(on sui juris churches in general)
Liturgical Family: Byzantine
Primary Liturgical Languages: Church Slavonic and Slovak
Juridical Status: Metropolitan
Approximate Population: Between 200,000 and 400,000 (Numbers seem to diverge quite a bit.)
Brief History: The Slovak Greek Catholic Church is the fourth of the particular churches arising from the Ruthenian Unions, and like all of the churches deriving from those Unions, its status as a particular church is due in part in part to the fracturing and isolating effect of first the Russian Imperial and then the Soviet persecutions that arose as Russian power grew. Like all of the particular churches of Central and Eastern Europe, Ruthenian in origin or not, its history also shows the features arising from the fact that its primary population lives in the unstable region between Christian East and Christian West.
The Union of Uzhhorod in 1649 included the bishops in what is now eastern Slovakia. When the Ruthenian eparchy of Mukacheve was removed from the authority of the Latin bishops of Hungary and given a certain measure of independence, so also was the eparchy of Prešov with it. These Ruthenian eparchies were split apart after World War II when the Soviet Union annexed Transcarpathia; Prešov was left on its own in Czechoslovakia. In 1950, however, a communist regime backed by the Soviet Union took over the Czechoslovakian government, and did what Communist regimes often did with the churches in nations they took over: forced everyone into a single church that could more easily be bullied by the state and whose hierarchy could be filled with collaborators. A puppet 'synod' was called. I put 'synod' in quotation marks because it had no bishops; it consisted of five priests and some laymen. The 'synod' signed a document declaring union with Rome at an end. All Ruthenian property was seized and transferred to the Orthodox Church. The bishop of Prešov, Pavel Gojdic, and his auxiliary, Basil Hopko, were imprisoned. Besides the Catholic community, the Jewish community protested his imprisonment (Gojdic had saved thousands of Jewish refugees in World War II, for which he has been honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among Nations). The protests were ignored, and a trial gave him a life sentence for treason. Gojdic would die in prison in 1960 and Hopko would die in 1976 after years of extremely poor health due to his treatment in prison.
In 1968 the full influence of the Soviet Union was shaken off a bit in the Prague Spring, during which reformers in the Communist Party came to power. One of the reforms was that former Greek Catholic parishes were allowed to restore communion with Rome if they wished; more than two-thirds of the parishes chose to do so. The Prague Spring itself did not even last a full year, but as it happens, the Soviets did not regard this particular point as worth their time to undo, and thus it continued, although the Greek Catholic community operated under very serious limitations -- for instance, just because they restored communion with Rome did not mean that their property could go with them, because it as officially recognized as belonging to the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia.
In the Gentle Revolution of 1989 (called the Velvet Revolution in Czech portions of the country), Communist rule in Czechoslovakia came to an end in a surprisingly peaceful transition. One of the effects of this was the return of a considerable portion of the former Ruthenian property to the Greek Catholics of Czechoslovakia. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into two nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Greek Catholics in the Czech Republic were organized into an Apostolic Vicariate (later an Exarchate), which is currently regarded as part of the Ruthenian Catholic Church. The Slovak eparchy of Prešov continued, and another Apostolic Exarchate, later and Eparchy, was created, along with other eparchies. In 2008, Benedict XVI raised the eparchy of Prešov to the status of a Metropolitan Archeparchy.
Notable Monuments: The Greek Catholic Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, in Preshov. There are also a number of Wooden Churches that are important cultural markers of religious life in the Carpathian regions of Europe; a number of these are in Slovakia, and several of these are Greek Catholic, of which the most important are those in Bodružal, Ruská Bystrá, and Ladomirová.
Notable Saints: As an offspring of the Ruthenian Unions, the Slovak Greek Catholic Church shares a number of saints with the Ruthenians, including saints on the Byzantine calendar. In addition, there are many beatified martyrs and confessors under the Communist regime, like Bl. Pavel Gojdic and Bl. Basil Hopko, who may end up canonized on the general calendar at some point.
Notable Religious Institutes: As with Ruthenian churches generally, Basilian orders have an important place in the life of the church.
Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Archeparchy of Prešov, with two eparchies in Slovakia and one eparchy in Canada. (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church. In the United States, for instance, which is a nation with an unusually rich diversity of Eastern Catholics, there appear to be quite a few Slovak Greek Catholics, represented in part by the Slovak Catholic Federation and similar organizations, but they are under the care of the Byzantine Catholic Church, which is Ruthenian.)
Online Sources and Resources:
http://www.grkat.nfo.sk/eng/index.html
http://www.cnewa.org/
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Behind the Clouds Is the Sun Still Shining
Rainy Day
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Written at the old home in Portland
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
Currently journeying through Never-ending Grading Land. It's not very scenic.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Sublimity and the Fake-Awesome
MrsD has a nice review of Avengers: Age of Ultron, in which she talks a bit about something we discussed about The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, namely, the tendency of these big-spectacle fantasy movies (and other parts of our culture, as well, but especially obviously here) to try to wow its audiences with the fake-awesome.
In that previous post, she suggested that the fake-awesome was connected with our sense of sublimity:
Thus the fake-awesome arises as a kind of corruption of our taste for the sublime. I think this account is very likely, and I think it explains some of the fakeness of the fake-awesome, and why it tends to take the forms it does. Just as human beings look for happiness in things that have only a superficial resemblance to real happiness, or for love in things that are only a bit like love, so we seek the sublime in things that seem to share one or two features of sublimity, if we don't look too closely. It's the common problem of trying to replicate extraordinary experiences without capturing what makes them extraordinary in the first place.
(1) The fake-awesome tends toward incoherence. The sublime, or genuinely awe-inspiring, is by its nature overwhelming. Precisely what makes it sublime is that it in some sense exceeds our capacity to take it in. Even the mere sensible sublime, like the apparently endless vista from a mountaintop, gets its sublime quality from the fact that we can tell, from the clues of sight itself, that what we are faced with exceeds our capacity to see.
The intelligible sublime is, as we say, mind-blowing. The sublime in its most proper sense is the infinitely intelligible to which our intellects themselves are disposed, but which we cannot, being merely rational creatures and not pure intellects, take in all at once. Mathematics is sublime because of its infinities. A narrative is genuinely epic when it somehow gives us this sense of the intelligible thing that goes on and on, that is more than we can assimilate: Homer, Virgil, Tolkien, the Ramayana, the Kalevala, the book of Job. This may or may not be in a form that is completely consistent -- even good Homer nods. And paradox and the sublime often go together, because of the overwhelming character of the latter. But the thing that is actually sublime or epic about it must in reality be consistent, because it must be intelligible -- it's just overwhelming in its intelligibility.
But how to present this in art is not a trivial problem to solve. In practice people often take shortcuts. But how do you fake the experience of having one's mind blown? You baffle the mind not by the luminous but by the obscure. (This is analogous to the Yoda method for faking a sage: Yoda mostly just says vapid and unhelpful things, but he sounds wise at first because he talks in such a way that we have to spend a little more time thinking through what he says. Similarly with the Big Word method of faking intelligence: instead of the character saying intelligent things, you can give a superficial illusion of intelligence by having them say stupid things using big words.) This can still be coherent, but the effort of maintaining consistency while making things more baffling at some point becomes prohibitive.
(2) The fake-awesome tends toward violence. The sublime has often been associated with the terrible. Indeed, the most basic experience of sublimity seems to be when we experience something capable of terrifying us but under conditions in which we can be exhilarated rather than fully terrified. At least, historically that is one of the most common kinds of experience associated with it. If you are going to fake experience of the sublime or truly awesome, one has to manufacture something analogous to this. The easiest way to do this is by pleasantly presented violence.
In Marvel's short series, Agent Carter, earlier this year, we trace part of the career of Peggy Carter after Captain America is frozen in ice. It's tough; it's a man's world, and the war is no longer giving women unusual opportunities by the sheer emergency imperative of "This needs to get done, no matter who does it." One of the ways they tried to convey this was by a classic radio program, depicting fictional adventures of Captain America and the love of his life -- I forget the name they give the character, but she's obviously a stand-in for Peggy Carter herself. But the woman in the radio program is constantly a damsel in distress needing to be rescued. It's a cute way to do things. But for someone like myself who listens to a lot of classic radio, it rang hollow. The Golden Age of Radio didn't actually tend to write women as damsels in distress, because there isn't much you can do with characters like that. People joke about Lois Lane always needing to be rescued by Superman, but the whole point of the character is that she is a woman doing a very dangerous job that would usually have been done by men. Because she is in this dangerous job, she sometimes is in danger. And she needs to be rescued exactly as much as Clark Kent, a man doing the same job, does -- it's just that we forget that Kent is always in situations in which he needs to be rescued because Kent is also Superman, who does the rescuing.
