We have received the following update on the TLM situation in India. The author of this piece has long involvement in the Traditionalist movement in India, but has requested not to be named for fear of reprisals from Church authorities. Out of respect for the author of the piece, I have not edited or deleted anything in his message.
Aside from the SSPX Masses, it seems that there are no regular Sunday TLM's in India under diocesan auspices, and only two monthly Masses.
The Catholic Church in India has Asia's largest Catholic hierarchy and, with nearly 17,000 seminarians, has more seminarians than any other country in the world (indeed, more than the entire North American continent). Unfortunately, the traditional Roman liturgy has been all but obliterated in this vast and growing Church. Given the future importance of the Church in Asia to the Catholic Church as a whole, this is a terrible deficiency that needs to be repaired urgently.
In the Archdiocese of Bombay the Indult Mass has been celebrated at Our Lady of Victory Church, Mahim, Bombay, on the first Sunday of the month since January 2001. Initially done by a very senior priest who was ordained in 1956, he had forgotten how to celebrate it and made quite a mess of it. For around a year the Mass was celebrated by pre-1969 priests but thereafter it has been celebrated mostly by a post-1969 priest. Attendance in the begining was 250 but it has reportedly dwindled to around 50. A seminarian who was attending it (and was also promoting the Holy Rosary with a small group in the Bombay Seminary) was victimised by the Archbishop (Cardinal Ivan Dias, now at the Curia), called a Lefebvrist, and his ordination was therefore delayed in 2002 by 3 years during which period he was to have been indoctrinated by a modernist Jesuit. He and 3 others, who had put in 9, 8, 7 and 6 years of study at the Bombay seminary, defected to the SSPX but were told by the SSPX in Australia that as their studies in Bombay was unsuitable for the Catholic priesthood they would have to study 6 years more (to the very same studies which used to be imparted in the Bombay Seminary befire Vatican II). Three of them quit Holy Cross Seminary, Australia, unceremously end 2005/ early 2006 and returned to India after having received assurances from the same archbishop that they would be well-received but they have not been ordained by the Archdiocese of Bombay as yet and have been under observation in three different churches; one of the three reportedly has quit altogether and has gone back to his mother. The fourth in Australia, youngest of the group, was ordained a SSPX priest there on December 27, 2008. Meanwhile Cardinal Dias was moved to Rome in June 2006 and the present Archbishop of Bombay from October 2006 is Cardinal Oswald Gracias.
Testimonies of 3 of the 4 Bombay seminarians who had defected to the SSPX, on the
modernistic teachings imparted by the Novus Ordo Bombay Seminary, were hosted on the SSPX Asia website in 2003/2004 and may be accessed at:
http://www.sspxasia.com/Newsletters/2004/Jan-Jun/Indian_Seminaries.htm
http://www.sspxasia.com/Newsletters/2003/Jul-Dec/Hinduism_at_a_Glance.htm
http://www.sspxasia.com/Newsletters/2003/Jul-Dec/Scandalous_Ecumenism_with_Hinduism.htm
From January 2008 the Motu Proprio Mass, requested by a group of laypersons, is being offered in th Jesuit-run St. Peter's Church, Bandra, in the church loft by a pre-1969 priest, first a 82 year-old priest in the Clergy Home and thereafter by a Spanish Jesuit, also ordained before 1969. Attendance at the start was around 70.The Mass is only on the third Sunday of every monthIn Bombay - Bassein the SSPX has 3 Mass locations.
In Goa there was a petition signed by more than 100 persons for the Indult Mass about 12 years ago but the Archbishop referred it to the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council and the Priests Council and both bodies vetoed it.
