By Steve Jalsevac
COCHIN, Kerala, India, June 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the southern Indian state of Kerala, Cardinal Varkey Vitheryathil is the leader of the state’s largest Christian denomination, the Syro Malabar Catholic Church. On May 30 LifeSiteNews visited the Cardinal in the official Archbishop’s House in the city of Cochin, the commercial capital of Kerala. Following are excerpts from the interview which focused on life and family:
LifeSiteNews: We have seen that there is a very strong Catholic presence in Kerala, unusually strong.
Cardinal Varkey: The strongest in India
LifeSiteNews: Yes, and very fervent Catholics also. We went to mass and the masses were full and the people participated fully.
Cardinal Varkey: That is very true
LifeSiteNews: But, one thing we noticed is that every family seems to have only two children and it seems be frequently a boy and a girl and naturally the question is, “How do these two reconcile themselves”- fervent Catholics, yet only two children and where is this leading to since it is a below replacement level birthrate? With our experience on these issues it seems that it is going to lead to the disappearance of the Christians and the rise of the Muslims.
Cardinal Varkey: That’s very true but we are aware of that, we cannot do anything about it. The Muslims are 6, 8 children. They can even have more than one wife. So, they are a minority in India but in Kerala they are becoming almost the second biggest number and in another 20 years Kerala will be, at this rate of children, becoming an Islamic state because the Hindus are also not prolific. Kerala is a very educated state. Where there is high education the number of children go down.
LifeSiteNews: The other thing we noticed in discussions with people is there does not appear to be information to balance the influence to have these very small families. It’s not only economics, we are told that many of the Catholics have accepted the direction of the state that India must reduce its population in order to be successful.
[Steve and Luke Jalsevac with Cardinal Varkey] Cardinal Varkey: I don’t think so. Our Catholic families, they are very Catholic, many have houses like a monastery. Up to about 50 years ago, and myself I am from a family of 8 children, 12 children was very normal. There is an erosion first of all, in that kind of faith. In those days they had more joint families so they would support one another, different brothers would stay in the same house as the family, they prayed together and so on like that.
Now we have these atomic families, single families, and also under the influence of the media and so on there is an erosion of faith. But they go to church and in Kerala attendance at mass is practically 90% at Sunday mass. I don’t think anybody would miss Sunday Mass, they go to communion and all that but regarding after Humanae Vitae (Pope Paul VI’s encyclical affirming the Churchs’ traditional ban on birth control), you know, there were protests from Catholics, even Bishops in different countries, because Kerala people are aware of what is happening in the rest of the world. We learned that even many Catholic priests in the West are unhappy about Humanae Vitae and it was being said that it is a matter to be left to the conscience of the couple, that they can use contraceptives. Abortion, of course not. Some do that but very few.
But contraception became common because of the influence of loose Catholic doctrine coming from Western countries. So that thing has influenced the people and they won’t say it in confession because they say it’s ok because each one decides it in conscience. Nobody openly challenges Humanae Vitae but no priest also talks about it. So, it is not being discussed, but Pope John Paul said you must form your conscience according to the teaching of the church.
LifeSiteNews: How is natural family planning used here, if at all?
Cardinal Varkey: I don’t think many have any faith in that. Some say they don’t want to risk having a child through natural family planning. They want to be sure. There are many following natural family planning and probably a lot of them are successful in limiting their family.
Now to educate more than two children an average person has a difficult time and then also our new, younger ladies are not like the older women of great faith and so on. And our older women and mothers, they work for their family. They live for their children. They will go to pray in the church, morning mass, if possible, every day and go back and do the chores for the family. ….So, that kind of life is gradually going away.
LifeSiteNews: They have gone from the past way to the present much more liberal one. Is it possible that they could come back to some balance between the two?
Cardinal Varkey: It depends. We are trying. We have declared that this will be a year of the family. And now there is an all out effort to save the family, which is the basic unit of the Church and of society, so this year is the year of the family for us in Kerala. We are trying. Whether they will have more children, I have my doubts because now often husband and wife are working. Before the wife never took any work away from the household duties and family.
