By Gregory Shullai
If I write on the circumstances in the All-Saints Cathedral under the Church of North India (CNI) today it is certainly about the saddest and most unpleasant business that has ever been my lot to relate and therefore it is with a heavy heart and most unwillingly that I sit in front of the keyboard and pour out the confessions of a confused soul. As a congregation we are now celebrating our sesquicentennial jubilee and we do not know if we can forgive ourselves of the situation that we have allowed our Cathedral to fall into. I don’t even know if I can forgive myself for writing everything down that follows and whether my fellow congregation members can ever forgive me for bringing my feelings out in public. After everything that has recently happened in the religious sphere of the Cathedral, every one of its members – concerned members that are – are troubled by the failure to restore things to normal in spite of having got rid of the main cause behind all our problems. For now, explanation calls and summons to court cases are a thing of the past, but good things are coming limping and late, the only good thing that has happened – the ouster of bishop Herenz, has not proved to be good enough and frustration is building up. The prayers of the congregation members in private and in the services may not have yielded as much as we hoped for and perhaps the prayers of more than just the congregation is what is needed now. I mean by this, the uncertainty of what’s in store in the near and the distant future has no silver lining because day by day the spirit of the members of the Cathedral to fight back against what’s been going on is being tested to its core and may even be dwindling because unity, consoling encouragement and enlivening hopes that the Cathedral will find a true Shepherd to lead us ever forward has yielded results that are far from what the members had hoped for.
But there is one point which troubles me most at present; the Cathedral flock have no Shepherd (bishop) to turn to; or to be more accurate it has to wait for the good Shepherd to turn up every now and then as he is tending to his flock in Gujarat and the duties of the Deputy Moderator in the CNI Headquarters at New Delhi, which are distinctly more important to his career – Gujarat being his hometown and Delhi his office – the centre of gravity of the CNI. The DNEI naturally being on the very periphery of the seat of power of the CNI is given the backbenchers’ attention. Both these two flocks, if I may call them that, demand closer attention, one being a hometown congregation and the other a central role in the administration of the CNI (the latter plays a vital role in a bishop’s rise in the organization). We must not think that the prospects of Chairmanship or Moderatorship in a religious organization are of no importance in the mind of every priest in any Christian organization. If there are those that do not consider their prospects in the organization, I can assure you they are very, very few. As regards the immediate future, it is precisely my practical doubts about it that trouble me. And here, a word against the CNI kind of Christianity.
In the CNI kind of Christianity neither doctrine nor religious liturgy come into contact with the reality of a congregation at any point for the basic reason that it is a conglomeration of denominations loosely bound into one outfit. Virtue and morality, which is normally doctrinal, are no longer bound to doctrines and dogmas but have to be invented to meet the congregations’ personal needs and future prospects, in any other sense it is merely a danger. This is especially encountered when a bishop from a different denomination shepherds a flock belonging to an altogether different denomination. And this is precisely what the All-Saints Cathedral in Shillong is going through at the moment. We must not lose sight of the fact in matters of our “statement of beliefs” and the forgiveness of sins, that what does not condition our lives in the way that has prevailed since childhood harms it. A virtue merely from a feeling of respect for position is harmful. Respect from the congregation by a replacement of the one who was bad tends to be understood as a right action, but in a denominational sense it may not be so. Some may even go to the extent of calling it a recipe for decadence in the long run. The CNI Synod must introspect into the bishops it posts in the different Dioceses and be guided by that which contributes to continuity and growth in the Diocese to which the bishop is posted, and not just as a replacement of the old by something new. As far as the Shillong Pastorate is concerned, they know that the end result as to what lies ahead and who will shepherd it towards that end in the future will not come of its own accord – the Synod calls the shots and they must call them thoughtfully. The Synod must find a bishop with an Anglican background to head the DNEI. And this should take precedence over anything else.
How much I should wish to hear from anyone in the Pastorate even if only in the tiniest of ways that things are well with us – but everyone is silent. And this is troubling. From friends in other congregations, I am often asked to give updates on what’s happening in our congregation and on the administration in the Diocese. They are aware of what’s going on, albeit superficially, and are worried at the troubles that have seized the parishioners of the Cathedral Pastorate. As far as they are concerned, and we can hardly know clearly enough how cordially and warmly people are towards us, they are worried with what’s going on in the All-Saints Cathedral, from a historic and a “beaconlike” point of view. This arises from the fact that members of other protestant denominations in Shillong have a sense of belonging whenever they visit and worship in the only Anglican Cathedral in Shillong that still upholds the office of a bishop and the seat of the bishop, and the solemnity in the way services are conducted. To them, as to us, the age-old traditions of Christianity in the litany and the liturgy that is followed at the Eucharist, and other orders of worship, possess the solemnity to inspire and arouse heartful and soulful instincts.
Something of the kind that the Cathedral congregation is going through has not been experienced before. The thought of having to learn from others as to what should be done to ensure continuity is something that is personally embarrassing at this age and time. But we must not flatter ourselves with the thought that we shall be able to meet this situation with calm and assurance by sitting on our hands, we must pray and we must act. And if we do, a time will come when we will burst out of these bonds and venture into the future from a different direction and in a better way. Normally, it is only to close friends, that we speak of these matters of faith but as things stand at present, we have suddenly acquired quite a lowly state in the opinion of church administration and this agonizes me. Whatever denomination one belongs to, one should be devoted to it, and having been brought up in it, one should want least of all to be a part among the generation under whose watch harm is coming to that congregation.
So long the Shillong Pastorate members have been fighting against the one who was laying waste to the spiritual and physical assets of the members and the Diocese and the one who has replaced him has done nothing in getting relief from that feeling. Until recently we were celebrating the fact that we had got rid of the nemesis from our pastorate, all that has blown away. Yet, like one grasping onto straws, this tallies with what I hear is going on in another church in Shillong, and in an even stranger way throughout India – especially South India.
It is another thing altogether to find with whom to commiserate for this absurdity that is taking place here in the All-Saints Cathedral. Does anyone, at this point in time, think that our actions have yielded the full fruit which we expected? Personally, I have my doubts, and until we get a full-time bishop – we are standing on sinking sand. That at least is what many believe with complete certainty at the moment. The Synod might possibly find this arguable, but the damage done by the bishop who was just ousted has placed a great deal of responsibility on the congregations of the Shillong Pastorate as the Synod appears to have been blind sighted on the posting of a replacement – in the short term; and this pains us very much because, when the time comes to appoint a regular bishop in the Diocese, the recommending committee, may likewise take a hasty decision from among the many which are presently incubating in everyone’s mind – some of which could be detrimental in the long run, not that it hasn’t happened earlier. We must make good use of this period of uncertainty and impress upon the Synod that a bishop from an Anglican background be posted in the Diocese and not someone from another denomination. That should be the first priority; many other suggestions will follow. This is how the Synod must charter a course for the way ahead – such is our desire; such is our undaunted hope.
It is so clear from talking to the members of the congregation that they should like to be something more than mere spectators to what is taking place in the affairs of the Cathedral. The future of the youth, the laity, the clergy and the children in the Sunday Schools – all this is in their mind. More than anything else they feel that if they must live their religious lives out to the end, let it be in the manner as their predecessors did; men and women whom they hold in high esteem, who handed to them the priceless gift of belief and faith in the tenets and precepts of the religion that they were born into because now it is the duty of the elders in the congregation to pass this legacy on in such a way that others may bless their life as a priceless treasure, once they have been happily released from its tolls. And this can only be done if the prevailing circumstances are straightened.