Actual Golden Age heroines, then, are a lot like Peggy Carter herself. Almost exactly alike, in fact. But there was one major obvious difference between a Peggy Carter and a Golden Age Lois Lane, or a similar radio heroine of the era: Peggy Carter is massively, and I mean massively, more violent. She beats people up left and right. And the reason is not hard to find. She is supposed to be an example of heroic strength, a strength that is awe-inspiring. And violence is a lazy way to suggest strength. Extreme violence is a lazy way to suggest great strength. It is also a lazy way to suggest competence -- in a superficial way, the violent person is in control. Extreme violence is a lazy way to suggest super-competence.
(3) The fake-awesome tends to involve big spectacle trumping all other features of a story. The sublime is something so great that in comparison to it we are small; but also so great that even our capacity to recognize its greatness is a mark of our own greatness. The pseudo-awesome cannot capture the latter part; but it can do a lot to imitate the vastness of the sublime and awe-inspiring. Thus the fake-awesome has a tendency to try for experiences that are bigger and bigger and bigger, even if it comes at the expense of valuable small things. In movies, of course, this tends toward super-extraordinary special effects, and it is why we can be living in a golden age of cinematic technique and yet get movie results that are so uneven. There is more skilled artistic technique involved in a superhero movie or in a movie like The Hobbit or Transformers than perhaps in any other kind of art -- but the gargantuan on its own is not the sublime, and it can often come across as simply ridiculous.
Contrast this with Tolkien, for instance. His full canvas is orders of magnitude greater than anything that can be conveyed on a screen but, a one-man Niggle painting a leaf at a time, he cannot provide at any particular point the sheer torrent of detail that an entire movie crew can easily provide. He has to sketch things out with hints and clues and carefully chosen phrases. In principle Hollywood can do anything Tolkien does on a much more massive scale than Tolkien can actually do it. But what we've seen in all the LOTR and Hobbit movies is that where Tolkien gives his close readers awe-inspiring, Peter Jackson just gives movie-watchers things that are big. (If it weren't for New Zealand scenery, in fact, it's unclear that Peter Jackson would be able to convey anything awe-inspiring at all.)
And there's no end in sight to this. As someone trying to find happiness in wealth alone will, because of the futility of it, just be driven to accumulate more and more wealth without finding any of it sufficient, the fake-awesome just gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it crashes under its own weight, because no amount of vastness alone can give you the kind of vastness that crushes you and exalts you at the same time and for the same reason.
In that previous post, she suggested that the fake-awesome was connected with our sense of sublimity:
The urge to adore is strong in humans, and if we aren't adoring something sublime, we will end up endowing all sorts of lesser things with fake-awesomeness so that we can exercise our faculty of admiration.
Thus the fake-awesome arises as a kind of corruption of our taste for the sublime. I think this account is very likely, and I think it explains some of the fakeness of the fake-awesome, and why it tends to take the forms it does. Just as human beings look for happiness in things that have only a superficial resemblance to real happiness, or for love in things that are only a bit like love, so we seek the sublime in things that seem to share one or two features of sublimity, if we don't look too closely. It's the common problem of trying to replicate extraordinary experiences without capturing what makes them extraordinary in the first place.
(1) The fake-awesome tends toward incoherence. The sublime, or genuinely awe-inspiring, is by its nature overwhelming. Precisely what makes it sublime is that it in some sense exceeds our capacity to take it in. Even the mere sensible sublime, like the apparently endless vista from a mountaintop, gets its sublime quality from the fact that we can tell, from the clues of sight itself, that what we are faced with exceeds our capacity to see.
