Indian Christianity

HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA : M. M. NINAN
12. Of orders
13. Homilies (in which the Eucharist is said to be the image of Christ)
14. Exposition of Gospels.
15. The Book of Rubban Hormisda
16. The Flowers of the Saints
17. The Book of Lots
18. The Parsimon or Persian Medicines
• It decreed the acknowledgment of the seven Roman sacraments, whereas the Syrians had
recognized only three;
• The liturgy used by the Thomas Christians were that of Addai and Mari. The Synod declared
certain passages of the Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari as impious, sacrilegious and outcome of
Nestorian heresy.
• It decreed that there indeed is a transubstantiation in the Eucharistic elements whereas the
syrians believed it as an image of Jesus and his sacrifice.
• Then followed the decrees to bring the Syrian Church into line with the papal doctrines of
penance, auricular confession, extreme unction, adoration of images, reverence for relics,
purgatory, eternal punishment, the worship of saints, the doctrine of indulgence, papal
supremacy, and above all, the worship of the Virgin Mary. All these were unknown to Kerala
Christians.
• There was the decree demanding the celibacy of the clergy. Until then all thomas clergy were
married. All the Syrian priests were immediately to put away their wives and all support to the
clergy family (wife and children) from the church were stopped
• Forty-one decrees were passed with reference to fasts and festivals, organization, and order in
church affairs. In the social context all inter-religious communal festivals were forbidden including
the celebration of Onam. These decrees essentially confused culture and religion based on
European culture.
In all there were nine sessions lasting a week and promulgating two hundred sixty-seven decrees.
The Syrian Church believed "that the Holy Ghost proceedeth only from the Father; that they celebrate
Divine Service as solemnly on the Sabbath, as on the Lord's Day; that they keep that day festival, eating
therein flesh, and fast no Saturday in the year but Easter Eve,...that they acknowledge not purgatory."
The whole synodic decrees make more sense when we consider that this occured not much later than
the Protestant Reformation Movements and the subsequenct Council of Trent.
Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) says:
"The only case in which an ancient Eastern rite has been wilfully romanized is that of the Uniat Malabar
Christians, where it was not Roman authority but the misguided zeal of Alexius de Menezes, Archbishop
of Goa, and his Portuguese advisers at the Synod of Diamper (1599) which spoiled the old Malabar Rite.
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