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| A nun prays during a silent protest in Kottayam town of Kerala. Representative image. Credit: Reuters/Dipak | |||
Abuse, Cover-Ups, Silence!Aaweful !
It is time to practice what the
brotherhood has so eloquently preached, but so abysmally failed to practice:
Visit the survivors. Support them. Speak up now.
Note:What
is given below is a report in ‘theWIRE’,
sent to us by our friend Denis Daniel,
as it deals with and corroborates the world report in the US Jesuit Review:
“Indian Nuns abused for decades by clergy” published in the CCV yesterday.
ANNUS HORRIBILIS or MIRABILIS?
It
too speaks of the “criminal conspiracy
of cover-ups of rampant sexual abuse by the Indian Clergy which made 2018 an
“Annus Horribilis”. Is there any hope of seeing 2019, an “Annus Mirabilis?”
Judging from my experience of Syromalabar Clergy for the last 80 years and
more, I don’t see any probability or even possibility!
My
wish of course, is that I should be proved wrong. But facts, experience and
reason compels me to say, that such wishful thinking would be “hoping against
hope!” True, one should try to be hopeful and optimistic. You are welcome to
take that stand! But even at the risk of being wrong, I would prefer to be
REALISTIC, rather than pessimistic or optimistic!
Facts
in Kerala and India recounted by the writers below are self explanatory! May
they persuade you to take the RIGHT stand. Long, long ago, Cardinal Newman
said: “It may be different in a higher world, but here below, to live is to
change and to be perfect, is to have changed most often!” But in what way and direction
are we changing: forward for the better or backward for the worst, towards the
dark ages?
Wait to judge?
Perhaps
we should wait, to make the final judgment till the long announced February
synod of heads of all Catholic bishops is over? But even to this day they have not announced their detailed
agenda for study and discussion. We know only vaguely it is going to be about
Sex abuse. But what can male Oldies (bishops) alone with out lay men, women and
youth, come to any workable conclusion, except a patriarchal one?
Man
is incomplete without woman, woman incomplete without man, each without the
other is only a piece of humanity, incomplete, according to biblical concept, said
also by the Brazelian Cardinal head of world wide religious congregations of
men and women. Even otherwise, is not Church the People of God, the community
of all faithful, from pronouncements of Popes from Pius the XII?
Feb.Synod of Bishops?
So
when the World wide Catholic Church International asked, this scribe replied,
not to expect anything workable from the coming Feb. Synod. Still it is a
thrill to wait for the impossible to happen from the coming Synod, since most
of us are believers in a God or gods who work miracles. So suspend reasoning
for a couple of weeks to see how we can blunder forward to prosperity or
catastrophe, believing in miracles! jamekottoor, ccv
editor.
Please read below the Report from the WIRE.
The
Year of Our Lord, 2018 was an annus
horribilis for the Roman Catholic Church in India, particularly
Kerala. It is not that some of the men in frocks were caught with their pants
down – which can be dismissed or at least explained away as an individual
aberration. It is the cover-up, the silence of the brotherhood of the pink
frock.
Cover-ups, as even children know, are evidence of institutional
complicity rather than individual weakness: The Kerala Catholic Bishops
Conference (KCBC), Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI), Roman Catholic
Bishop Franco Mulakkal, Cardinal Mar George Alencherry and Cardinal Oswald
Gracias all played their part.
Bishop
Theodore Mascarenhas SFX, Secretary General, CBCI has a quote from Winston
Churchill in his letters: “Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing, but of
reflection.”
Where
does one start? With the sexual abuse and rape of a housewife by a group of
priests? Priests violating the confidentiality of the confessional and defiling
the sacraments of confession and marriage? The repeated sexual abuse of
a nun by a bishop, or the shower of petals that greeted the accused bishop on
his release.
Never
in living memory has the idiotai (as
the faithful are derisively referred to)
been so thoroughly exposed as idiots. Why else did Cardinal Alencherry think he
could get away with denying knowledge of the abuse? This is despite the fact
that the nuns had come to him and he had prayed over them.
