Cardinal Vithayathil’s message to Syro-Malabar Catholics

(October 11, 2010) The head of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church based in southern India’s Kerala state says some people’s faith has become “ritualistic and superstitious” and that “practical materialism” has smothered life. A pastoral letter from Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil of Ernakulam-Angamaly read in all parishes of the Church on Sunday, says the outside world criticizes the Church because of their failure to live according to faith. The three-page letter highlighted the outcome of the Church’s five-yearly Major Archiepiscopal Assembly that was held in August. His letter to the 3.8 million-strong eastern rite Church said the bishops’ synod has set up a 15-member committee to implement the assembly’s proposals that discussed faith, life, countermeasures against the culture of death and Church responses to environmental issues. Cardinal Vithayathil says a faith that ignores human rights is self-deception. For him, the basis for human rights is the Ten Commandments as it not only asks people to respect others’ rights, but to sacrifice “one’s own rights freely for the other.” He also criticized the abuse of sexuality as a commodity, couple’s reluctance to have children and the growing trend to wallow in selfish luxury. Denouncing the unscrupulous abuse of nature, he said that the world has “sufficient resources for the needs of everyone but the entire universe may not be sufficient for the greed of anyone.”