Rama P. Coomaraswamy

Rama Ponnambalam Coomaraswamy, (1929–2006), was a cardiac surgeon, then a psychiatrist and later a Traditionalist Catholic priest and exorcist, besides being a prolific writer on Traditionalist Catholicism and Perennialist topics.

Ancestry
Rama Coomaraswamy, of mixed Tamil, English and Jewish ancestry, was the son of the famous Indologist Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, and of his fourth wife Luisa Runstein, an Argentine-born woman of Jewish descent. He is the grandson of the Tamil-Ceylonese lawyer and social pioneer Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. As such, Rama Coomaraswamy hailed from notable Tamil and English families.

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

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 30 years as a thoracic and 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 heart problems, 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.

Conversion
Sometime after his father's death, he met an American Catholic woman, and was married to her in Bombay 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 Church leaders began to implement institutional change in the name of (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 Traditionalist Catholic 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 the New Mass, thus beginning a series of polemics between himself and Mother Teresa.

Within the Traditionalist Catholic 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 began an ideological shift towards Sedevacantism. 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 &mdash; 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 then united in a loose manner as the Instauratio Catholica. Over time, even this loose confederation frayed and ceased to exist.

As a Priest
Although a married man, he was ordained a priest by 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 Traditionalist Catholic Bishop 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.

Coomaraswamy was involved with the demonologist Dave Considine and would determine the validity of claims by people who reported being spiritually oppressed by demons. If the person's claims were found to be credible he or another priest would perform the Latin rite of Exorcism.

Catholic Traditionalism and Perennialism
Coomaraswamy was involved with not only the Traditionalist Catholic  movement, but also with Perennialism (also called "Traditionalism") whose main exponents were René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy (Rama's 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.

William Stoddart and Mateus Soares de Azevedo discuss Coomaraswamy's double involvement in an article for the Canadian journal Sacred Web (No. 18, 2007). The topic was also covered by a blogger, Carrie Tomko, specializing in investigation of the occult infiltration of Catholicism, and picked up by, among others, J. Christopher Pryor, a Lefebvrist who operates the Perennialism 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.

Motives for conversion
J. Christopher Pryor reports on the cause and motives of Coomaraswamy's conversion 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.''"

Part of an interview with Joaquin Albaicin 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 thread, 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.

Pryor also reproduces what he claims is a letter in reply from Coomaraswamy, responding to these claims:

...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 a 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 one can be saved by 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.

Illness and death
Rama Coomaraswamy died on July 19, 2006 due to complications relating to bone cancer. He left four children and nine grandchildren.