Editorial
The radiant dawn of Easter morning, once the quintessential emblem of hope, redemption, and divine renewal, has become entangled in a tapestry of contradictions. No longer solely a solemn paean to the risen Christ, Easter in many contemporary ecclesiastical contexts now stands as a disquieting metaphor for a Church increasingly seduced by power, politicisation, and subterfuge. In place of the sacred tremor of resurrection, we are met with the rumble of institutional decay. This paradox is not simply abstract or theological; it is concrete, manifesting in specific and deeply troubling instances—none more poignant, perhaps, than in the case of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka.
To consider Easter without confronting the state of the institutional Church is to engage in a form of theological escapism. The ancient liturgies and resurrection hymns proclaim, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death”—a victorious cry that once resounded against the backdrop of empire, tyranny, and the corruption of human systems. Today, that same cry must contend with a Church that, in many quarters, has become complicit in the very things Christ’s resurrection was meant to overcome.
One cannot speak of complicity without naming it. The Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka in 2019, a massacre that shook the world and tore through the heart of the island nation’s Christian community, remain unresolved in justice and shrouded in ambiguity. Yet in its aftermath, another tragedy unfolded: the instrumentalisation of suffering for political gain. At the epicentre of this ecclesial-political vortex is a senior prelate—a Cardinal of the Catholic Church—who has extended his tenure beyond the normative canonical retirement, cloaking himself in the martyrdom of his people while allegedly orchestrating a network of power, influence, and questionable financial dealings.
There are persistent murmurs, both within the Church and civil society, that vast sums of money—funds ostensibly collected to seek justice for the victims of the bombings—remain undisclosed. The opacity is staggering. No public ledger, no ecclesiastical accounting, no theological reflection offered for how these donations were managed. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21), said Christ. Yet the Church’s heart in this matter appears sequestered behind a veil of silence and selective accountability.
This is no isolated anomaly. Rather, it reflects a broader malaise afflicting global Christendom. The very institution that once sang with unction, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55), now finds itself stung by scandal, its moral grave dug by its own hands.
The Harrowing of Hell—one of Easter’s more arcane yet profoundly evocative theological motifs—portrays the risen Christ descending into Hades to liberate the souls of the righteous. The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus recounts Christ commanding, “Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in.” The Church was once that door through which liberation came. But what happens when the gatekeepers themselves become the captors?
Mary Magdalene, the first apostolic witness to the Resurrection, proclaimed a gospel that defied empire and patriarchy alike. Yet today, women and marginalised voices in the Church are too often silenced, relegated to the periphery by hierarchies obsessed with dogma and dominance. Her cry, “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18), is muffled beneath the din of clerical self-preservation and institutional defensiveness.
Nowhere is this institutional defensiveness more acute than in the Church’s handling of sexual abuse scandals, financial irregularities, and politicised rhetoric. The Church which once dared to confront Caesar now curtsies before modern political demagogues, trading its prophetic voice for relevance and security. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21) has, in some cases, become a barter system: divine authority traded for temporal clout.
In Sri Lanka, this barter is playing out in tragic realism. The Cardinal in question has aligned himself, either overtly or tacitly, with political factions, leveraging the moral authority of his office to influence the direction of national discourse. His continued prominence, despite reaching canonical retirement, raises questions about the nature of ecclesial appointments and the unspoken immunity enjoyed by certain hierarchs. Is this the Petrine office, or is it a throne of influence built upon the backs of martyrs?
The victims of the Easter bombings are invoked in speeches and processions, yet their suffering is commodified. They are not subjects of justice but objects of political capital. And what of the funds—allegedly millions—donated in the aftermath? To whom were they disbursed? What criteria governed their allocation? Who monitors their usage? The Church, which demands transparency from the world, has offered opacity in return.
There is a sinister irony here. The tomb is empty, but the Church is full—full of secrets, unaccounted funds, and moral evasions. The Christ who overturned the tables of the money changers would likely find ample cause for indignation in the modern ecclesial apparatus.
This is not to disparage the Church in totality. There remain pockets of prophetic witness, communities of radical love, and clergy of rare integrity. But the institution itself groans under the weight of its contradictions. Easter was meant to be an ecclesial exhale—”Peace be with you” (John 20:19)—but instead it feels like an inhalation of dread, of waiting for the next revelation of misconduct, the next scandal, the next betrayal.
The early Church celebrated Easter with a trembling joy, mindful of both the cross and the empty tomb. St. John Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily invited all—”If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant feast… If any have tarried until the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid on account of his delay.” There was room for the prodigal, the penitent, and the broken. But can today’s Church make room for such honesty? Or has it become a citadel too fortified to admit its need for resurrection?
Easter is not merely a commemoration; it is a confrontation—with death, with injustice, with the illusion that power redeems. The Church must choose again whether it will be an empire or an upper room, whether it will cling to the tomb or run to the garden.
The Gospel of Peter, an early non-canonical account, imagines the resurrection as an event so radiant that even the cross speaks. A voice from heaven asks, “Hast thou preached unto them that sleep?” and the cross responds, “Yea.” Would that the Church today could echo such confidence—that it has truly preached to the sleeping, the silenced, the slaughtered.
Instead, we find ourselves pleading for the Church to wake itself. To cease using tragedy as theatre. To turn its gold into justice. To rise not only liturgically, but morally.
This Easter, let the Church contemplate not only the vacant tomb, but its own vacuity. Let it ponder whether it has become the very sepulchre Christ broke open—beautiful on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones within.
As T.S. Eliot wrote in The Hollow Men, “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” But resurrection promises otherwise. It promises not whimpers, but witnesses. The Church must decide if it will be one.
He is risen. But is His body?
