Valson Thampu
Events,
broadly speaking, are of two kinds. One in which individuals are put to the
test and their mettle is proved or exposed. The other, in which communities and
societies are put to the test; exonerated or exposed. In the former,
individuals lose, if issues are not understood aright. In the second, communities emerge more
bankrupt; if they fail to read the underlying messages and reform themselves
accordingly. The Sr. Lucy saga is of this kind. It is necessary, therefore,
that the Christian community understand this aright; especially given the desperate
and devious attempts being made, by those who have to suppress the truth, to
misinform the people that this is an issue of ‘discipline’. This is ironic; for
those who wield the sword of discipline against Sr. Lucy are the most
undisciplined in the sight of God.
This
will become clear, if we use a medical analogy. The Sr. Lucy episode, in
relation to the church, is like a diabetic rash that erupts on the body. The
eruption is an isolated thing in itself; but it is serious as a symptom of the
systemic ill-health the body has been harbouring. Only the foolish will insist
that in such cases we should look only at the rash, and not engage with the
underlying disease. The patient will die, if this is done. We want the patient
to live, not die. Hence the following-
The
patient in the present instance is not Sr. Lucy. It is the Christian community;
in particular the Catholic Church, that tries to hide its inner rot under
authoritarian repression. The church oligarchs must be expected to invoke canon
law and convent rules to create an illusion of being endangered. Demonizing Sr.
Lucy becomes necessary to attain this end. She is accused of ‘lifestyle’ offences;
which only means that she cannot be damned on any spiritual ground. Here is the
proof. If Sr. Lucy was indeed guilty of these alleged offences, she should have
been acted against before the Franco rape case. She committed them prior to it.
It is quite certain that no action against Sr. Lucy would have been initiated,
if she hadn’t taken a stand inconvenient to Franco Mulakkal. It is only now
that her achievements have become ‘offences’. This is too obvious to not look petty
and pathetic in the public eye. Sr. Lucy, on her part, is clear that she is not
the core issue. She is only a finger that points to a host of key and critical
issues that demand urgent attention.
What are they?
1. A major issue emerging
from this event is the need to make the spiritual vocation of nuns spiritually
authentic, rather than physically vulnerable and economically exploitative.
Consider this: how can nuns who, according to Pope Francis, are sexually
violated by those who should be their protectors, be unblemished spiritual
assets in the eyes of the church that endorses and perpetuates this atrocity?
If the piteous plight of our nuns is not a concern for the church authorities,
it is clear that they no longer see the nuns as comprising a spiritual order.
Now, here’s what all Christians must understand clearly. The moment the
spiritual authenticity of the vocation of the nuns is violated or disowned by
the church, they are degraded into slavery. This is a serious matter.
2. We need to understand the
nature of this slavery. A slave is one whose life, freedom, way of life, scope
or activities, are all determined by others. It is in relation to slaves that ‘restrictions’
become paramount, as is now clearly the case with our nuns. No one has any
business, at the same time, to raise any questions about any regulation
applicable to bishops and their sidekicks. They are, in effect, slave-drivers.
In the eyes of the church, the only thing that matters is that nuns “obey” the
rules and regulations imposed on them, without asking a question about their
fairness or spiritual validity. If this is not slavery, what is?
3. Slaves were, in ancient
times, outside the pale of law. Slave owners could ill-treat, sell, or kill
them. They had no protection or remedy. Their life did not belong to them.
Their life had no intrinsic value. Their value was determined by their owners.
This explains why the rape-victim-nun did not get justice from the church. In
the eyes of our autocratic slave-owners, it was not worth their while to pay
heed to her cries. She did not deserve justice.
4. Slaves were never entitled
to ‘equality of treatment’. What we must keep in mind is that the question of
‘hypocrisy’ does not arise in such a context. If a slave is being treated in
ways that mock Christian values, or differently from other free men, there is
nothing wrong about it in the perception of their owners or of the public. This
explains why the church authorities cannot realize that there is impropriety in
the gender-discriminative way our nuns are treated. Consider this: Sr. Lucy is
not the only nun or priest in the Catholic Church who drives or owns a car. Priests
also do. Bishops own up-end cars. But that is not perceived as improper because
men are not slaves. All of us will be shocked, on the contrary, if a bishop is
seen to be using an ordinary car; and we will faint, if he uses by public
transport!
