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| THE CHURCH IN INDIA | ||||
 COMMUNICATION IS PARAMOUNT Father Dominic Emmanuel - is the Communications & Public Relations Officer for the Catholic Bishops Conference in India. The Catholic Church is the dominant face of Christianity in this land. We place a strong emphasis on inter-religious dialogue. This is because we are a minority religion and it is so crucial and vital that we enter into dialogue with our brothers and sisters from other faiths and traditions. My own doctrinal work has been based on communications and dialogue. The Church in Asia is still thriving and working in dialogue in a very profound way. Inter-religious dialogue is crucial for the Catholic Bishops Conference in India. As a minority, priests and missions in India slug it out, they are working very hard as a Christian community and can struggle for survival. There is a great deal of poverty in our land and many of our people find it hard to make ends meet. Our priests and nuns work incredibly hard, I do not know a priest who takes a day off each week. They seem to work seven days a week. Because of the poverty dimension priests tend to do all the work themselves. Even in our cathedral church here in Delhi there is no full-time secretary employed. Generally, India has a deep faith. This can be seen in all the religions, most clearly in Hinduism and Islam. Being in the minority you need to be firm in your faith but it also has its advantages in that it makes you reflect and stand-up for what you believe in. Here in India, there are good relations between all the other faiths. You often find Sikhs and Hindus walking into our cathedrals, there is good cultural harmony. Nevertheless, a new phenomenon has arisen with a fundamentalism in certain political structures. Even so, the Church is still relied upon as an important contributor to the life of our society. I see the Press and media in general as so vital and crucial to the life of the Church, not only here in India but throughout the world. We need to make use of the media. The Church has a function to play in the whole public domain. I am pleased to say that 85% of our Church membership are practising. We are basically a religious society struggling with poverty and looking for a god who can walk with us in solidarity. We have many people in our Christian community who are theologians, people who are using each day to reflect on the meaning of God and the reality of their existence. Because of the other faith communities we are challenged to theologise on our own Christian identity. |
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