Liturgy wars in the East

Liturgical language wars continue as reported by The Mangalorean (originally by way of CWnews.com) where "Catholic families have boycotted Sunday Masses since early July in a southern Indian parish to protest a language policy concerning liturgy."

This whole matter is virtually identical to a similiar controversy that erupted between Anglos and Hispanics in an American parish.

Further in the area of liturgy wars, The Indian Catholic (also via CWnews.com) is reporting that the Syro-Malabar Church wants more independence from local Latin rite officials and wishes to preserve and foster its own historical liturgical customs: those of the Syro-Malabar church/rite.

Issues like this are interesting because it gets into an unfortunate tendency that can at times exist in the Latin rite, being the big brother of rites after all, which is it can at times push its own ritual traditions and forms on others. This is a common complaint of most all the Eastern Catholic Churches.

I have a theory about this, and it relates to the gradual loss of historical rites and uses in the Latin rite itself for reasons of a preferred "Romanitas" in regards the Roman rite, at the expense of, or tension with regards, the other liturgical rites and uses of the West. I believe, particularly after the Reformation (perhaps justifiably in that chaotic climate), while various rites and uses were still allowed, the seeds were planted for a kind of ideal of liturgical monogamy.