Life in India/Roman Catholicism in Madras
Roman Catholicism in Madras.
At the close of a warm day in July, our attention was arrested by an illumination which lit up the sky at a short distance from our Royapooram residence. Flashes of brilliant flame shot up from torches and rockets, and other fireworks threw glittering globes into the air with loud explosions. From the clangor of the Hindu music which accompanied the explosion of fireworks, I at first took it to be a heathen wedding procession. The merry ringing of the bells of the Roman Catholic church, some five minutes' walk distant, chiming in, led me to ask myself whether this could be a Christian ceremony on the Christian Sabbath? Having seen but little of the practices of the Romish Church, I was slow to believe it, and yet these sights and sounds evidently came from the compound of the Catholic church. To satisfy myself, I walked to the church. It is a large, substantial edifice, standing in the centre of an enclosure of some fifteen acres, with a belfry close by well supplied with large bells. As I drew near, the music became more noisy, and the light more brilliant; and when the gate of the outer wall was reached, all doubt as to the scene of these sights and sounds was dispelled. It was a religious service of the church which proclaims itself in India, as well as in other lands, the only true church of Christ, the only channel of salvation.
Entering the gate, I found myself in a throng of Roman Catholics, Mohammedans, and heathen, who were gazing at the passing procession. First came a band of native musicians, making horrible discord with tomtoms, (Hindu drums) pipes, and other instruments; next a wooden figure, two feet in height, with wings, borne on mens' shoulders,—this represented an angel, and was preceded and accompanied by flaming Roman candles;—next came a canopy glittering with tinsel, glass, and gilding containing a male image of the same size, (the common size of the idols borne about in their processions by the heathen of India, but this was not Krishna or Ganesha—it was St. Peter. This canopy, which was also borne on mens' shoulders, was modelled precisely after those on which the idols of India are paraded by the Hindus. Next came the great centre of attraction, a pyramidal structure with a female image, adorned, according to Hindu ideas, with great splendour: this was Mary, the mother of Christ. Two men with fans attended, one on either side, waving their fans to cool the idol, as it advanced amid the glitter, hiss, and flash of fireworks; and immediately after it walked a European priest, chanting prayers to the saints. With him followed a choir of young men with violins, and boys singing over and over again, “Ora pro nobis,” (pray for us,) adding each time the name of a different saint. Thus they made the circuit of the grounds and advanced to the church, when, with a burst of glittering wheels and fireballs, the saints turned off, while the priest, and the multitude, entering the church, fell down before a female image clothed in red, and bearing an infant in her arms.
My heart sank within me and my soul turned sick at the thought that this gross idolatry, differing in nothing but in title from the idolatry of the heathen around us, was done in the name of Christ; and that for three hundred years this had been set before the Hindus as the religion of Jesus Christ and of that God who has said, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them nor serve them; for I, JEHOVAH thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.”[1]
A few weeks after this, my attention was called to the church by the erection of lofty canopies or sheds, supported each by four posts wound around with white and coloured cotton-cloth, placed in the streets which adjoin the church-compound. The flag of St. Anthony was unfurled from a high flag-staff; and at sundown, the noise of music and the reports of firearms announced the commencement of the services. At eight o'clock, I walked to the church, and found the workmen still busily at work upon the canopies erected in the street. The ceilings and pillars were wrapped in cloth, and from them hung lanterns, moons, stars, and angels, while the ground was strewed with flowers. The church was brilliantly illuminated with lamps, and the altars glittered with wax candles. On the floor many natives and East Indians were bowed before an image placed at the opposite end of the building; it was a full-length representation of our Saviour upon the cross; the blood was represented as streaming from his head upon his breast, and trickling from his hands and feet. On each side stood a tall female figure clothed in black, in an attitude of wo. As the words of the second commandment involuntarily flashed across my mind, two church officials bowed before this graven image and passed on. Near the door was stationed a band with drums and fifes, and farther off natives were beating their tomtoms.
At the other extremity of the compound, a crowd was assembled before the residence of the priests. They were preparing for the procession, overlooked by two European priests who stood in the verandah of the house. Several images, brilliantly but tawdrily decorated, were placed upon pyramidal forms. The most conspicuous was the figure of a monk, holding a book in his left hand, on which a child was seated. The platform on which he was placed and the umbrella over his head were completely covered with flowers. A native woman was explaining the figures to a man, whether heathen or Christian I know not. I asked her who the images were. “This,” she replied, pointing to the monk, “is San Antonio, and the one in his hand is the Lord. Yes, that very one is the Lord." Upon this the man made a worshipful obeisance. On being asked why the festival was kept, the old woman told us that the cholera was among them, but that if these images were taken outside and carried round the church, the cholera would go away, and all would get well. Two intelligent heathen lads, standing by, asked me what god this was. On my replying that it was no god, but an idol, that this was not Christianity, for our Scriptures commanded us to make no graven images—the older of the lads said to me in English, “Do not speak so! Many evil men flock to this place. Do not speak so in this place!" But now, with the noise, confusion, and wrangling seen in every Hindu crowd, where everybody directs everybody else, the images were raised on the bearers' shoulders, and moved off in procession. It was much as in the former case—fireworks, music, the angel, Peter, the Virgin Mary, closing with the chief actor, St. Anthony, followed by crosses and banners, the priests and choir-singers.
