Mar Thoma Syrian Church in the context of "Union of Utrecht (Old Catholic)"

The Malankara Church, also known as Malankara Syrian Church, was the unified body of Puthankur Saint Thomas Christians who claim origins from the missions of Thomas the Apostle. This community, under the leadership of Thoma I, opposed the Padroado Jesuits as well as the Propaganda Carmelites following the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653, which was taken to resist Western Catholic influences.

The Malankara Church eventually came under the influence of the Syriac Orthodox Church but later split successively, leading to the creation of churches across various denominations and traditions. The Malankara divisions and branchings have resulted in the present-day Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, Malabar Independent Syrian Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, the Saint Thomas Anglicans of the Church of South India and the St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India.

Ad orientem, meaning 'to the east' in Ecclesiastical Latin, is a phrase used to describe the eastward orientation of Christian prayer and Christian worship, comprising the preposition ad (toward) and oriens (rising, sunrise, east), participle of orior (to rise).

Ad orientem has been used to describe the eastward direction of prayer that the early Christians faced when praying, a practice that continues in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox churches, Mar Thoma Syrian Church, Assyrian Church of the East, as well as the Eastern Catholic and Eastern Lutheran churches. It was normative in the Roman Catholic Church until the 1960s, and remains so in the Tridentine Mass; some Lutheran and Anglican churches continue to offer their respective liturgies ad orientem. Although the Second Vatican Council never ordered any change from ad orientem to versus populum, a posture facing the people, in the aftermath of the council the change was nevertheless widespread and became the norm. Ad orientem was never forbidden, however: the Pauline Missal, indeed, presumes that Mass is said ad orientem in its rubrics, indicating that in the celebration of the Mass the priestly celebrant faces the altar with his back to the congregants, so that they all face in the same direction.

A vicar general (previously, archdeacon) is the principal deputy of the bishop or archbishop of a diocese or an archdiocese for the exercise of administrative authority and possesses the title of local ordinary. As vicar of the bishop, the vicar general exercises the bishop's ordinary executive power over the entire diocese and, thus, is the highest official in a diocese or other particular church after the diocesan bishop or his equivalent in canon law.

The title normally occurs only in Western Christian churches, such as the Latin Church of the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. Among the Eastern churches, the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Kerala uses this title and remains an exception. The title for the equivalent officer in the Eastern churches is syncellus and protosyncellus.