St. Francis Xavier and the Modern Church

St. Francis Xavier and the Modern Church

Four countries have lapsed since St. Francis Xavier, the true model of missionaries, preached Christianity in Goa and other parts of the East. The zeal of the saint, his dedication to spread the Good News continues to invoke admiration despite the changing of the times and circumstances.

Meanwhile the Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola of which St. Francis was one of the first members and the Catholic Church in general have undergone tremendous changes in their outlook and have accepted different means of preaching the way of salvation. The main basis behind the change was the different point of view of looking at the values preached by the other existing religions. The post Vatican II Catholic Church is the embodiment of the drastic changes of views those have been

brought about during the last few centuries.

There have not been many works written by St. Francis Xavier, giving us the glimpses of the view he held on evangelisation, conversions and the religions he encountered during his ambitious sojourn in East. However the letters written by him to St. Ignatius of Loyola, his teacher, and his fellowmen in the Society of Jesus in different parts of the World, provide sufficient clues about his philosophy The Society of Jesus, founded in 1540, was essentially a revivalist movement as a reaction to the Lutheran

movement that had seemed to threaten the very existence of the Church in Europe as well as to preach the gospel in the then new discovered world.

Soon after his ordination, St. Francis Xavier who had received a Master’s Degree in Philosophy and theology, was entrusted with the responsibility of preaching Christianity in the East. Many of the means, employed by the Apostle of India, have been now considered as “out-dated” by the modern

Church theologians. However the principles, adopted by St. Francis Xavier, through the trial and error methods, have found prominent places in the convictions and ways accepted by the modern Catholic Church.

Having the sole task of spreading the World of God in the East, the saint succeeded in his mission, winning the distinction of being one of the great missionaries of the Church right from its inception. However the issues of mass-conversion despite Christ’s instruction to his apostles to baptize people in his name is, being debated in the Christian theologian circles, especially the liberal ones due to the change in Church’s perspective.

Encouraged by the good response in conversions in the East, St. Francis often urged his fellow-men and teacher to send more personnel to reap the “white harvest”. Yet during the last few decades, the Church missionaries have refrained themselves from mass-conversions owing to the more liberal stand taken by the Church with regards to other religions. The Second Vatican Council, officiated by Pope John XXIII, which is said to have opened the windows of the Catholic after a lapse of some centuries

and allowed the fresh breeze to come in, has taken a commendable stand about the co-existing religions in the world. While gradually departing from the age-old belief of the Christian religion as the only way of salvation, the liberals in the church have come to the stage of accepting that the non-

Christian religions do contain the “seeds” of the World of God and that salvation is possible for a person even if he is not “Christian” in the strict sense of the term and yet followed the norms of behavior which not go against the moral values of the Catholic Church.

Fired with his desire to bring numerous number of people in the Christendom, St. Francis is found utilising several means of conversions, depending upon the prevalent situation in the particular. In Goa, and other parts India, he went about preaching the gospel among the children and others with his

words and deeds while in places like Japan where he met formidable opponents in the form of the Buddhists monks, St. Xavier used the method of discussion, a method used by Shankaracharya, one of the greatest philosophers in the world, while arguing the tents of Hinduism against the then prominent Buddhists in India.

The process of introducing inculturation in the Catholic Church, through unconsciously, was first started by St. Francis Xavier in India. When the barrier of language proved to be a major drawback in his evangelisation, the saint learnt Konkani language in Goa to repeat the Christian doctrines on Sundays. The eagerness to adapt to the social situation of the particular society was certainly a revolutionary step in that period, especially if it is remembered that worships in Latin language had continued in churches in the world until a few decades ago.

The seeds of inculturation, sown by the saint and his colleagues in the later period, have borne fruits now in the Catholic Church as inculturation has become an attractive slogan among many of the young Church leaders. In India, as in the other parts of the World worshiping in the churches have much in common with their counterparts in other religions.

The inculturation, indicated with the basic assumption that various norms of local worshiping which do not come in conflict with the dogmas of the Mother Church, has helped converts to accept Christianity without cutting their umbilical cords with the society they live in. In one of his letters, St.

Francis comments, “Whenever some thing is not a sin, it ought not to be changed.”

Thus, barring the Territory of Goa, in many parts of India, local ways of worship like use of arati, Bhajans, kirtans and celebration of the holy mass by the priest while wearing the shawl, replacing the traditional vestments and the people squatting on the ground, etc., have become a way of religious, services, yet while totally remaining within the church. Cardinal Parecattil of Kerala has accounted for the failure of the Catholic Church in India by the paucity in recent times of “efforts to use the country’s genuine spiritual treasures to built the local Church on the basis on Indian cultural and soil”. In fact, the Cardinal, a priest of the Catholic Church, even goes to the extent of saying that theoretically speaking, there would be no objection to introducing like the breviary and into the liturgy of the word some

passages from non-Christian sacred books”.

However the process of inculturation has led to a debate by the conservative circles within the Church on the grounds of compromising with Church doctrines and the many of the radicals propagating

inculturation were asked to go slow. For example, German priest who started using roti and milk as substitution for the traditional bread and wine while offering the daily mass, had to resort to the traditional way as a result of hot controversy in Maharashtra.

The Ideology behind the social reforms since the times of St. Francis Xavier has also undergone tremendous changes in one section of the Catholic Church. The saint was also busy with helping the needy, serving the sick, burying the dead and visiting the prisoners besides his usual work of teaching catechism, hearing confession. Though Christianity, like many other religions, views the wordy life as a preparation for the heavenly life, most of the leading congregations of priests as well as nuns have accepted the mantle of social reforms through the different medium of education and by imbibing universal moral values among the Christians and the non- Christians alike. And while retaining their respect for the age-old evangelical work, many of the clergy belonging to the intelligentsia, have

discovered academic, research works in various fields including social sciences and technology as new avenues of service to the mankind. With the strong influence of the changing ideologies in the world, some of the extremist leaders of the Church have even thrown themselves into the fray of social-political struggles, adding a new dimension to the heterogeneous Catholic Church.