Bishop
Franco Mulakkal. Credit: PTI
The
brotherhood first feigned ignorance of the issue – the infamous
Alencherry tapes put paid to that lie. They raised ‘jurisdictional’
limitations: Cardinal Alencherry is from the Syro-Malabar Church while Bishop
Mulakkal from the Latin rite. A priest offered to buy out the survivors and was
caught on tape, and is under police investigation.
Despite
the sister survivor knocking at every ecclesiastical door, there was no
response. These include personal complaints and letters to
priests, bishops and the papal nuncio (ambassador) to India.
Even the Pope himself was hand-delivered a letter at the Vatican. A letter with
1,000 signatures of the faithful, appraising him of the facts and pleading for
his intercession.
All
to no avail. The police investigation into the false case filed by Bishop
Mulakkal is what finally led to the case being filed. The sister survivor was
forced to part with copies of the letters written to the church authorities
during this investigation.
The
brotherhood used their usual tactics of
isolation, defamation, character assassination and false cases. The absolute
mind-control the clergy exercise over their flock is shocking.
For example, in 2017 a 16-year-old girl ‘confessed’ that her father got her
pregnant. In reality, it was the result of long-term sexual abuse by Father Robin
Vadakkumchery, a Roman Catholic priest. She
did it to ‘save the honour’ of the priest, which she equated with the church.
Bishop Franco Mulakkal.
Credit: PTI
The
sisterhood of the frock – nuns, Sisters Tessy
Jose, Ancy Mathew, Aneesa, Lissy Maria and Ophilia – helpfully used their
medical facilities to cover-up the role of the priest. They are now serving
jail time. It shows the depth of defilement
and hollowing out of Catholic institutions: from the church and the
confessional, to the convent, hospital and orphanage.
From
the comfort of his perch two continents away, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of
India piously writes: ‘Absent
a comprehensive and communal response, not only will we fail to bring healing
to victim survivors, but the very credibility of the Church to carry on the
mission of Christ will be in jeopardy throughout the world. The first step must
be acknowledging the truth of what has happened. For this reason, we urge each
episcopal conference president to reach out and visit with victim survivors of
clergy sex abuse in your respective countries prior to the meeting in Rome, to
learn first-hand the suffering that they have endured.’
He
writes this as part of the organising committee of the February 2019 Papal
conference on ‘Protection of minors and vulnerable adults’. Significantly, his
letter is only addressed to his ‘Dear Brothers in Christ’. Not one of his ‘dear
brothers’ has visited the sister survivor, though they streamed to visit the
much-maligned beloved Bishop Mulakkal.
Nuns
in Kerala hold a protest. Credit: Reuters
The
latest salvo has been the January 1 order from the Ernakulam-Angamaly
Archdiocese Apostolic Administrator, Mar Jacob Manathodath, to Father Augustine
Vattoly. Father Vattoly, as the convenor of Save Our Sisters
(SOS) movement, was a prominent face of the
protests seeking action against Bishop Mulakkal.
The
order directs him to step down as the convenor of SOS. It does not stop there.
It orders him not to support associations like the Archdiocesan Movement for
Transparency and “respect those in authority and abide by its guidance and
directions.”
Five-hundred
years after the Reformation began in 1517,
the Vicar of Christ realises that the Holy Roman Catholic Church is ripe for
another reformation. Married clergy is not the solution when the problem is impunity.
The desperate synods, conferences and consultations called by the Pontifex
Maximus seem increasingly like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
A
tone-deaf dance of dinosaurs – out of sync with the times, out of sync with
their flock and out of sync with the values the humble carpenter’s son lived
and died for.
“Across
India, the nuns talk of priests who pushed into their bedrooms […] of hands
pressed against them by men they were raised to believe were representatives of
Jesus Christ. […] The Vatican has long been aware of nuns sexually abused by
priests and bishops […] but it has done very little to stop it”
It is clear that
when shepherds feign sleep, the flock must awake; when shepherds silent keep,
the sheep must speak. It is time to
practice what the brotherhood has so eloquently preached,
but so abysmally failed to practice:
Visit the survivors. Support them. Speak
up now. Or be idiotai forevermore! (Edwin and Anita
Cheria are the directors of OpenSpace, a policy research and campaign support
organization).
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