Outsourcing
Religion
By Siddharth
Srivastava
05 May, 2004
Asia Times
One
area of outsourcing is not taking away jobs in the West, but it is certainly
making quite a few Christians say "Oh Jesus". A mix of
economics and a shortage of priests in Western Europe and the United
States have fueled the outsourcing of the "holy mass" to parishes
in the
south Indian state of Kerala.
This is how it works:
mass intentions - requests for services, such as thanksgiving and memorial
masses for the dead - are made at the foreign
dioceses and then passed to churches in Kerala, to priests and congregations
with time on their hands. The communication is usually via email. As
there is no official channel, many intentions are through personal relations
of the priests, who may have friends abroad.
If a devotee offers
a mass in, say, New York, it may be performed in Thrissur. Each mass
is said in front of a public congregation in Malayalam,
the local language. Reports from Kerala say bishops have had to limit
priests to just one outsourced mass a day to prevent them from denying
others the opportunity to earn a higher income. There is a dominant
Christian population in Kerala, with churches dotting the urban and
rural landscape.
Referred to as "dollar
masses", several reports on prayer outsourcing have been appearing
in the local press in Kerala due to the incomes
generated among local churches. "Most of these requests are made
from the US and European countries. These mass intentions are usually
routed through dioceses and handed over to relatively less busy parishes,"
Jose Porunnedam, chancellor of Syro-Malabar Church, told a local daily
newspaper."Pilgrim
centers also direct mass intentions to the diocese. We also get mass
intentions made at Lourdes in France and Santiago De Compestele in Spain,"
says Father Dr Philip Nelpuraparambil, director of ecumenism and dialogue
at the Archdiocese of Changanassery.
The main reason
for the outsourcing of prayers is the lack of manpower and hectic schedules
in churches in the West. Add the financial benefits. As in the case
of corporate outsourcing, the money saved can be substantial. While
fees for a holy mass intention made in Germany can be 50 euro (US$60),
it is just Rs 50 ($1) at a Thrissur diocese. Rates vary from country
to country: a request from North America or Europe can net an Indian
priest three pounds or four pounds ($5-7), which is good money here."Mostly
these intentions are given out for meeting expenses of parishes with
membership of fewer than 250 families and less sources of income. The
money is also used for paying remuneration for the priests," says
Father Paul Alappat, chancellor of theThrissur Archdiocese, which gets
an average of 50 mass intentions from abroad every month.
One Indian news
agency has quoted the case of Father Benson Kundulam, who lived in Paris
for several years, and recently held a requiem mass
in Cochin, India for a man in France mourning the death of his father.
"It doesn't matter where the person is from, we treat the request
the same," he says. The money, he says, is the last thing on the
priest's mind. "It is a religious duty to say the mass. We do it
the same, whether it is an Indian paying a few rupees or an American
paying dollars."His colleague, Father Tony Paul, who has not traveled
abroad, gets far fewer foreign requests and more Indian ones, which
earn only a fraction of the money. "If you don't get personal requests,
it is up to the bishops to hand them out," he said.
Virtual worship
is not unusual in India as several prominent temples, such as Tirupati
and Vaishnodevi, have set up websites that allow online darshan (prayers)
as well as the offering of prasad (sweets, incense etc) by paying via
credit card.
However, as in the
case of corporate outsourcing, there have been voices of protest from
the West. Britain's biggest industrial union, Amicus, expressed alarm
earlier this week at the latest trend in outsourcing to South Asia:
religion."Religious services and prayers for the dead are being
offshored from the United Kingdom to India because of a lack of priests,"
Amicus, whose
one-million-plus membership includes several thousand clergymen, said
in a statement. Amicus cited press reports that revealed how more and
more prayers were being said in Kerala because they had become too expensive
in the West. "This shows that no aspect of life in the West is
sacred," said Amicus' national secretary, David Fleming.
Church representatives,
however, aver that outsourcing religious services has been going on
for many years, which has nothing to do with the current fad over business
process outsourcing or services sector jobs.Paul Thelakat, spokesman
for the Cochin archdiocese and editor of the largest-selling
Catholic weekly in Malayalam, has been quoted as saying that prayers
for the dead have been outsourced for decades and that the tradition
has been thrust into the spotlight only because of the controversy over
corporate outsourcing in the West.
"Priests and
bishops abroad have no choice but to send them here or else the mass
intentions would never be said," Thelakat said.Other critics say
that though religious outsourcing does not take jobs away from other
parts of the world, unlike its corporate equivalent, there may be a
tendency by unscrupulous priests scrambling to make a profit, with no
way to verify whether the clerics perform the ceremonies they are assigned.It
could indeed be morally right to outsource God as it results in money
being re-distributed to the poor and needy. On the other hand, should
matters concerning the human spirit be shopped around to the lowest
material bidder? One would think that, like one's faith, the choice
should be individual.
Courtesy - Harsh
Kapoor/SACW