The intelligible sublime is, as we say, mind-blowing. The sublime in its most proper sense is the infinitely intelligible to which our intellects themselves are disposed, but which we cannot, being merely rational creatures and not pure intellects, take in all at once. Mathematics is sublime because of its infinities. A narrative is genuinely epic when it somehow gives us this sense of the intelligible thing that goes on and on, that is more than we can assimilate: Homer, Virgil, Tolkien, the Ramayana, the Kalevala, the book of Job. This may or may not be in a form that is completely consistent -- even good Homer nods. And paradox and the sublime often go together, because of the overwhelming character of the latter. But the thing that is actually sublime or epic about it must in reality be consistent, because it must be intelligible -- it's just overwhelming in its intelligibility.
But how to present this in art is not a trivial problem to solve. In practice people often take shortcuts. But how do you fake the experience of having one's mind blown? You baffle the mind not by the luminous but by the obscure. (This is analogous to the Yoda method for faking a sage: Yoda mostly just says vapid and unhelpful things, but he sounds wise at first because he talks in such a way that we have to spend a little more time thinking through what he says. Similarly with the Big Word method of faking intelligence: instead of the character saying intelligent things, you can give a superficial illusion of intelligence by having them say stupid things using big words.) This can still be coherent, but the effort of maintaining consistency while making things more baffling at some point becomes prohibitive.
(2) The fake-awesome tends toward violence. The sublime has often been associated with the terrible. Indeed, the most basic experience of sublimity seems to be when we experience something capable of terrifying us but under conditions in which we can be exhilarated rather than fully terrified. At least, historically that is one of the most common kinds of experience associated with it. If you are going to fake experience of the sublime or truly awesome, one has to manufacture something analogous to this. The easiest way to do this is by pleasantly presented violence.
In Marvel's short series, Agent Carter, earlier this year, we trace part of the career of Peggy Carter after Captain America is frozen in ice. It's tough; it's a man's world, and the war is no longer giving women unusual opportunities by the sheer emergency imperative of "This needs to get done, no matter who does it." One of the ways they tried to convey this was by a classic radio program, depicting fictional adventures of Captain America and the love of his life -- I forget the name they give the character, but she's obviously a stand-in for Peggy Carter herself. But the woman in the radio program is constantly a damsel in distress needing to be rescued. It's a cute way to do things. But for someone like myself who listens to a lot of classic radio, it rang hollow. The Golden Age of Radio didn't actually tend to write women as damsels in distress, because there isn't much you can do with characters like that. People joke about Lois Lane always needing to be rescued by Superman, but the whole point of the character is that she is a woman doing a very dangerous job that would usually have been done by men. Because she is in this dangerous job, she sometimes is in danger. And she needs to be rescued exactly as much as Clark Kent, a man doing the same job, does -- it's just that we forget that Kent is always in situations in which he needs to be rescued because Kent is also Superman, who does the rescuing.
Actual Golden Age heroines, then, are a lot like Peggy Carter herself. Almost exactly alike, in fact. But there was one major obvious difference between a Peggy Carter and a Golden Age Lois Lane, or a similar radio heroine of the era: Peggy Carter is massively, and I mean massively, more violent. She beats people up left and right. And the reason is not hard to find. She is supposed to be an example of heroic strength, a strength that is awe-inspiring. And violence is a lazy way to suggest strength. Extreme violence is a lazy way to suggest great strength. It is also a lazy way to suggest competence -- in a superficial way, the violent person is in control. Extreme violence is a lazy way to suggest super-competence.
(3) The fake-awesome tends to involve big spectacle trumping all other features of a story. The sublime is something so great that in comparison to it we are small; but also so great that even our capacity to recognize its greatness is a mark of our own greatness. The pseudo-awesome cannot capture the latter part; but it can do a lot to imitate the vastness of the sublime and awe-inspiring. Thus the fake-awesome has a tendency to try for experiences that are bigger and bigger and bigger, even if it comes at the expense of valuable small things. In movies, of course, this tends toward super-extraordinary special effects, and it is why we can be living in a golden age of cinematic technique and yet get movie results that are so uneven. There is more skilled artistic technique involved in a superhero movie or in a movie like The Hobbit or Transformers than perhaps in any other kind of art -- but the gargantuan on its own is not the sublime, and it can often come across as simply ridiculous.
