GLOBALIZATION The new outsourcing — prayer BY MARY ANN SORRENTINO

When the customer service rep finally answers your phone call, what registers in your brain — behind his answer to your question — is the cadence of his speech pattern. You picture Peter Sellers in his Nehru suit as you hear the unmistakable accent of someone coming to your aid from Bombay. When you ask where he is speaking to you from, he says company policy prohibits him from disclosing that location.

At that moment, you know. Your Internet server, your refrigerator or dishwasher manufacturer, or (fill in the blank) has moved its technical assistance branch to save big bucks. Welcome to India; outsourcing Valhalla to the globe, where such red ink considerations as employee-benefit packages, demanding labor unions, and double-digit minimum wages can be avoided.

The trend daily picks up steam, as does the reach of the outsourcing craze. The latest fan of India’s outsourcing potential may be God himself, since dial-a-prayer has come of age.

US, as well as Canadian and European clergy, are sending Roman Catholic requests for memorial and Thanksgiving masses overseas. This means that the prayers for the repose of your mother’s soul, or the mass to celebrate your aunt and uncle’s silver jubilee, may well be offered up by a Catholic celebrant somewhere near the Ganges.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As the Reverend Paul Thelakkat, a spokesman for the synod of Bishops of the Syro-Malabar Church in Cochin told the New York Times, "The prayer is heartfelt, and every prayer is treated as the same whether it is paid for in dollars, euros, or rupees."

American clergy, we are told, are in short supply and therefore unable to handle all the so-called "spiritual bouquets" bought by American Catholics, usually for requiem masses. The church in India, which ministers to two percent of that country’s population, sees the export of special intentions as a way that an affluent church can help its struggling overseas sister.

The Reverend Vincent Kundukulam of St. Joseph Pontifical Seminary in Aluva bristles at comparisons of outsourcing prayer and similar approaches for Internet technical support. "The church is not a business enterprise, and it is sad and pathetic to connect this practice to outsourcing software work to cheaper destinations," he told the Times.

But when an average Catholic in a small parish anywhere from San Diego to West Warwick pays $20 for a memorial mass, there is some expectation of personal connection. Most have no idea that prayers are being offered up thousands of miles away by someone who not only didn’t know their loved one, but who never heard of West Warwick.

For those who believe God is everywhere, it shouldn’t matter. In the hoped-for relationship between petitioner, priest, and God, however, the outsourcing of prayers adds yet one more layer and gives the offering the look of a tariff.

Somewhere, Martin Luther, champion of direct man-to-God chat, must be smirking.