Amalorpavadas: Educator of the Indian Catholic church in the process of inculturation

This dissertation is a historical (Chapter 2), theological (Chapter 3) and pedagogical (Chapter 4) inquiry into the vision and ministry of Amalorpavadas, with the intention of finding their relevance and implications for the Catholic Church in India as she heads toward the third millennium (Chapter 5). D. S. Amalorpavadas (1932–1990) was an Indian guru and Christian prophet, who had challenged and educated the Church in India to grow, mature, and become authentic, relevant, and effective through the process of inculturation. He founded the National, Biblical, Catechetical, and Liturgical Center (NBCLC), in Bangalore, and the Anjali Ashram, in Mysore, and headed the Department of Christianity in Mysore University, in order to educate the Church in India in the process of inculturation. His personality and lifestyle as well as his words and actions were great examples of inculturated living. At the wake of the third millennium, the Church in India is in crisis through the internal rivalries in the Church, in the name of the foreign missionaries, and through the external threats from the Hindu fundamentalists. Both keep the Church from becoming creatively and responsibly present in India as authentically Indian and passionately Christian. According to Amalorpavadas, only an inculturated Indian Church, i.e., a Church that is My incarnated in the Indian culture and has penetrated the heart of India, can overcome those problems and exist in India as the sacrament of Christ and the evangelizer of salvation, and head toward the 21st century fully equipped for her challenging mission. There the Church will realize her true Indian identity and will be able to minister to India through dialogue and conscientization. Through dialogue she will guide the multicultural and multi-religious India to communal unity, and through conscientization she will lead the poverty-stricken and politically oppressed India to liberation and development. The inculturating vision of Amalorpavadas, instilled in the people he taught, embodied in the institutions he built, and continued in the movements he launched, can lead the Church in India into the third millennium making her truly authentic, relevant and effective