Rama P. Coomaraswamy

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The Rev. Dr. Rama Poonambalam Coomaraswamy, (1929-2006), was the son of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, who was raised an Anglican but who converted to Hinduism, and of Luisa Runstein, an Argentine-born woman of Jewish descent.

Raised a Hindu, Coomaraswamy obtained his early education according to the Hindu system at the Gurukul Kangri Vidyalaya at Bharadabad-Haridwar in Uttaranchal, India , an institution founded by a member of the Arya Samaj and that was later granted the status of a deemed university ([1]).

After graduating from the Gurukul Kangri Vidyalaya, he next studied in Oxford, from where he obtained his Matriculation. Graduating from Harvard university with a major in Geology, he went on to medical school, graduating in 1959. He spent eight years in post-graduate medical and surgical training and then some thirty years as a Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgeon, holding the position of Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and later as the Chief of Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgery at Stamford Hospital. Subsequent to some cardiac difficulties, he retired from the practice of surgery and retrained in Psychiatry in which field he also held an Assistant Professorship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Sometime after his father's death, he met an American Catholic woman, and was married to her in Bombay, India by its Archbishop Valerian Gracias, at the Cathedral of the Holy Name on Wodehouse Road, Colaba. At this time, he converted to Roman Catholicism. As a Catholic, he soon became closely involved with Mother Teresa and her charity works.

However, as the Church began to implement institutional change formalized by Vatican II (1962-1965), Coomaraswamy grew increasingly alienated, seeing these changes as the abandonment of Catholic Tradition, saw the New Mass as gravely sinful and ceased attending these services. As a result, Coomaraswamy became involved with the Catholic Traditionalist movement. He also forbade his children from attending these services. When his wife, displeased with this, sought the advice and intervention of Mother Teresa, she advised his wife to defy his decision by continuing to send their children to these services, thus beginning a series of polemics between the two (that is, Coomaraswamy vs. Mother Teresa; see his website for transcripts).

Within the Catholic Traditionalist movement, Coomaraswamy initially grew close to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who appointed him Professor of Church History at the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary of his organization, the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), in Ridgefield, Connecticut, a position he held for about five years until 1983. While there, he ideologically began to move towards Sedevacantism, and he successfully influenced a significant number of faculty and students to subscribe to Sedevacantism, resulting in the secession of a group of priests and seminarians from Lefebvre — initially nine, among them Clarence Kelly, Daniel Dolan, Donald Sanborn, William Jenkins, and Anthony Cekada. This group then formed the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV). When Dolan, Sanborn, Cekada and most of the other priests of the SSPV began to dissent from the rigorist leadership of Kelly, Coomaraswamy again joined them in departing from the SSPV. They (these dissidents from Kelly's position) then united in a loose manner as the Instauratio Catholica (or Catholic Restoration in Latin). Over time, even this loose confederation frayed and ceased to exist.

Contents 1 Ordination as a Priest 2 Catholic Traditionalism and Perennialism 3 Sincerity of Conversion to Catholicism 4 Illness & Death 5 Bibliography 6 External link

[edit] Ordination as a Priest

Although a married man with a subsisting marriage, he was ordained a priest by the Most Rev. José Ramon Lopez-Gaston, a Sedevacantist bishop from the lineage of the Vietnamese Archbishop Ngô Ðình Thuc Pierre Martin, in 1999 and began work as an exorcist, collaborating with the Most Rev. Robert McKenna. Prior to his ordination he had taken public vows of continence and celibacy, together with his wife. Some years later, he publicly stated that he stopped participating in exorcisms citing his advanced age (see [2]).

It is stated that Coomaraswamy claimed that Fr. Malachi Martin, who — according to him — claimed to have been made a bishop and Cardinal by Pope Pius XII in secret (in pectore) for the Christians of the Communist Bloc, conditionally re-ordained him a priest. Others have claimed that this is merely a misunderstanding or rumor, and cite Coomaraswamy's website, where there is a photo of his ordination with Fr. Malachi Martin present but not performing the ordination (see [3]). However, Coomaraswamy, in his own statement On The Validity of My Ordination, states quite clearly:

One problem arose. One of the people present thought Bishop Lopez-Gaston didn’t actually touch my head during the critical part of the rite. I of course cannot bear witness to this as I was too much too involved in the process of ordination to check on such a detail. I however recently looked at the photographs which were taken and offer two as evidence to the contrary.

However, my close friend and mentor, Bishop Malachi Martin, stated that he wished there to be absolutely no doubt about my ordination. He therefore proceeded to conditionally re-ordain me. Hence it is that I received the graces of Ordination from a double source. (Rama P. Coomaraswamy, On The Valdity of My Ordination)

The confusion can be attributed to the fact of Coomaraswamy's conditional re-ordination by Malachi Martin being discussed in a sort of "Chinese whispers": Fr. Anthony Cekada, in his article, Untrained and Un-Tridentine: Holy Orders and the Canonically Unfit alludes to this purported conditional re-ordination in a mocking tone, and more people are familiar with Cekada's writings than with Coomaraswamy's:

A married bishop ordained another married man a priest using a photocopy of the traditional ordination rite. The photocopy, however, was missing the page containing the essential sacramental form that must be recited for an ordination to be valid.