Scarcely a month or week passed without some such idolatrous scenes being enacted in the Romish church of Royapooram, under the eye and with the countenance of European priests. The identity of their practices with those of the heathen is so complete, that we felt no hesitation in telling them that they differed very little from the heathen around them. The fact is so palpable, that it cannot be denied; nor do I remember to have seen a Roman Catholic at all resent the charge. They have answered, “We do not worship the image, but the person represented by the image;" “But,” say the heathen, “neither do we: we are not fools, to pray to a stone." They sometimes attack us as heretics, when preaching to the heathen; but the reading of the second commandment (especially from the Latin vulgate) to the audience is sufficient to overthrow their claim to the assumed title of "Sattya-veda-karer,” or true Bible men.
The difference between the Roman Catholics and the heathen Hindus is so small, that both are alike considered idolaters by the Mohammedans; while many Hindus, knowing no other Christianity than this, look upon all Christians as worshippers of wood and stone. They see but little difference between their own worship and that of Roman Catholics, except the change of names in the objects of worship. Hinduism finds almost a full reflection of its own customs in the religious observances, rites, and ceremonies of the members of the Roman Catholic church who live beside them. Have the heathen lamps burning before their images, with the ringing of bells and wavings of censers? so have they. Have the heathen their holy places, their pilgrimages, their miracle-working shrines? so have they. Have the heathen their processions, images, music, fireworks, fans, holidays? so have they. Have the heathen hosts of inferior gods? the Roman Catholics have their saints. And as in Hinduism inferior deities have crowded out the worship of the Supreme Being, so in Roman Catholicism the Virgin and the saints have eclipsed the only true God and the only Mediator, Jesus Christ. When crossing the surf in a Massulah boat one day, a Roman Catholic asked me, “which we ought to worship, the Father or the mother?” adding, “We worship the mother.”
In a little work on the “Identity of Heathenism and Popery,” by a Hindu Christian, the close relationship of the two systems in one respect is illustrated by the following story: “In a certain town, a Hindu and a Roman Catholic, getting into a dispute, began to revile each the other's gods. The abuse ran high on both sides; and upon the Hindu's sneering at the other's St. Anthony as being only a tamby, or younger brother, of his god Ganesha, the exasperated Catholic commenced more forcible arguments, and the debate turned into a fight. They were carried before a magistrate, who, hearing the story of the Catholic, demanded of the Hindu why he had thus insulted the Catholic saint. In his defence, he replied, that on a certain occasion the Hindus, wishing a new image of their god, had gone to the carpenter to contract with him for the job. Finding that he had a fine solid piece of timber, they engaged him to make them an image from it. Shortly after, the Roman Catholics, wishing a new image of St. Anthony, went to the same artificer and made similar inquiries. Thereupon, the carpenter brought out the remaining half of the same log for their inspection, and, as it was satisfactory, carved for them from it a new St. Anthony; 'And now,' concluded the defendant, will not your highness admit that I was right in saying that their god was younger brother to our god Ganesha?'”
For a Hindu to become a Roman Catholic involves no great change. He may keep his worship of visible, tangible idols, his processions, his feasts, his theatrical plays, only substituting Christ, Pilate, Herod, and Judas for the old heroes of Indian story; and, above all, he may retain his caste. To become a Christian, he must renounce all these. So great is the passion of the people for an external religion, that of a truth unto them “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The priest Bartolomeo remarks, that “The native Christians (i. e. Roman Catholics) are fond of the images of the saints, processions, and in general of the ceremonies of the Catholic Church; and, as the Protestants lack all these things, it may naturally be conceived that their simple religion can have very few attractions for the Indians.” Yet, blessed be God! this "simple religion” of Jesus Christ, so unattractive to the natural man, debased by idolatry and sin, is to fill the earth, for God has given to him the heathen for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. Even the Roman Catholics of India have in many places turned from these vanities, cast down their idols, and are now serving the living God.
- ↑ The writer would gladly pass by these sad and painful facts. But he would be false to his duty to truth and religion, did he not bear witness against the fearful and degrading idolatry in India of that church, by which Christianity is misrepresented before the heathen, and multitudes deceived to their eternal ruin.