Date set for delayed Syro-Malabar ordinations
The ordinations were due to take place in December 2023, but became enmeshed in the Eastern Church’s liturgy dispute.
Eight deacons are due to be ordained as priests in India’s Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly Monday, following an almost year-long delay.
The eight men were originally scheduled to be ordained to the priesthood in December 2023, but the ceremony was postponed after it became enmeshed in the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church’s liturgy dispute.
The ordinations will now take place Nov. 4 at Thrikkakara minor seminary in India’s southern Kerala state, the heartland of the Syro-Malabar Church, the second-largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the pope.
The Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy is the most populous of the 35 Syro-Malabar dioceses worldwide, with more than 500,000 members, and is the see of the Eastern Church’s Major Archbishop, or head.
Bishop Bosco Puthur, the archeparchy’s apostolic administrator, confirmed the ordination date in an Oct. 30 circular letter.
He said the new priests would only be permitted to celebrate the new uniform version of the Syro-Malabar Church’s Eucharistic liturgy, which is known as the Holy Qurbana.
He urged parishes where the new priests will be assigned to make arrangements for celebrations of the uniform liturgy.
The majority of parishes in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy reject the new liturgy and want to continue using a form of the liturgy introduced after Vatican Council II, in which priests face the congregation throughout the Eucharistic celebration (versus populum).
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 (ad orientem), and then faces the people again after Communion.
Thirty-four out of the Eastern Church’s 35 dioceses complied, with sporadic opposition, but there was mass resistance in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy, marked by hunger strikes, physical altercations, and the burning of cardinals in effigy.
Supporters of the versus populum liturgy responded angrily to Puthur’s circular letter, which the bishop asked to be read out in churches Nov. 3.
A spokesman for the activist group Almaya Munnettam (Lay People to the Fore) said the letter would be publicly burned rather than read out in parishes. It described the circular, which also urged Syro-Malabar Catholics not to criticize Church leaders on social media, as “the biggest joke of the year.”
Syro-Malabar leaders declared in June that priests refusing to adopt the new liturgy by July 3 would be considered in schism and barred from ministry.
Shortly before the deadline, both sides reached a compromise in which parishes in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy could continue celebrating the liturgy versus populum if they offered at least one uniform Eucharistic liturgy on Sundays and major feast days.
The priestly ordinations scheduled for December 2023 were delayed after candidates were told to promise in writing to celebrate only the new uniform mode after their ordinations.
Supporters of the versus populum liturgy argued it was wrong to require the deacons to promise to celebrate only the uniform mode when the archeparchy’s priests were offering the new liturgy solely on Sundays and other holy days of obligation.
Earlier this month, Church authorities said the dispensation for the archeparchy’s priests to continue celebrating the versus populum liturgy was a “temporary concession,” rather than a recognition of a right.
“Therefore, the prefect of the [Vatican] Dicastery for the Eastern Churches has stated that this exemption is not available to the new priests,” they explained.
Catholics opposed to the uniform liturgy held a street protest Oct. 13, expressing their frustration at the delay in the priestly ordinations.
Demonstrators dramatized the dispute, with a man covered in chains portraying a deacon and an ashen-faced figure wielding a pruning saw dressed as the Major Archbishop.
On Oct. 29, police prevented a group of priests opposed to the new liturgy from entering Major Archbishop’s House in Ernakulam. The priests were reportedly seeking to hold talks with Bishop Puthur. A video showed police officers in animated conversation with clergy.
Meanwhile, two priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy were recently photographed at Everest Base Camp, at an altitude of 17,598 feet, with a sign saying: “We stand for Mass versus populum.”
It is remarkable how badly the Church handles these situations. I can only think that it’s because we are so used to an ironclad obedience, so when people in the “Age of the Laity” speak up, the hierarchy short-circuits and attempts to impose edicts.
The “priest facing the people at Mass” thing is silly. I have even read commenters online say, “I am sure Jesus did not turn His back on His disciples at the Last Supper.” No, you are quite right. He did not. He faced the same direction as them. The Last Supper was conducted according to oriental custom — no table, A tablecloth on mats spread on the floor, everyone including our Lord reclining on one elbow on pillows along one side of the table while the servants served the various dishes on the other.
When the early Christians rose in the morning they faced East to pray. At the Eucharist, they faced East to pray; for the East was the direction from which came the rising sun, the most powerful symbol they had for the Second Coming of Christ —so priest and people faced East, awaiting their blessed hope, the coming of the Savior. The priest was not celebrating with his back to the people. He was facing IN THE SAME DIRECTION as the people. In fact, he was one of The People (fancy that ??!). In the East and West, that is how the Eucharist was offered. If the Lord came in glory during that Mass, He would find His Church, Priest and People, awaiting a him.
When I was in the seminary, we were told that the arrangement of the papal altar in St Peter’s Basilica heartened back to the earliest Church, for the Holy Father always celebrated facing the people in St Peter’s. This was exactly wrong: St Peter’s was built so that the main altar would be directly over the tomb of the Apostle. Because of geography, this meant that the Altar had to be at the WEST end of the basilica, not the East end. The Pope therefore stood at the West end of the altar facing East (therefore facing the people), but the principle of the eastward position was maintained in that the Pope was facing East, offering the prayers; the people were on the sides (leaving the center free for processions) and the people turned their back to the altar to face East for the prayers.
The priest facing the people business in the Roman Rite, which was represented after the Council as a return to the early church, was a serious error. But the adoption of it by the Eastern Rites that did so was even more serious. They are supposed to be guarding their distinctive rites from Latinization. They have an incredibly rich treasury of traditions which they are supposed to keep from being swamped by the eight hundred pound gorillas in the room, the Roman Rite.
Perhaps I have just missed it, but I think the Church missed a huge opportunity in not explaining this patiently and carefully. To the whole Church. The Roman Rite faithful could benefit from understanding that something precious and ancient was lost at the time of the postconciliar reform
(with the result that every day I offer Mass like Julia Child doing a cooking demonstration at a kitchen island). The Eastern Rite Catholics could have benefitted by a catechesis that emphasized the heritage received from the early Church. And these Indians might have reflected on the precious gift of their tradition and the importance of not uncritically adopting latinization. If they are not careful, they will wake up one Sunday morning finding themselves expected to sing Eagles’ Wings! I would wish to spare them this.
The Maronites and others generally face the people. This took place according to the latinization of their Liturgy. The current texts are from their restored Syriac liturgical Tradition but not the position of the celebrant.
The ikonostases of today generally would allow for those of the Byzantine Tradition to see which direction the priest faces and there is no great push among Byzantine Catholics or Orthodox to face the people.
In the late 1960's and the 1970's I attended "experimental" Divine Liturgies facing the people in front of the ikonostas but happily these were seen as weird attempts to be "relevant" and "hip." It is a great blessing that they died out in the few places that did this.
The Syro Malabar shave never had an ikonostas as but did at one time have a veil across the holy place the was opened and closed for certain parts of the Qurbano. This went away with latinizations even before Vatican II called for the reform of the Latin Liturgy.