Church goes all out against Communists

An
all-out campaign is on against Communists and the Communist ideology
across the state within the Church which is a sequel to the series of
conflicts between the CPM and the Church leaders.

Circulars, special study camps, pastoral letters from Bishops and introduction of new prayers are part of this.

An
interesting piece of comparison from the pamphlets circulated and
widely discussed among believers and the clergy reads like this: “For
the Communists, party office is their church, local secretary of the
party is their parish priest, Marxism is their religion, martyrs are
their saints and Das Capital their Bible.”

Communist parties
have all the paraphernalia of a religion. Then how could a Christian
become a Communist? Asks some of the circulars which were read during
the Holly Mass.

Words like class war, bourgeoisie, classical
Communism, dialectical materialism, socialism and names like Engels ,
Marx and Lenin, once kept off from the altar, are very much familiar to
the believers now , but for the wrong reasons.

Even the prayers
during the Holly Mass had been altered and new prayers have been
introduced to make the believers aware of the dangers of the Communist
ideology.

To cap it all, from this year onwards believers were
directed to select only God-fearing ideal personalities, sans any
connection with any organisation related to Communism , to the Parish
Council, which leads the parish.

A newly inducted oath for the
members of the Parish Council says: “I oppose all ideologies like
rationalism, atheism, dialectical materialism, class war, armed
struggle and the dictatorship of any particular section of people and I
would not become a member of any such organisation or movement.”

If
any selected person refuses to take this oath, only the Bishop was
entitled to resolve the issue. “All those laws and regulations were
there in spirit, but as the leaders of the Communist parties took an
unpardonable stand against the Church in public, we have decided to
implement them,’’ said Fr Thomas Therakam, Public Relations Officer of
the Mananthavadi diocese.