Rev Dr James Gurudas is the Director of Snehavani, a Centre that promotes understanding, tolerance and cordiality among various religions. It is located in Adichira, just ten minutes of leisurely walk from where I currently live. He is a Catholic priest belonging to the C.M.I. congregation founded by Blessed Chavara Kuriakose Elias. He has been a priest for the last 40 years, of which 25 were spent as lecturer in Theology. Recently he published Mochana Kaahalam [= call for liberation], a collection of poems. Its preface is being serialised in Snehasandesham from the January 2012 issue.
The word kaahalam reminds one of the trumpets used in biblical times as a mustering call for the Israelite clans to battle. Through his poems he is making a mustering call for the liberation of Christian minds from centuries of priestly domination and oppression.
I was deeply impressed with the profound thoughts expressed in the preface. They may be anathema to Christian fundamentalists. What amazed me most was that these thoughts come from a least expected quarter – a Catholic priest, who under normal circumstances, unquestioningly subscribes to many of the myths, irrational dogmas, and meaningless rituals of the Catholic Church and to its feudalistic set up.
He starts with a call for mochanam [=liberation] of the mind from the slavery of the ignorant and malicious of the priestly class. Jesus called the priests of his day ‘a brood of vipers’ who imposed a heavy yoke of meaningless commands and prohibitions on their people. When he wrote the poem മതമെന്ന മഞ്ചട്ടി മനസ്സില് കടിച്ചു, Gurudas had in mind the ‘vipers’ among the current crop of clergy who continue to impose more modernised versions of ‘meaningless commands and prohibitions’ on the little lambs enslaving their minds. Like the viper’s bite that poisons and destroys bodily tissues, the clerical bite poisons and destroys the soul and leaves it a rotting psychological mess.
All religions have exploited man’s fear of death and the uncertainty thereafter. Christianity and Islam have tried to outdo each other in this respect. Catholic Church has transformed the pre-Christian concept of Hades into a most grotesque and physically painful Hell. In addition, its early think-tank made up of Church fathers, including Augustine of Hippo who suffered from sex addiction, widened the concept of sin and created sins where none existed. Besides original sin which was a creation of Augustine’s fertile imagination to assuage his sex addiction, sins became mortal and venial, mortal sins deserving hell with no chance of redemption – eternal damnation, a state that an all merciful and benevolent God cannot permit. This was part of the grandiose plan at enslaving the minds of the little lambs.
Another technique of mind control was the exploitation of man’s basic instincts: self-preservation and self-propagation – food and sex. Controls on food included Lenten fasting and abstention from meat on Fridays. Contraventions were regarded as mortal, sending one directly to hell. Sexual controls were more bizarre and widespread covering all aspects of human relationships including one’s thought process – even thinking about sex was a mortal sin. When, where, how, how often should the marriage act be performed were and are still the hot topics of discussion among supposedly ‘celibate’ moral theologians even to this day. The reasoning of the church went something like this: more rules, more sins; more sins, more of the faithful rushing to priests for forgiveness. The idea of confession was introduced into this cycle: sin – go to priest - confess - escape from hell – sin. The confessional produced its own abuses like solicitation. Perverts among ‘celibate’ clergy got their orgasmic highs from discussing the theology of sex and from listening to the descriptions of sexual sins in the confessional.
Gurudas’ observation that for the Catholic Church, morality = sexual morality is spot on. Character assassination, mentally torturing someone to suicide, producing children and abandoning them, abusing aged parents, protecting paedophile priests and bishops and allowing them to continue in the ministry, charging capitation fee in Catholic institutions, underpaying or not paying nurses in Catholic hospitals – these are but venial; but using condoms to prevent the spread of aids or having some harmless sexual fantasies – these are grave and mortal deserving of eternal damnation. In fact, according to the good priest, Catholic Church has put all its morality into a small pot [കുടുക്ക ] and hangs it between everyone’s legs. Like the fox that has its eyes fixed on the chicken coup, priests too have their eyes focused on this pot.
The icing on the cake in the preface was his studied observations about the Bible and its misuse by loud-mouthed charismatic preachers and fraudulent healers. Although many scholars have referred to the gospels as ‘priestly forgeries over a century after their pretended dates’, Gurudas takes a more objective view. According to him, the Gospels were written between the second and fifth centuries. It contains a number of forgeries. A careful reading reveals contradictory statements; this should not be a cause for worry since the Bible is neither a scientific nor a historical book. It is kerygmatic. It is a compilation of talks, discussions, debates and oral traditions about Jesus and his message of love by those who came after him.
The priestly class and the charismatic preachers project the Bible as though everything in it has been directly dictated by God. The faithful are asked to believe that Mathew, Mark et al have, like modern day newspapermen, made live reports of the life, works and sayings of Jesus and these are compiled into different books that make up the Bible. Since it is the ‘Word’ of God, it must be accepted and believed in toto without questioning. They quote what suits them, leaving out what is inconvenient or that for which they have no answer.
The concept of God is impossible for the human mind to grasp. So man defines it within the finite limitations of his capacity and projects on to Him his own qualities a million times multiplied and places him up in the sky. For Gurudas, the concept of God is beyond definition.
I strongly feel that Catholics in Kerala, who have been genetically programmed into blind irrational beliefs over centuries of clerical brainwashing, should read this preface again and again with an open mind. After each reading they should quietly reflect on these ‘revelations’. When that is done, the faithful will be able to break free from the dungeon of ignorance and superstition that the priestly class have confined them to and will begin to live by the core teaching of Jesus: believe in the One God your Father and love your neighbour.
Congratulations to Father Gurudas for fearlessly speaking his mind and thanks for enlightening us.
(This article is from 2012 February issue of Sneha Sandesham)
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