In Indian ‘Secular’ Labelling, Pope Francis And Patriarch Kirill Can Be Called Communal

Every Indian secularist should read the statement of the two church leaders and see how much of the logic applies to India.

Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, and Patriarch Kirill of the (Russian) Orthodox Church, met “like brothers in the Christian faith” in Havana last week to figure out if the millennium-old schism between their two churches can be healed steadily.

They issued a joint statement on how to spread the faith without conflict between themselves. In the course of making the joint declaration, they made several points which should open the eyes of India’s secularists.

Given below are some passages from their statement, and my comments on them (read the full declaration here).

The church leaders said: “We observe that the transformation of some countries into secularised societies, estranged from all reference to God and to His truth, constitutes a grave threat to religious freedom. It is a source of concern for us that there is a current curtailment of the rights of Christians, if not their outright discrimination, when certain political forces, guided by an often very aggressive secularist ideology, seek to relegate them to the margins of public life.”

Comment: It is interesting that the two heads of churches find secular ideology to be a grave threat to religious freedom, forcing one to wonder if religious freedom does not include within it the right not to have religious faith. Note also how they claim that political trends tend to discriminate against faith due to “a very aggressive secularist ideology”.

This could be a veiled attack on the Richard Dawkins type of atheists and also the Left-liberal core of the Anglo-Saxon world. One wonders whether Indian secularists would accept this kind of language that rails against atheism, though one must also note that in Europe, secularism was about separating religious and temporal life, and in India it was about equal respect for all faiths.

The church leaders said: “The process of European integration, which began after centuries of blood–soaked conflicts, was welcomed by many with hope, as a guarantee of peace and security. Nonetheless, we invite vigilance against an integration that is devoid of respect for religious identities. While remaining open to the contribution of other religions to our civilisation, it is our conviction that Europe must remain faithful to its Christian roots. We call upon Christians of Eastern and Western Europe to unite in their shared witness to Christ and the Gospel, so that Europe may preserve its soul, shaped by two thousand years of Christian tradition. (italics mine)

Comment: The two church leaders have said something that no Hindu leader in India can say without being called a communalist. The two want Europe to remain Christian, claiming that Christianity is Europe’s soul. They forget that for centuries even after Christ was crucified, Europe was not Christian and remained substantially pagan.

So to claim Christianity as the soul of Europe is debatable. Also consider what the outcry would have been if any Hindu leader were to say the soul of India is Hindu and India must always remain Hindu. The two church leaders made no concessions to Europe’s “composite” culture, a term used by secularists in India to deny India’s Hindu core.

The church leaders said: “The family is based on marriage, an act of freely given and faithful love between a man and a woman. It is love that seals their union and teaches them to accept one another as a gift. Marriage is a school of love and faithfulness. We regret that other forms of cohabitation have been placed on the same level as this union, while the concept, consecrated in the biblical tradition, of paternity and maternity as the distinct vocation of man and woman in marriage is being banished from the public conscience.”

Comment: One can’t deny religious leaders the right to confirm the sanctity of marriage, but one wonders why marriage is supposed always to be “between a man and a woman”, though that is obviously the norm. Pope Francis has been hailed as a modern Pope, with none of the stick-in-the-mud conservatism of previous popes that saw homosexuality as sin. But this statement seems to suggest that the two churches are still conservative at the core.

The church leaders said: We call on all to respect the inalienable right to life. Millions are denied the very right to be born into the world. The blood of the unborn cries out to God.

Comment: Clearly, the churches continue to deny choice to women in the matter of abortion, though it is fair to oppose arbitrary abortions.

The church leaders said: The emergence of so-called euthanasia leads elderly people and the disabled begin to feel that they are a burden on their families and on society in general.

Comment: It is natural that religious leaders will affirm the right to life, but the demands of euthanasia do not come from making people feel they are a burden on society. It is largely about ensuring that people don’t have to suffer endless pain or a useless existence for reasons they themselves come to recognise. No country sanctions euthanasia purely because the old or the disabled have become a burden to society.

The church leaders said: We are not competitors but brothers, and this concept must guide all our mutual actions as well as those directed to the outside world. We urge Catholics and Orthodox in all countries to learn to live together in peace and love, and to be “in harmony with one another”. Consequently, it cannot be accepted that disloyal means be used to incite believers to pass from one Church to another, denying them their religious freedom and their traditions. We are called upon to put into practice the precept of the apostle Paul: ‘Thus I aspire to proclaim the gospel not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on another’s foundation’.” (Italics mine)

Comment: It is interesting that the two churches are effectively saying they should not poach believers from each other. They even rail against “disloyal means used to incite believers to pass from one church to another” – which could be a reference to the aggressive Protestant churches of America, which treat religious conversion like selling soap or insurance, using marketing and behavioural sciences to convert.

But note how they equate this with “denying them their religious freedom and their traditions.” The question to ask is: if this is true between Christian denominations and different churches, why should the same principle not apply to conversions from non-Christian faiths? Is that too not an attempt to sometimes use “disloyal means” and an offence to “freedom of religion?” Can’t St Paul’s precept, of not building on another’s foundation, not apply to the sophisticated conversion machineries now in operation in India?

Every Indian secularist should read the statement of the two church leaders and see how much of the logic applies to India. The chances are they will ignore it altogether.