In a four-page letter addressed to the Synod, the top decision-making body of the crisis-ridden Church, the Forum of Religious for Justice and Peace (FORUM) urged the bishops to embrace the “spirit of reconciliation” as the dispute “has tarnished the image of the Church globally.”
“We have emailed the letter to individual bishops attending the Synod,” said Father Baby Chalil, a Jesuit priest in southern Kerala state.
The five-day synod of 54 serving and retired bishops began on Jan. 6 at the Church’s headquarters on the outskirts of Kochi city in Kerala.
Chalil said the Forum wants the Synod to respect a July 2024 settlement in which the priests and laity of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese agreed to celebrate one Mass following the official rubrics on Sundays and other feast days in every parish.
During the official liturgy, the celebrant faces the altar during the Eucharistic prayer.
Most priests and laity in the archdiocese want to continue with their traditional Mass, in which the celebrants face the congregation throughout.
However, the peace pact was breached in October after Bishop Bosco Puthur, the apostolic administrator, insisted that archdiocesan deacons give a written undertaking that they would only celebrate the official Mass after their priestly ordination.
The warring priests and laity accused Puthur of breaking the peace pact with his new condition and began to boycott him and Curia.
“We appeal to you to implement the agreement in letter and spirit and end fight and hatred,” the letter urged the Church's head, Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil, and Puthur.
The letter also reminded the prelates that the Forum had cautioned the Synod against deciding the rubrics of Mass at its meeting in August 2021, as this could create unrest in the Church.
Since then, the dispute began to vitiate as the Synod decreed that all 35 dioceses implement the uniform liturgical rubrics. All except the archdiocese complied, some after initial resistance.
Most of the 480 priests in Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese continue to face the congregation throughout the Mass in their parishes.
The Forum wants the prelates to reconcile with the protesting priests and laity “in this Jubilee Year 2025 and move forward with fraternal unity rather than sticking with the controversy over rubrics.”
This dispute has not only brought division but also kept the youths away from the Church and brought humiliation within and outside the Church, including people from other faiths, the letter noted.
The Forum also sought to know from the prelates why they could not settle the simmering liturgy dispute “despite being a sui juris [self-governing] Church.”
Instead, the Synod was escaping from its duty by blaming the Vatican, which, the letter said, was “suicidal.”
The Forum also noted that when all parishes in the troubled archdiocese wanted to continue with the traditional Mass, “how could they be overruled without even listening to them?”
The religious men and women found nothing wrong with having diverse rubrics for Mass. They urged the prelates to follow Jesus Christ's example of washing His disciples' feet and being flexible.
The Forum wanted those in the Church's governing positions to show commitment to Gospel values, noting that several recent appointments in the Church have contradicted these values.
The archdiocese is
the seat of the major archbishop and the biggest diocese of the Church.
It has more than half a million Catholics, who constitute some 10
percent of this Eastern Rite Church's worldwide membership.