Visitors to Our Lady of Good Health in Bengaluru said that they came for peace, and to pray for prosperity for themselves and for all.
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Mother Mary, St. Alphonsa, and St. George all represent ideal models of Christian behaviors for women and men, but many more of the stories around them seem to center on miracles, cures and protection.
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Unofficial shrines in unexpected places are reminders that the divine can be manifest anywhere and everywhere in Indian society.
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The Miraculous Infant Jesus Church is a popular shrine celebrating the image of the Infant Jesus of Prague, a devotion imported from the Czech Republic. The parish and shrine are relatively new, having been established in the late 1960s, but the site draws large crowds for its nine Thursday novena Masses to the Infant Jesus, and the seven Sunday Masses. The church serves a primarily Tamil speaking community, but also has Masses in five other languages. The shrine’s motto, “The more you honour me, the more I will bless you,” is a surprisingly mechanistic perspective on prayer, is but one that
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Shrines play an unusually big role in Catholic life in southern India. Almost all Catholic churches there have shrines in front and inside. Towns with a significant Catholic population often feature a Catholic shrine near the center of town or at a crossroads, and there are many unofficial shrines built and maintained by individual families or groups of families . Pilgrimages and shrines in India are not simply a populist phenomenon, something elites might avoid.1 1Corinne Dempsey, Kerala Christian Sainthood: collisions of culture and worldview in South India , (New York: Oxford University
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Feasts, a tremendously important part of parish life in India, are a period of nine or 10 days that include Masses, novenas with visiting preachers, music, processions, and food. In Kerala, nothing compares to the energy put into parish feasts.
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The family is an enormously important—some say all-powerful—social institution in India. Where geographic mobility has increased, and where striving and middle class Indians have become more focused on higher education as a means of advancement, older norms are shifting, but family is still a powerfully cohesive and determinative force in people's lives, and marriage is seen as an alliance between two families, not just two individuals. Multigenerational families are the norm, and beyond that, extended family networks can be quite influential. First and second cousins are traditionally
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An even larger charismatic center than the Renewal Retreat Centre is the Divine Retreat Centre in Kerala, which hosts week-long retreats in seven languages on two campuses throughout the year.
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The Renewal Retreat Centre, a charismatic center in Bengaluru, is striking for the intensity of its services, and the extraordinary way that it weaves Euro-Catholic, evangelical, and Hindu religiosity.
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The rise of charismatic practice in India has been credited with retaining large numbers of Catholics who may have otherwise been inclined to join a newer Evangelical church in their area.