’s protest took place amid rising tensions over the fate of eight transitional deacons awaiting their priestly ordinations in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy.
In November 2023, Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, the archeparchy’s then apostolic administrator, announced that candidates for the priesthood had to promise in writing to celebrate only the new uniform mode.
The priestly ordinations of the eight deacons did not go ahead as planned in December 2023, leaving men who had trained for at least 10 years in limbo.
In June this year, the Syro-Malabar leaders declared that priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy who refused to adopt the new liturgy by July 3 would be considered in schism and barred from ministry.
But just before the deadline expired, both sides reached a compromise in which parishes could continue celebrating the liturgy versus populum if they provided at least one uniform Eucharistic liturgy on Sundays and major feast days.
According to local media, clergy of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy threatened to withdraw from the agreement if, among other conditions, the deacons were not ordained by September.
Supporters of the versus populum liturgy argue that it’s unacceptable to require deacons to promise to celebrate only the uniform mode, when the archeparchy’s priests are offering the new liturgy solely on Sundays and other holy days of obligation.
At the weekend, there were reports of parishes in the archeparchy canceling celebrations of the uniform liturgy until further notice, in protest at the failure to ordain the deacons as priests.
Major Archbishop Thattil, who was elected head of the Syro-Malabar Church in January, is currently at the Vatican attending the synod on synodality’s second session, which ends Oct. 27. He spent the preceding weeks visiting the Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Great Britain.
Also representing the Syro-Malabar Church at the synod are Archbishop Thazhath, Archbishop Joseph Pamplany of Tellicherry, and Cardinal George Alencherry, who resigned as major archbishop in December.
Cardinal Parecattil, who died in 1987, was the first cardinal from the Indian state of Kerala. He is buried at St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam, which was closed for more than a year after clashes between supporters and opponents of a new uniform mode.
