Jolly Joseph is a member of the Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Church who was recently arrested for killing her husband and five other members of his family over a period of 14 years.

The disclosure of the killings through cyanide poisoning has shocked the Kerala society with many struggling to understand what prompted a village housewife to become so diabolic.

Jolly whole-heartedly participated in the activities, programs, festivals, and celebrations in her parish. There are reports that Jolly was a catechism teacher, a member of the women’s group in the Church, and a leader of the ward prayer group.

She was regular in spiritual retreats, reciting the rosaries, and listening to sermons and homilies given by well-known preachers. Jolly never missed her Sunday Eucharistic celebrations. She projected the persona of an ideal Catholic, who was much admired and envied by her neighbours and fellow Catholics.

Then, why did Jolly kill her husband, his parents and three others in the family? Was there something seriously wrong with her in internalizing the religious doctrines? The teachings of scores of priests, preachers, and bishops fell futile. Was there something really wrong with the role model of the male-dominated hierarchy of the Syro-Malabar Church?

The Church in most countries in Europe has vanished. Even in Italy, Spain, Portugal, its influence is waning fast. The existential philosophy of Camus, Sartre, Kafka, Nietzsche, and the post-modern literature in Spanish, French, German and English, the latest findings of the Quantum Physics, scientific and technological developments have pushed the Church in the margins of history.

In Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Nether-lands, France, Belgium, Austria, Canada, Australia and New Zealand people don’t talk about religion anymore, or en masse become atheists. The Catholic antecedents of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco and the support given to these fascists by the Catholic Church have become unacceptable.

Rape of a nun by a bishop, impregnating an adolescent by a vicar, sex scandals involving married women, money laundering among the higher echelons, unethical dealings, bribes, illegal money transactions for teaching jobs, and admissions to students in educational institutions, low salary paid to nurses and other employees in hospitals have severely dented the image of the Syro-Malabar Church.

Some decades ago, in almost all parishes, the educational institutions and landed properties belonged to the members of the local parish, as they who raised the institutions with their own effort and money.

But on a Sunday morning, all the assets including institutions of the parish, carefully, intelligently and wickedly transferred to in the name of the bishop and a group around him, and thus, he became the legal owner.

Even in the parish cemetery, nowadays, the burial of a believer costs not in thousands, but in lakhs. Bishops are eager to participate in a wedding or a funeral if bundles of currency were paid. The Church has turned into a marketplace of money exchangers in a big way.

A large number of priests are upright individuals, and among them, many are highly talented visionaries. There are philosophers, theologians, social activists, social workers, doctors, engineers, litterateurs, authors, poets, musicians, painters, and scientists among the clergy.

Kerala adores the cherished memories of Arnos Padiri, Benjamin Bailey, Hermann Gundert, St Kuriakose Elias Chavara, and Father Joseph Vadaken.

In recent days, the church has almost lost its glory, except the right name of Pope Francis, because the Church has forgotten the teaching of Jesus.

Varghese Vayalamannil Devasia