Contrast this with Tolkien, for instance. His full canvas is orders of magnitude greater than anything that can be conveyed on a screen but, a one-man Niggle painting a leaf at a time, he cannot provide at any particular point the sheer torrent of detail that an entire movie crew can easily provide. He has to sketch things out with hints and clues and carefully chosen phrases. In principle Hollywood can do anything Tolkien does on a much more massive scale than Tolkien can actually do it. But what we've seen in all the LOTR and Hobbit movies is that where Tolkien gives his close readers awe-inspiring, Peter Jackson just gives movie-watchers things that are big. (If it weren't for New Zealand scenery, in fact, it's unclear that Peter Jackson would be able to convey anything awe-inspiring at all.)
And there's no end in sight to this. As someone trying to find happiness in wealth alone will, because of the futility of it, just be driven to accumulate more and more wealth without finding any of it sufficient, the fake-awesome just gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it crashes under its own weight, because no amount of vastness alone can give you the kind of vastness that crushes you and exalts you at the same time and for the same reason.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
A Poem Draft
Torrent
My thoughts are falling like the rain,
with thunder interlaced, and piercing light,
with murmurs of the waters as they run
through silent street and empty parking lot.
My shoulders ache; inside my heavy head
the pressure builds, then cracks across the height;
it rumbles through the air, this weight I've had
upon my soul, that I have come to hate.
And yet, from torrent-rains come health and green;
look out when storm is passed, and all has grown.
My thoughts are falling like the rain,
with thunder interlaced, and piercing light,
with murmurs of the waters as they run
through silent street and empty parking lot.
My shoulders ache; inside my heavy head
the pressure builds, then cracks across the height;
it rumbles through the air, this weight I've had
upon my soul, that I have come to hate.
And yet, from torrent-rains come health and green;
look out when storm is passed, and all has grown.
The Deathless Beauty of All Winged Hours
Above the Battlements of Heaven Rise
by George Santayana
Above the battlements of heaven rise
The glittering domes of the gods' golden dwelling,
Whence, like a constellation, passion-quelling,
The truth of all things feeds immortal eyes.
There all forgotten dreams of paradise
From the deep caves of memory upwelling,
All tender joys beyond our dim foretelling
Are ever bright beneath the flooded skies.
There we live o'er, amid angelic powers,
Our lives without remorse, as if not ours,
And others' lives with love, as if our own;
For we behold, from those eternal towers,
The deathless beauty of all wingèd hours,
And have our being in their truth alone.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Sui Juris Churches XI: The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church
(on sui juris churches in general)
Liturgical Family: Antiochene
Primary Liturgical Language: Syriac and Malayalam.
Juridical Status: Major Archiepiscopal
Approximate Population: Between 400,000 and 500,000.
Brief History: The Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches are both significant St. Thomas Christian communities; the St. Thomas Christian communities were originally all united, and they all shared what we would call a Chaldean (East Syrian) liturgy due to their links with the Church of the East. So how is it that the Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara churches are now distinct churches in different liturgical families, with one West Syrian and one East Syrian? The answer is the heavy-handedness of the Portuguese.
When the Portuguese began to dominate along the Malabar Coast of India, they became increasingly suspicious of the rites and customs of the Mar Thoma Nasrani communities, and began to take measures to impose the Latin rite. This did not go over well, and famously major leaders of the Mar Thoma community swore an oath to stop cooperating with the Jesuits -- not quite a breaking of communion in itself, but definitely a revolt. Disaster was avoided for the Latin church primarily because the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, concerned with missionary activity in India, immediately saw the danger, and sent missionaries out to try to placate and restore good relations with the Mar Thoma churches. This was a last desperate measure, but the missionaries sent out were actually very good, and they managed in short time to reconcile 84 out of the 116 churches; these reconciled communities are what would become the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. The remaining 32 churches were not placated, however, and remained apart (although, again, there was still no official breaking of communion). In 1665, only a very short time after all of this had happened, a different kind of missionary arrived: Mar Gregorios of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch. A number of the Mar Thoma congregations were impressed enough with him that they broke communion with Rome and joined communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church.