Since this would-be bishop had no training, he had no idea anything was wrong. The mistake was detected only because an apostate priest (correctly trained) happened to be present. Not to worry, though. The apostate priest 'corrected' the error himself afterwards by imposing hands and reciting the correct form — having announced that he had been secretly consecrated a bishop by Pius XII himself! (Anthony Cekada: Untrained and Un-Tridentine: Holy Orders and the Canonically Unfit)

[edit] Catholic Traditionalism and Perennialism

Coomaraswamy was involved with not only the Catholic Traditionalist movement, but also with Perennialism (also called "Traditionalism") whose main exponents were Rene Guenon, Ananda Coomaraswamy (Rama's Hindu father) and Frithjof Schuon. He was a member of the Foundation for Traditional Studies and was a regular contributor to the foundation's journal Sophia.

Coomaraswamy's troubling double-involvement with the two, ostensibly exclusive movements was first exposed by a blogger, Carrie Tomko ([4]), specializing in investigation of the Occult infiltration of Catholicism, and picked up by others, among others, a J. Christopher Pryor, a Lefebvrist who operates the LeFloch Report. (Interestingly, Rama Coomaraswamy had never broken away from Perennialism and propagating it, along with Frithjof Schuon and Coomaraswamy's own perennialist disciple, William H. Kennedy, even when he was associated with Lefebvre's seminary, and Lefebvre et al would and should have known of this).

[edit] Sincerity of Conversion to Catholicism

J. Christopher Pryor reports on the cause and motives of Coomaraswamy's conversion from Hinduism to Catholicism in the following words:

Coomaraswamy... recounted that he converted to Catholicism because there was not enough of a Hindu presence in the United States for him to practice his traditions, and that he found living outside a Traditional Religion repugnant and so became a Catholic, since, according to Rama, Catholicism fit perfectly with his beliefs as a Hindu. (J. Christopher Pryor: What is Perennialism)

This is based on an interview granted to Joaquin Albaicin by Rama Coomaraswamy in 2003:

Joaquin Albaicin: In his letters, your father gave to you indications regarding how to become a full member of the Hindu tradition. How was that belonging to a Brahman family did you finally embraced the Christian path instead of the Hindu one?

Rama Coomaraswamy: I grew up in Haridwar, one of the Holy Cities of India, and lived for years during my youth as an orthodox Hindu. Having been invested with the yajñopavita or sacred tread, I can state that since the Hindu view point I am a dvija or a "twice born". But after my father's death I returned to America, where my mother was essentially alone. As it was impossible for me to live as a Hindu in America at that time, and as living without any traditional affiliation was in my mind to live on an animal level, I entered Catholicism which I found completely compatible with my Hindu outlook. (Rama Coomaraswamy interviewed by Joaquin Albaicin)

Pryor also reproduces what he claims is a letter in reply from Coomaraswamy, where he (Coomaraswamy) replies to these claims thus:

... Let me speak to the matter of my conversion in which discussion I sense an ad hominum intent. Conversion is both a complex and a simple matter dependent on the grace of God. If I was taught as a Hindu to love and serve God, why would I not continue to believe that when I became a Catholic? And what is surprising about feeling uncomfortable in a purely secular society? I studied the Faith for some two years before seeking Baptism.

I have a somewhat unusual background, Deo gratias. My family has included both Jesuit priests and Hindu monks. I was as young man first introduced to the reality of God by Tibetan monk. I have lived with Hindus and Sufi Muslims as well as with many wonderful Catholics. Many of these individuals feel about their religion much as I do about mine, I proffer no judgment about their beliefs, I know they are men of prayer and love God and feel they may well fall into those that St Pius X said belong to the soul of the Church. But as Muslims are fond of saying, “God knows best.” This does not mean that I am against conversion, and I am happy to preach when opportunity arises, “Christ, and Christ Crucified.” It should be absolutely clear that no can be saved be error. Those outside the Church who are saved, are saved by the divine Word (logos) which is Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Since my conversion I have never departed from the traditional Catholic faith, though I have often fallen from grace. I think my writings bear witness to my orthodoxy. I think any aspersions cast upon my Catholicism are completely unjustified. (Reply of Rama Coomaraswamy to J. Christopher Pryor's articles on Perennialism & Rama Coomaraswamy)

[edit] Illness & Death

Rama Coomaraswamy died on July 19, 2006 due to complications relating to bone cancer. Soon after his death, his family, which accepts the Vatican II reforms that he rejected, pulled off his website, but it was later restored without an explanatory statement.

[edit] Bibliography

• Correspondence With Mother Teresa
• The Destruction of the Christian Tradition (1972)
• The Invocation of the Name of Jesus (1999)
• The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (2004)
• The Problem With The New Mass (1990), TANBooks.com
• The Problem With The Other Sacraments

[edit] External link

• Rama Coomaraswamy's Website