5. The foremost issue that we
are a faith community that believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ need to
realize is that outright slavery thrives under the auspices of the church. This
will be seen clearly, if the curtains of deceptive illusions are drawn aside.
This is a scandal to the Way of Jesus. Jesus came to set the captives free. His
middlemen of our times decoy unsuspecting young women into slavery. Sr. Lucy is
protesting against this hypocrisy. She is saying, “Look, no nun is required by
her spiritual calling to be your slave. Rather, her discipleship to Jesus urges
her to break the chains of unfreedom.”
6. The plight of nuns today
is worse than that of ancient slaves. The slaves of yore could fondle hopes of
being manumitted, or set free in the future. Such hopes do not relieve the
gloom of our nuns. They are shut up in dungeons of hopelessness. Once they
enter a convent, they are presumed to suffer ‘civil death’. They become de facto
living corpses. Ancient slaves were not dead bodies; only nuns are required to
be. You can do what you please with dead bodies. It is unnatural for dead
bodies to have rights, or grievances. It is high time we interrogated this
inhuman arrangement. The idea that nuns are civilly dead bodies –and required
to live as ghosts- is laughable! If they are ghosts, why are they raped? How
can you expel a ghost from a convent? From this it is sufficiently clear that
these are convenient fictions meant to keep nuns in perpetual submission;
degraded in sexual slavery.
7. Not only that. This perverse idea flies in the
face of Jesus’ mission. Jesus came that all of us may have life in its fullness
(St. John 1:10). Those who pretend to be his followers make dead bodies of
young, living women. This is a cruel joke, not only on our hapless daughters
and sisters but also on Jesus Christ, the fountainhead of our faith.
8. If nuns are dead in a
civil sense, and are hence not entitled to legal relief, of ownership of
anything material, what about bishops? How come they can claim to be –as George
Alanchery did in the High Court- exclusive owners of the material assets of the
church? Ghostsmay over-hang, but never ‘own’, property or fixed assets. From
this alone we should know the extent of double-standards and superstition
prevalent in our midst.
9. The plight of nuns raises
yet another serious issue. We live in a democratic society, which guarantees
freedom of choice. This is not only political but also spiritual. God gives to
everyone freedom of choice. God respects our freedom. He coerces none. But
where do our nuns stand in relation to freedom of choice? In a vast majority of
cases the decision for a young girl to enter a Convent is taken for her by her
parents. In this they are swayed by a mere supposition in our community that it
is meritorious for a family to have a nun or a priest hailing from it. The girl
to be made a nun would have no idea of what she is getting into? Or, if she
really has a spiritual vocation. This is true also of men who become priests.
Otherwise, we won’t have had a priest who raped and impregnated a sixteen-years-old
girl and –what is even more diabolic- tried to bribe her father into becoming
the scapegoat in his place. Spiritual vocation, this? But things like this do
not prick the conscience of the church big-wigs as much as the offence of a nun
in writing poems does! Like the society at large, the church too is indulgent
towards the sexual perversions of men; whereas it crushes women with hypocritical
fury. The teaching of Jesus, “Those who have not sinned may cast the first
stone”, hasn’t made any difference to the church.
10.
We must realize at this eleventh hour that vast numbers of
nuns are living in conditions of slavery –as Pope Francis clearly said. If we
do, we will agree that at some point in their lives each nun should be given
the opportunity to make an informed choice to continue in her calling or not.
Perhaps this can be done five years after a young girl joins convent. The rules
of a convent should be make applicable to only those nuns who, having had the
opportunity to judge for themselves, choose to stay on.
11.
Yet another issue emerges from the plight of nuns: their
economic exploitation. Nuns are not only exploited sexually but also economically.
