“Uniformity is no longer accepted as a sign of unity,” said the cardinal, major archbishop of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. “Uniformity is something artificial now in the public life as well as in the Church life. Diversity is not indifference to the reality, diversity is something complimentary to the nature of objectivity because that is the way God created us.”
Cleemis, who spoke to The Register on Sept. 5 while in Toronto on the final stop of a pastoral tour of Canada before heading to New York, wasn’t speaking of diversity in terms of creed, nationality or skin tone. Rather he was referring to the diversity of the Christian churches, primarily the Eastern and Western Catholic Churches.
“(Easterners live) the same Catholic faith as our brothers and sisters of the Western Church, the Roman Catholic Church, but celebrate it in a different way,” said Cleemis, 54.
“Our mission, our vocation, is to see that the same faith of the Catholic Church can be lived in different ways.”
One main difference between the Eastern Churches and those of the West can be found in the celebration of Mass, he said. For example, while Churches of the West see the sacrament of Holy Communion as a reliving of Jesus speaking at the Last Supper, Syro- Malankara parishioners view it as a celebration of God’s constant presence in the world.
“This is not a simple memorial of the passion of the death of Jesus Christ for us,” he said. “This is a re-enactment of God’s saving work in the world. The Holy Mass for us is a reminder of all these events in life, not a particular moment of the events which happened in the life of Jesus Christ.”
Cleemis said that sense of reverence is something which the Catholics of the West could take from their Eastern brothers and sisters.
“When the sense of reverence is gone, when it is minimized, the human beings tend to dominate (the Mass),” said Cleemis, who became the first Syro-Malankara to be made a cardinal when he was ordained last November.
“The sense of reverence should be maintained so that we all adore God.”
And while parishioners from the West could benefit from a greater sense of reverence in their Mass, people of the Eastern Churches would be wise to borrow the West’s dedication to evangelizing mission work.
“The Church of the West and countries which follow the Catholic traditions, they have produced a lot of missionaries around the world,” he said. “The Church of this Catholic tradition (Roman Catholic) has produced many saints who are real missionaries. They went around and spoke about the mercy of God and the love of Jesus Christ.”
This significant contribution to the population of saints shows that even Roman Catholics are not hindered from living truly authentic Christian lives, said Cleemis.
It is a sign to him that diversity in how we practise and live our faith is yet another gift from God.
“Diversity is always a blessing,” he said.