LifeSiteNews: The type of life they want to maintain now has a much higher standard than it had before.
Cardinal Varkey: Yes, there is a little craze for becoming rich, for all the comforts that the modern life has to offer them they must have money.
LifeSiteNews: We have pro-life organizations in North America. Do you have pro-life organizations here?
Cardinal Varkey: Yes, in India we have it but still in India even Catholics are aborting children.
LifeSiteNews: In the schools, you have so many schools, do they teach on these issues in the schools?
Cardinal Varkey: No.
LifeSiteNews: Why not?
Cardinal Varkey: See, talking about sex, sex education is rather poor in India. This is something very private, you know. Nobody talks about sex, you know even among the Hindus we do not talk about the plain truths about sex and the sex life. Now there is a bit of an improvement, sometimes. So children pick up their knowledge of sex from other sources, from the government and something like that. Parents never say a word to their children about sex.
LifeSiteNews: But in high school and beyond high school, at that age, it would be more appropriate to discuss at least the issues of population control and abortion and the real reasons why these are being pushed, the serious flaws in the arguments and the harm they cause. That is not so much sex education as very interesting and useful information and facts that most people would be interested to learn. The students would then tell their parents and then the wider community, Hindus and others. Everyone could benefit (at this point LifeSiteNews gave the Cardinal copy of the 54 page LifeSiteNews Special Report, The Inherent Racism of Population Control). This useful report covers one issue, population control, and the real reasons it is being pushed in the world and the poor foundation of arguments favouring it. There is much more information on other issues as well that you could obtain from LifeSiteNews.
Cardinal Varkey: In India, the Hindus and so on, they hate this idea of limiting population. They regard each human being as a gift of God – Hindus more than Catholics. So Indira Gandhi lost elections because of that. Her son was promoting sterilization. She was very popular but when they heard this sterilization was being encouraged they voted against her. That was the main reason. I don’t know if the world knows it. She lost the election. Then she came back again afterwards. Can you imagine, throwing out a lady just because of sterilization? That was 1977.
Today Sonia Gandhi doesn’t speak much about it. She won’t openly speak about it. She’s Italian and a Catholic and so on
[St. Mary's Cathedral Basilica in Cochin] LifeSiteNews: In Kerela, what is the percentage of Catholics.
Cardinal Varkey: Now, it is fast decreasing. Now I think it is maybe 16%. The total Catholic population of India is only 1.8% but in Kerala we are maybe 5 or 6 million. In spite of this erosion of faith under the influence of media, Western influence, there is still strong Catholic living, there may be many practicing contraception, abortion, maybe some, but still we are ordaining about 253 priests per year this small church, and we have about 70,000 sisters. Half of them are working in the Latin rite. About 70% of the missionary personnel in the whole of India comes from the Syro Malabar community. In Kerala the Syro Malabars number 3.5 million. The Latin Church is of recent origin, only three centuries or so. There are about 2 million Latin Catholics in Kerala.
We have a traditional Indian philosophy which we inherited because we are Hindu converts from long ago.
But how long it will last I don’t know. There is a big onslaught of TV, media, making it so worldly attractive. But in spite of that the Church is very vigorous because we have about 4500 catechism teachers in my diocese, lay people and sisters. So in each diocese a good catechesis is going on
As for a pro-life movement, we will try our best, we will try our best.
I am told that Muslim girls, from an early age are told you must have 8 children. More than 8 children, it’s a special blessing of Allah. We don’t do anything like that.
But there is such a deep peace from having a larger family.
Yesterday, was my birthday, 79th birthday. In my family there were 8 children. Every day we would go for mass, that was a must, but we were not forced. And the love among the children, some are in England, some in America, some here, it is something wonderful when we come together. We have such strong family bonds of love. The world cannot understand this.