He had already begun to celebrate the holy liturgy in Malayalam. He was succeeded by his cousin, Mâr Thomas Athanasius, whom he had already ordained as his auxiliary. The head of the unreformed Jacobites, his rival, was Mâr Dionysius V. Dionysius invited the Jacobite Patriarch to come to India himself and to crush the Reformed sect. In 1875 the Patriarch (Ignatius 'Abdu-lMasīḥ)[1] came. He did all he could to help Dionysius. He excommunicated Thomas Athanasius and his followers, and ordained six new bishops as suffragans of Dionysius. But he could not crush the Reformed sect. There were now two non-Uniate Churches: the Jacobites (known as the Patriarch's party) and the Reformed (the Metran's party). In 1889 and 1901 the quarrel between these two over the churches and church property again came before the Hindu courts.[2] The case went both times against the Reformers. Quite rightly, the judges decided that the Jacobites are the old Church (since 1665), and have a right to all the property they have acquired since then. The Reformers are a new sect, and must acquire property for themselves.
At the time of the Vatican Council it was proposed to submit the Malabar Uniates to the jurisdiction of the (Chaldæan) Patriarch of Babylon.[3] It seems that Propaganda was considering the matter — maybe they had already discussed it with the Patriarch, when he, without further authority,[4] sent a certain Elias Mellus (formerly Chaldæan Bishop of Akra in Kurdistan) to India, pretending to give him jurisdiction over all Malabar Uniates.[5] From this a great quarrel arose, which will be described in our next volume. The end of it was that Mellus would not
- ↑ This is the Patriarch who was deposed in 1906 when Ignatius 'Abdullah Sattūf was made his successor. I am glad to say that the other day (May 3, 1913) Ignatius 'Abdu-lMasīḥ abjured his heresy and was reconciled to the Catholic Church by Ignatius Ephrem Raḥmāni, the Uniate Syrian Patriarch of Antioch. Two other Jacobite bishops had already done so in January.
- ↑ The lawsuits fill four large volumes.
- ↑ Hitherto the Malabar Uniates had an irregular position under Latin bishops. Some such arrangement as this would seem most natural.
- ↑ The Patriarch said he had received authority from the Pope to do so. This was denied at Rome.
- ↑ This was only one of several such more or less schismatical ordinations made by the late Chaldæan Patriarch Joseph VI (Audu, 1848-1878). He repented of these, and did not incur the excommunication with which he was threatened in 1876. I will tell the whole story in the volume on the Uniates.
