Morphing My Faith : Influence Of Hinduism On The Roman Catholic Church In India

With a plethora of temples, churches and mosques all over the country, it is obvious that religion is alive and thriving in the Indian sub-continent. Religion is integral to Indian identity and spirituality. Every Indian has multiple identities such as caste, class, religion and region. Political groups try to capitalize this for their own gain. Inculturation has been the Church''s way of evangelizing since her very beginning as she moved from her Jewish background into global settings. Today the Church faces a greater challenge as she moves into a multicultural digital world. Due to significant political and theological developments, the Indian church has been suffering an identity crisis. Catholics in India are debating the wisdom of this "inculturation" - whether it is right or not to fuse Roman Catholicism with Hindu culture. When the Vatican advocated that the Church should move with the times while suppressing unchanging Catholic doctrine, many Catholics participated in these changes. Many of the clergy and the laity, out of obedience to the supreme Pontiff and eagerness for change, did not question the Vatican II counsel. Some feel this devalued and allowed the organized storming of the Catholic faith - allowing heresies to take deep root in defiance of God''s commandments! Many theologians are trying to convince us that Christianity in India has inherited an undesirable Western ambience and must realize her genuine identity. This inculturation effort involves a transformation of Catholic theology to provide greater spiritual accommodation for indigenous Indian religions and to dispel the notion that Christianity is the only true faith. If inculturation now means denying the exclusivity of Christianity, equating Christ with Hindu and Muslim deities, asserting that all religions have equal validity, and in some cases even aban?doning Christian theology to discover higher forms of spirituality in other religions, then is it acceptable to Catholics? If Catholic leaders can give up reading the Bible, meditate on the Ramayana and the Bhagavad Gita for inspiration, and consider Krishna "a genuine revelation of God''s grace and love," then why are they calling themselves Catholics or a Christians? If we look at the practices in the Catholic Church in India today, we can understand why resistance has been building among the laity against the effort of the theologians and many clergy to In?dianize the Catholic faith. Most of us ''old school'' Catholics were raised to worship in a particular way, and now it is be?ing radically altered. We are being told that our religious claims have been exaggerated. So why is Christianity being tailored for the Hindus, who don''t want to practice it, instead of for the Catholics who do? We are in a spiritual battle rather than a cultural or informational warfare. Unless we redefine our spirituality, we will go nowhere. Indians are wise and only a wise Church can serve them. How can we get back to our old traditions of faith in a modern non-Catholic or even a non-Christian environment? What answers do we have for our Hindu friends when they accuse Christians of doing things that are misleading Hindus? "Morphing My Faith" is all about inculturation in the Catholic Church in India. Not everything is wrong and we should welcome all that is good. I do not want to get back into a cocoon, but I still draw my strength from our traditions. It is our legacy, it is what keeps us going. We may accept the Vatican''s guidelines, but do we have to go overboard? The fact is that there is a tremendous difference between drawing from a faith tradition and blending faith traditions. When we look at what we have in the Catholic Church in India today, can we say that we are spirituality thriving even if we are starting to morph the way we worship in the predominantly Hindu environment? I hope and pray that we are. We are at the crossroads of our faith and I pray that we are not walking on religious quicksand.

• | Author: Rayol J. Augustus
• | Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• | Publication Date: Aug 26, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 200 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1975712641
• | ISBN-13: 9781975712648