By Matters India Reporter
Mumbai: A Jesuit parish priest in Mumbai has apologized for including verses from other religious scriptures in Mass readings after some Catholics protested calling him Anti-Christ.
“I realize that the verses were not appropriate as part of the readings of the Mass and I apologize for this. However, to attribute this to the Antichrist is very shocking,” said Father Frazer Mascarenhas, pastor of St Peter’s Church in Bandra, a western suburb of India’s commercial capital, on August 21.
St Peter’s is among the few parishes managed by Jesuits under the Archdiocese of Bombay.
Father Mascarenhas, a former principal of St Xavier’s College in Fort and inter-faith activist, included readings from the Bhagvad Gita of Hindus and Quran of Muslims during a Mass on August 15, the Independence Day.
While most parishioners welcomed the move, some accused him of jettisoning tradition.
Bombay archdiocesan spokesperson Father Nigel Barrett said Mass is a structured liturgical service that cannot be replaced by anything else. “Fr. Frazer has apologized for [doing so],” he told media persons.
Father Mascarenhas issued a statement explaining his action. “St Peter’s has been making efforts to build human communities in our neighborhood, as encouraged by the archdiocese. In this context, on the dual feast of the Assumption, and Independence Day, at the traditional Indian liturgy we hold at the 10 am mass, I took the theme, ‘Giving Jesus to the world as Mary did’.”
He further said he did so because it means ‘establishing the Kingdom of God in collaboration with people of all faiths.’
However, some parishioners labeled it as Ant-Christ. “The parish priest doesn’t seem to have been trained in traditional Roman Catholicism, and even if he was schooled in the academics of Catholic Revelation, he has rejected traditional Holy Roman Catholic doctrine for liberal, modernist and progressive human wisdom,” said Melwyn Fernandes, secretary of the Association of Concerned Catholics.
Father Barrett, however, acknowledged that the Catholic Church accepts readings from other religious texts, but that can be done in services where “a flexibility to be creative with prayers” is possible.
“Nostra aetate” (In our Time), the Second Vatican Council declaration on the Church’s relations with other religions, teaches that “the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and doctrines which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men.”