THE
P RTAL
August 2017
Page 6
Patrimony:
Is it important?
Fr Mark Woodruff tells us this question of patrimony
is important for other people in the Catholic Church
T
he story of the Catholic Eastern Churches helps us to understand the Ordinariate, with its form
of the Roman rite, as both part of the diversity natural to the Universal Church, and as evidence of the
Church manifest in providential language, culture and history.
The West and East Syriac traditions, shared by the
Syriac Catholic and Syro-Maronite Churches, arise
from when the Gospel, epistle and the Old Testament
in Greek, with the sermons and prayers, were first
translated into the language of people beyond the
Graeco-Roman communities. Syriac is a dialect of
Aramaic, the language spoken by Christ and His
disciples. Speakers of modern Aramaic are holding
on to the region, despite persecution. Without their
presence and return in their homelands, we all lose
a living link with the Saviour’s own utterance of the
Gospel; we will be cut off from our very roots.
So outraged were the Malankara Christians that
Thomas, their Archdeacon, led them in an oath to
break with the Portuguese (though not necessarily
Rome).
The rift resulting from European arrogance remains
an open wound. Thomas became the first Metropolitan
of the Malankara Church – no bishop could be found
to consecrate him, so he was ordained by twelve
priests and the physical imposition of a letter from
Mar Ahatallah.
A chance for healing was missed when a Carmelite
missionary was sent to attack his validity and
orthodoxy, and divide the Malankara. Mar Thoma
wrote to his fellow East Syriacs in Mesopotamia, and
even to the Coptic Church in Egypt, but received no
answer.
These roots are so important that, a millennium and a
half after the second-century Syriac evangelisation that
led to the once vast “Church of the East” stretching from
modern Iraq into China and India (remnants include
the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syro-Malabar
Church, which we met before), an almost forgotten
In 1665 the non-Catholic West Syriac patriarch
community of East Syriacs in southern India, fearing
for their patrimony and identity, retraced their steps in Antioch consented to his consecration, and the
Malankara Church came into union with the Syriac
back to Antioch to ensure their survival in the 17th.
Orthodox Church, ending the communion with Rome
Portuguese colonial authorities had either forced the Malankara had never considered they had lost,
the “St Thomas Christians” to conform to Roman even in isolation for 1500 years.
Catholicism, or imposed Latin customs on their
Although the shape of their liturgy was East Syrian,
ancient Liturgy. Their own apostolic succession was
ended, they lost communion with the other remnant many communities embraced the West Syrian rite,
of the Church of the East in Mesopotamia, and in shaking off Latinisations, and reconnecting with
1599 they were placed under a mere Archdeacon, origins through contact with a living Syriac patrimony.
Those who retained the East Syrian rite evolved into
answerable to the Latin archbishop of Goa.
what is now the Syro-Malabar Church.
In 1653, Mar Ahatallah Ignatius, a Syriac bishop who
The West Syrian Malankara Church, however,
had come into unity with Rome, arrived to assume
leadership over the Malankara Christians, claiming endured a sadly divided history on account of the
a mandate from Innocent X. The Portuguese arrested wounds inflicted by Catholic westerners. Anglicans
him, and Archbishop Garcia of Goa, fearing the loss of also brought a Uniate-style schism in 1889: the “Mar
his authority, colluded in a false accusation of heresy. Thoma” Church, one of three Protestant Churches
Ahatallah was denied contact with the Malankara using reformed versions of the West Syrian rite, shorn
Christians, and shipped off to face the Inquisition, of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
dying in Paris before his case could be decided by Pope
Innocent X.
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