The Mighty Vatican doesn’t want to admit that it is fighting a do-or-die battle.

Indian Catholic priests and nuns are increasingly in demand in the West, which has a dearth of new recruits

The flow of missionaries is now from East to West, over 20,000 Indians serve in Catholic institutions in Europe, US […] India is proving to be an exception to the general trend of decline in vocation. Development has made the West more secular, but that model does not apply to India.” He adds that there are “too many candidates for seminaries in India, and bishops have to choose”. Compare it to Italy, a 98 per cent Catholic country, where an average of only 30 priests are ordained annually. The nadir in Europe was reached in the 1970s when seminaries began closing and one particularly dry year, only one priest was initiated in Italy. Alarmed, the Vatican under Pope John Paul worked hard to reverse the trend.

Desperate situations call for equally desperate measures: the Indian Christian apparatus has never really been independent. Indeed, like in many aspects of India, the colonial holdover subsists. Indian Christian heads-bishops, archbishops, priests, et al—still look askance outside. They’re naturally elated at this development where:

…Indians [are] doing tough assignments abroad for the Catholic church too, like the Pope’s ambassador to Iraq, Archbishop Francis Chullikat of Kerala. A Vatican diplomat for 18 years, he has the extra burden of saving the few Christians left in Baghdad.

At least 15 Indian professors are teaching everything—from the history of dogma to modern communication—at the seven main papal universities in Rome. For the first time, Archivum Romanum, the most important Jesuit archives, has an Indian director—Father Thomas Reddy.

The Vatican has finally condescended, out of sheer necessity for survival in an atmosphere where 82% say faith causes tension in country where two thirds are not religious. I’m talking about England. The number is more or less the same for the rest of Europe. Yet, the Mighty Vatican refuses to soften on certain.. err.. weighty issues like:

While the upper layers of the Vatican, including the Pope, appear to be hardening their stand on how and why a dialogue should be conducted, Indian priests have an instinctive feel for living with other religions.

Absolutely. A dialogue dictated by the Holy See, a one-sided “dialogue.” Sample this and this. Scratch the surface, don’t dig deep. Hell, they didn’t spare their own, what about others?

Jacques Dupuis, a Jesuit who worked and taught in India for 35 years, had imbibed Indian concepts to an extent that his Christian basics were seen as shaky by authorities when he returned to Rome. His belief that the relationship between Christianity and other religions can’t be viewed in terms of opposition and much less as “absoluteness on one side (Christianity) and only potentialities on the other” was found offensive, for it went against the belief of Christ as the only saviour. Dupuis was suspended from teaching at the Gregorian in 1997 and died in 2004, but he cherished his Indian experience. In one of his last interviews, he said: “I consider my exposure to Hindu reality as the greatest grace I have received from God in my vocation as a theologian.”

Which prompted others—the Indian imports—to ask uncomfortable questions:

The Vatican won’t officially comment on the special grace Indians bring, or their blending of Hindu practices into Catholic rituals, for to acknowledge would be to concede. And Rome resists dilution—practical or philosophical.

If you can’t handle the consequences, why convert the heathens in the first place?