This group would remain Syriac Orthodox for quite some time. They kept a lot of their own customs, although there was also pressure to conform to the customs and liturgy of Antioch, which is why the Syro-Malankara will end up in a different liturgical family. This all happened quite slowly, and for the most part peacefully. In 1911, however, another crisis arose: the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Ignatius Abded Aloho II Sattuf, came to India. Ignatius, it must be understood was more than slightly controversial. He was a Syriac Orthodox bishop who became Syriac Catholic, apparently because he did not (due to Ottoman interference) become patriarch. He then switched back, apparently under the promise that he would be the next patriarch. This he did, and once he was Patriarchwent about traveling, first to London and then to India. He had spent some time in both places before. While in India, however, he began consecrating bishops on his own initiative. This was a considerable irritation to the bishops of India, and he and the Metropolitan of the Malankara in communion with Antioch, Vattasseril Geevarghese Mar Dionysius, got into a row over it. Ignatius excommunicated Mar Dionysius. Since Mar Dionysius was highly respected and widely considered a holy man (he is a saint on the current Malankara Orthodox calendar), this split the Malankara community into two groups: the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. Tensions between the two groups became quite intense.
In 1930, a new twist arose when two bishops, Geevarghese Mar Ivanios and Jacob Mar Theophilos, who were Malankara Orthodox, joined with Rome. (They had been investigating the possibility of doing so for several years.) The reunion was a grand total of five people -- two bishops, a priest, a deacon, and a layman. But Mar Ivanios in particular was a very important bishop with very important connections, and the reunion movement that began to build around him is the beginning of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, which was officially recognized in 1932 by Pius XI. Over the next few years, a few other bishops would join from the Malankara Jacobite branch of the Mar Thoma Nasrani. Mar Ivanios became Metropolitan Archbishop of the Malankara Catholics, and fulfilled the office magnificently; the church grew impressively during his tenure, and, what is more important, a foundation was laid that would attract Malankara from non-Catholic churches over the next several decades.
In 2005, the juridical status of the church was raised to Major Archiepiscopal; the Syro-Malankarans tend to refer to the head of their church as Catholicos, which is roughly the Church-of-the-East equivalent of a patriarch. From five people to a half a million is certainly significant growth, and its growth looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Notable Monuments: St. Mary's Syro-Malankara Cathedral in Trivandrum; St. Mary Queen of Peace Pro-Cathedral in Trivandrum.
Notable Saints: I know of no Syro-Malankaran saints on the general calendar, although there are a number of canonization processes open, most notably for Mar Ivanios himself.
Notable Religious Institutes: Easily the most important religious order in the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is the Order of the Imitation of Christ, also known as Bethany Ashram. It was founded by Mar Ivanios himself while still a bishop in the Malankara Orthodox Church; when he joined communion with Rome, the Bethany Ashram followed him. There is an associated women's order, Sisters of the Imitation of Christ or Bethany Madhom. In addition to other religious orders, there are also many lay societies.
Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Major Archeparchy of Trivandrum, the Archeparchy of Tiruvalla, and seven eparchies, all in India. In addition there is an exarchate for southern India and an exarchate for the United States. (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church. In the Syro-Malankara church this is often traceable through various lay societies, which have historically tended to be the organizing force of the church outside its official jurisdiction.)
Online Sources and Resources:
http://www.catholicate.net/
http://syromalankarausa.org/
http://www.katolsk.no/
http://www.cnewa.org/
Liturgical Family: Antiochene
Primary Liturgical Language: Syriac and Malayalam.
Juridical Status: Major Archiepiscopal
Approximate Population: Between 400,000 and 500,000.
Brief History: The Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches are both significant St. Thomas Christian communities; the St. Thomas Christian communities were originally all united, and they all shared what we would call a Chaldean (East Syrian) liturgy due to their links with the Church of the East. So how is it that the Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara churches are now distinct churches in different liturgical families, with one West Syrian and one East Syrian? The answer is the heavy-handedness of the Portuguese.
When the Portuguese began to dominate along the Malabar Coast of India, they became increasingly suspicious of the rites and customs of the Mar Thoma Nasrani communities, and began to take measures to impose the Latin rite. This did not go over well, and famously major leaders of the Mar Thoma community swore an oath to stop cooperating with the Jesuits -- not quite a breaking of communion in itself, but definitely a revolt. Disaster was avoided for the Latin church primarily because the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, concerned with missionary activity in India, immediately saw the danger, and sent missionaries out to try to placate and restore good relations with the Mar Thoma churches. This was a last desperate measure, but the missionaries sent out were actually very good, and they managed in short time to reconcile 84 out of the 116 churches; these reconciled communities are what would become the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. The remaining 32 churches were not placated, however, and remained apart (although, again, there was still no official breaking of communion). In 1665, only a very short time after all of this had happened, a different kind of missionary arrived: Mar Gregorios of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch. A number of the Mar Thoma congregations were impressed enough with him that they broke communion with Rome and joined communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church.
