My quest for an Eastern Catholic community in Greater Boston similar to the one I had been raised in as a child of Malayalee immigrants from Kerala, India, was successful just in time for Holy Week last year. However, as we prepared for the Palm Sunday liturgy in the basement of St. Jeremiah’s in Framingham, Massachusetts, I noticed a less-than-familiar sight. The Syro-Malabar community was solemnly gathered at one end of the hall with palms in hand, ready to process from the basement to the sanctuary upstairs. Across from us, members of the Roman Catholic community, having just completed their Palm Sunday Mass, were boisterously chatting over refreshments. I covered my head with the shawl of my salwar as we began the opening Qurbana (liturgy) song in Malayalam. An elderly lady from the other end of the hall unexpectedly approached me. “What are you all doing?” she asked in a brusk tone. As a newcomer to this community, her question caught me off guard. I calmly whispered to her, “We’re about to process with the palms upstairs.” The wrinkles around her blue-green eyes relaxed as she murmured, half to herself, “Oh, we do that too.”
Only later would I discover that this particular Syro-Malabar Catholic community – an Eastern Church in communion with Rome – was sharing sacred space with a Roman Catholic vigil group. One of several in Greater Boston, this vigil group was part of a larger protest movement against the reconfiguration plan put in place by the Archdiocese, which resulted in the closing of their parish in 2005. My brief exchange with the elderly woman, an active member in the vigil, inspired many questions about Catholicism in the United States, eventually leading me to research a case study for the Pluralism Project about this contemporary encounter between Eastern and Western Christianity.
My studies, by and large, have focused on the historical trajectory of my faith tradition. Syro-Malabar Catholicism, with its Syrian roots, developed in the Indian state of Kerala in the 3rd century. The first, and most significant interactions between the Syro-Malabar Catholics and the Roman Catholics occurred when 16th century Portuguese colonizers attempted to gain control by accusing the Indians of heresy and syncretism. But the challenges of today have been a real part of my own experiences as well. My parents were among the many Syro-Malabar Catholics who came to America to work in the healthcare and software fields in the wake of the 1965 Immigration and Nationalities Act. As part of the second-generation of this community in multi-religious America, I wanted to investigate if the proximity enabled by sharing worship space encouraged inter-communal, or ecumenical, dialogue between these two expressions of Catholicism.
What I discovered was that this situation was unique not because it allowed for dialogue between different Catholic communities, but because of recent, parallel socio-historical struggles within each community. Sharing sacred space was less of a choice than a means of survival. The vigil group, on the one hand, comprised of 75 of the 1,600 Roman Catholic families who remained after their parish closure, had been occupying their parish building 24/7 by sleeping in the choir lift and celebrating Mass with any available priest since May 6, 2005. Their hope is to maintain their building – their home for over fifty years, against all odds.
On the other hand, the Syro-Malabar Catholic community has been in dire need of a facility that could accommodate its growing numbers. Their hope is to attain their own building – creating a new home in a new place. They came to worship in this closed parish after it was agreed that the Syro-Malabar priest would say Roman Catholic Mass for the vigil group before the Syro-Malabar liturgy on Sunday mornings – an arrangement that sought to meet the needs of both groups. Nevertheless, an implicit tension rumbles beneath the surface as this agreement prevents either community from fully moving forward due to the presence of the other. For example, the Syro-Malabar community is unable to remodel the worship space to better fit the expression of its liturgy, and the Roman Catholic community is unable to sustain its once vital programs, such as its religious education classes for children, without the active support of the Archdiocese.
With one community expressing its Eastern Catholic faith in a new context and the other seeking to uphold its Roman Catholic faith in a not-so-new context, one comes to realize that there is no such thing as a monolithic Catholicism. While people are much more likely to recognize cultural variations within Roman Catholicism (Latino, European, Asian, etc), is Western Christianity also ready to acknowledge pre-colonial Christianities (Greek, Coptic, Syrian) that have developed apart from direct Western influence? Are the Western Church, academy, and society ready to accept these expressions of Christianity as equal in dignity and validity? As Christians become involved in pluralist models that are culturally, historically, and theologically sensitive to other religions, are they also able to ensure that their ecumenical models are equally as sensitive to those who express the same faith with a different culture, history, and theology?
What does all of this mean for generations of Roman Catholics who feel that they are losing their voices within the historic structures after 50 years? What does all of this mean for an emerging second generation of Eastern Catholics who are only now finding a voice after struggling to find language to express their experiences for the past 50 years?
Jaisy Joseph is a Master of Divinity student at Harvard Divinity School. She is currently completing a field education placement, or year-long internship, with the Pluralism Project.