The Church In India After The All India Seminar 1969

Contributed articles evaluating the Catholic Church in India since the conclusion of the All India Seminar on Church in India held in 1969 in Bangalore.

The Vatican II was an event of a new facelift for the entire edifice of the Catholic ecclesiology. It called for the renewal in the universal Catholic Church. This book deals with the question: How can the Catholic Church in India accept the council's challenge for renewal and become truly Indian in its being and essence? Undertaking a systematic examination of the post-conciliar ecclesiological development in the Indian Catholic Church, in its existential multi-religious and multi-cultural context, the author attempts to develop an ecclesiological reflection for the Indian context.

Colonial missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, arrived in India with the grandiose vision of converting the pagans because, like St. Peter (Acts 4:12) and most of the church fathers, they honestly believed that there is no salvation outside the church (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). At the end of the "great Protestant century," however, Christians made up less than 3 percent of the population in India, and the hope of the missionary was nearly shattered. But if one looks at mission in India qualitatively rather than quantitatively, one sees a number of positive outcomes. Missionaries in India, particularly Protestant missionaries espousing the social gospel, in collaboration with a few British evangelical administrators, dared to challenge numerous social evils and even began to eradicate them. The scientific and liberal English education began to enlighten and transform the Indian mindset. Converts belonging to the upper caste, although small in number, laid the foundation stone of Indian theology and an inculturated church using Indian genius. The end of colonialism in India coincided with the painful death of colonial mission theology. Now, the power of the Word of God, extricated from political power, is slowly and peacefully gaining ground, like the mustard seed of the parable. A paradigm shift from the ecclesio-centric mission to missio Dei offers reason for further optimism. In short, the future of mission in India is as bright as the kingdom of God. In today's new context, theologians, despite objections from some quarters, are struggling to discover the Asian face of Jesus, disfigured by the Greco-Roman Church. And the missionary is challenged to become a living Bible that, undoubtedly, everyone will read.

In late 20th-century India, Christian-Hindu dialogue was forever transformed following the opening of Shantivanam, the first Christian ashram in the country. Mario I. Aguilar brings together the histories of the five pioneers of Christian-Hindu dialogue and their involvement with the ashram, to explore what they learnt and taught about communion between the two religions, and the wide ranging consequences of their work. The author expertly threads together the lives and friendships between these men, while uncovering the Hindu texts they used and were influenced by, and considers how far some of them became, in their personal practice, Hindu. Ultimately, this book demonstrates the impact of this history on contemporary dialogue between Christians and Hindus, and how both faiths can continue to learn and grow together.

With rare exceptions, serious intentional, reflective and sustained interfaith encounter is a novel and recent enterprise. This book looks in detail at one such encounter--the intentional recent Hindu-Christian dialog in India--and asks why and how the practice of dialog came to replace previous attitudes of confrontation and monologue (especially on the part of Christians). Part I sets the encounter in its global context. Part II offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the actual encounter. Part III draws on aspects of the Christian tradition as it critically examines the ways in which the dialog has been justified in Christological categories. A final chapter discusses the future of the encounter. Unlike many other works in the area of interfaith studies, this work combines both descriptive detail of the actual encounter and critical theological analysis of the strengths and weakness of the dialog model.

In this PhD research, the author has inquired the contribution of the Khrist Bhakta movement to inculturation in the field of community building in India. He focuses on Matridham asram at Varanasi where rural Hinduism and the charismatic form of Catholic Christianity meet one another. The author addresses the issues involved in this encounter from a social, cultural, legal, pastoral and theological perspective, which is relevant for all those interested in interreligious and intercultural encounter. --Book Jacket.