This group would remain Syriac Orthodox for quite some time. They kept a lot of their own customs, although there was also pressure to conform to the customs and liturgy of Antioch, which is why the Syro-Malankara will end up in a different liturgical family. This all happened quite slowly, and for the most part peacefully. In 1911, however, another crisis arose: the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Ignatius Abded Aloho II Sattuf, came to India. Ignatius, it must be understood was more than slightly controversial. He was a Syriac Orthodox bishop who became Syriac Catholic, apparently because he did not (due to Ottoman interference) become patriarch. He then switched back, apparently under the promise that he would be the next patriarch. This he did, and once he was Patriarchwent about traveling, first to London and then to India. He had spent some time in both places before. While in India, however, he began consecrating bishops on his own initiative. This was a considerable irritation to the bishops of India, and he and the Metropolitan of the Malankara in communion with Antioch, Vattasseril Geevarghese Mar Dionysius, got into a row over it. Ignatius excommunicated Mar Dionysius. Since Mar Dionysius was highly respected and widely considered a holy man (he is a saint on the current Malankara Orthodox calendar), this split the Malankara community into two groups: the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. Tensions between the two groups became quite intense.
In 1930, a new twist arose when two bishops, Geevarghese Mar Ivanios and Jacob Mar Theophilos, who were Malankara Orthodox, joined with Rome. (They had been investigating the possibility of doing so for several years.) The reunion was a grand total of five people -- two bishops, a priest, a deacon, and a layman. But Mar Ivanios in particular was a very important bishop with very important connections, and the reunion movement that began to build around him is the beginning of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, which was officially recognized in 1932 by Pius XI. Over the next few years, a few other bishops would join from the Malankara Jacobite branch of the Mar Thoma Nasrani. Mar Ivanios became Metropolitan Archbishop of the Malankara Catholics, and fulfilled the office magnificently; the church grew impressively during his tenure, and, what is more important, a foundation was laid that would attract Malankara from non-Catholic churches over the next several decades.
In 2005, the juridical status of the church was raised to Major Archiepiscopal; the Syro-Malankarans tend to refer to the head of their church as Catholicos, which is roughly the Church-of-the-East equivalent of a patriarch. From five people to a half a million is certainly significant growth, and its growth looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Notable Monuments: St. Mary's Syro-Malankara Cathedral in Trivandrum; St. Mary Queen of Peace Pro-Cathedral in Trivandrum.
Notable Saints: I know of no Syro-Malankaran saints on the general calendar, although there are a number of canonization processes open, most notably for Mar Ivanios himself.
Notable Religious Institutes: Easily the most important religious order in the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is the Order of the Imitation of Christ, also known as Bethany Ashram. It was founded by Mar Ivanios himself while still a bishop in the Malankara Orthodox Church; when he joined communion with Rome, the Bethany Ashram followed him. There is an associated women's order, Sisters of the Imitation of Christ or Bethany Madhom. In addition to other religious orders, there are also many lay societies.
Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Major Archeparchy of Trivandrum, the Archeparchy of Tiruvalla, and seven eparchies, all in India. In addition there is an exarchate for southern India and an exarchate for the United States. (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church. In the Syro-Malankara church this is often traceable through various lay societies, which have historically tended to be the organizing force of the church outside its official jurisdiction.)
Online Sources and Resources:
http://www.catholicate.net/
http://syromalankarausa.org/
http://www.katolsk.no/
http://www.cnewa.org/
Music on My Mind
One Harp and a Flute, "Lady Mary Primrose".
I just finished teaching a bit of Lady Mary Shepherd's philosophical work for my Intro courses. Lady Mary Shepherd, of course, was born Lady Mary Primrose of Rosebery, and this famous tune, usually called "Lady Mary Primrose's Favorite", is named after her -- by Nathaniel Gow, the great collector of fiddle tunes, I think. This interesting arrangement of the fiddle tune, of course, has no fiddle in it at all; but it works very nicely.
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