(In point of fact, sex and economics operate as partners. Sex is either bought
–as in prostitution- or suppressed –as in celibacy- for monetary
considerations. Sexual freedom also stands on money.) Their plight is worse
than that of daily wage workers. Such workers are entitled to wages; nuns are a
free workforce, bonded for life. What about the incomes they generate through
hard work for years and decades? Jesus stipulated that ‘a workeris entitled to
his wages’. Nuns are kept in economic deprivation, just to ensure that they
never develop independence of spirit and remain in subjection to slavery out of
sheer helplessness. The bedrock of the slavery to which nuns are yoked is
economic deprivation, not ‘obedience’ as is often misunderstood. This is conveniently
and profitably glorified as ‘sacrificial’ service. The question arises as to
why sacrificial service is good only for nuns, and not for bishops and
archbishops, who live in conspicuous opulence, being served by others?
12.
We have a duty to ensure that clear-cut provisions are put in
place to compensate adequately the work done by a nun, if and when she chooses
to exit convent. The church has a duty to rehabilitate them with dignity,
protected against destitution and vulnerability. It is cruel to cast out a nun,
after having exploited and prospered from her labours for decades, without due
compensation. Anything less than this amounts, in retrospect, to have practised
bonded labour. Let this be clearly understood. The convent keeping the incomes
of nuns for the while that they are members may be justified somewhat. But this
becomes indefensible the moment a nun is cast out, or when she chooses to leave
convent. At that point, if she is not fully compensated, she becomes, in
retrospect, a bonded labourer as per the definition of the law. The reason is
simple. The arrangement under which the previous financial discipline could
have been justified has ceased to exist. What was till then a voluntary
offering of one’s labours becomes a retro-active expropriation.
13.
Yet another issue raised starkly by this event pertains to
‘chastity’; in the case of nuns, this becomes virginity. It is nothing but
worldly shrewdness on the part of the church that chastity is equated with
celibacy. Do we really believe that married men and women cannot be chaste?
Really? What an insult! It is more than likely that ordinary men and women who
lead disciplined, God-fearing family life are more chaste compared to bishops
and priests and, because of the criminal perversity of some of them, also helpless
nuns. It is clearly the case that the sexual exploitation of nuns will not end,
so long as celibacy is imposed on priests and bishops. Marriage is not sinful!
God is the Inventor of matrimony, not Satan! Celibacy is an out and out
economic scheme; it has no spiritual merit. Rather, when it is imposed
arbitrary on priests and nuns –irrespective of their spiritual convictions and
volitions- it creates a world of perversions. Surely, it is godlier that
priests marry than that they become pedophiles and corrupt our children. Even
our boys are not safe, thanks to these ‘celibate’ saints of our times. This
flaming hypocrisy must end; the sooner, the better.
14.
It is very likely that a few individuals –say one in a
thousand- may have a vocation to be celibate. This needs to be respected. At
the same time, those in this category need to be screened for homosexuality so
that our boys are safe. This is not to justifyhomophobia, but to be responsible
in managing church life.
15.
Like in the case of nuns, bishops and priests too should be
given the choice to marry, if they feel they need to. What merit is there in
making then burn, as St. Paul says, in lifelong suppressed sexual prurience?
The church abandon its theological denigration of sex. Sex is a source of
pollution only when it is abused and turned into a site of crime and moral
corruption. Sex, in the plan of God, is sacred: it is the medium of life. It is
our perversion that makes it seem impure. The exclusion of priests and nuns from
this God-ordained privilege cannot be justified any longer. We must give up
being wiser than God.
16.
Finally, there is a crucial issue to be addressed; for it is
sure to burst into public attention soon. What should be the relationship
between canon law and the Constitution of India? Does a religious functionary
cease to be a citizen of India, or get excluded from the fundamental rights
enshrined in the Constitution? Can fundamental rights be ‘renounced’ in
perpetuity by anyone by way of meeting the requirements of any system,
religious or otherwise? To put canonically, does ‘civil death’ –which a nun is
supposed to incur- amount to ‘citizenship death’ also? As of today, a host of
indefensible things are being justified by the Church on the presupposition
that a nun is not a citizen for purposes of law. This is clearly wrong! It will
not stand in law, as time will prove. We, as a community, need to debate this
issue and evolve our own standpoint; so that we don’t have to be coerced legally
or politically in this regard.
There are other issues as well. But, the ones flagged above
should suffice to start a long-overdue discussion on the crisis we face today
and the responsibilities it highlights.
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