Category: From The States

The decision of India’s top court to allow women of reproductive age to enter a Hindu temple in Kerala has snowballed into massive street protests and started a debate on gender inequality in other religions including Christianity and Islam.

Thousands of Hindus, mostly women, continue to protest on the streets of the southern state against allowing women aged 10-50 to enter the 12th century Sabarimala, a popular hilltop temple. The Supreme Court in its Sept. 28 ruling said “the attribute of devotion to divinity cannot be subjected to the rigidity and stereotypes of gender.” The ban was an expression of gender discrimination, it said.

Christian groups, which together form some 18% of Kerala’s 33 million people, have not taken any stand in the dispute.

Father Varghese Vallikkatt, spokesman for the regional bishops’ council, said there was no need for the church to intervene. “The Hindus protesting for their faith are enlightened enough to resolve the issue,” he told ucanews.com.

However, Hindu leaders like Rahul Easwar believe the top court’s verdict sets a precedent for the court to interfere with the faith issues of other religions such as Christianity and Islam.

“There is absolute discrimination in the church that women cannot do what men do. Women are endowed with the ability to reproduce and thus they are treated as unclean,” said Virginia Saldana, a theologian in Mumbai.

She told ucanews.com that Vatican II had “removed this idea of women as unclean, but still they are not given their due share in the church.”

There is a custom among Christian women in India to abstain from entering a church for 40 days after giving birth.

“Though I visited church after my delivery, my parents and seniors strictly asked me not to step inside the church and pollute it. I had to follow them,” said Christian activist Philomina Joseph.

In some Catholic Churches, nuns and women distribute communion but are not allowed to enter the area of the altar.

According to Holy Spirit nun Sister Lizy Thomas, based in Madhya Pradesh State, the problem rests with the mindset and perception of men, which keeps away women, including nuns, from leadership positions in the church.

“Generally, men tend to treat women as inferior and until and unless it is changed, gender equality is a mirage in the Catholic Church,” she said.

Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, a women’s leader and theologian based in Mumbai, said women in the Catholic Church have been asking for gender equality for ages.

Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur said: “The Catholic Church is all in favour of the maximum participation of women in all activities of the church except the ordination of women.”

Benny D’Souza remembers good past times at Christmas when he enjoyed a week of sumptuous meals and quality time in India’s western Pune city with a local Christian Mascarenhas family that traces its roots to Portuguese missionaries.

“We were poor and the parish organized that I have lunch and spend the evening with the Mascarenhas family, and come home for the night,” said D’Souza, 55, father of a son and daughter.

“The daily visits for a week made me feel on top of the world.”

The help came as part of the Small Christian Community (SCC) activities of the Immaculate Conception Church in Poona Diocese. Poona is the former name of Pune.

The growth of such communities across India helps narrow a rich-poor divide, and caste-based discrimination, in hundreds of village parishes, a group of Indian bishops recently explained.

For example, Archbishop Anil Joseph Couto of Delhi noted that in Poona Diocese rich and influential people mingle with others who are poor and not so well educated.

Archbishop Couto was among 41 bishops and four archbishops, who met on Sept. 17-20 for a bishops’ colloquium on Small Christian Communities. The theme was: ‘Bishops are builders of communities to re-vitalize the Church.’

The bishops met and interacted with families and various groups in several parishes of the diocese.

A Christian veterinary surgeon was arrested by the Jharkhand police on charges of forcibly converting a 13-year-old girl by offering her money. The arrest took place in Pakur on October 16, following the complaint filed by the child’s father the day before.

Speaking to AsiaNews Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), condemns “the arrest of the Christian, according to the Jharkhand Freedom of Religion Act [the anti-conversion law in force in the State, ed.]. We are suspicious of the arrest, given that recently Jharkhand is a hotbed of persecution against Christians.

The arrested person is called Dalu Soren and lives in the village of Sawanlapur. He is a cattle inspector in Chatarpur, in the Pakur district, and he also runs a school in his village. Some report that in the past he has already been accused of forced conversions against minors, and that is why he moved to the place where he resides.

Advocate Deepika Rajawat, who fought to seek justice in the Kathua rape-and- murder case, has won the Mother Teresa Memorial Award-2018 for social justice.

The Harmony Foundation hosted the 14th annual Mother Teresa Memorial Awards- 2018, at the Taj Lands End, Mumbai. At the award ceremony, people who rescued women and children from captivity along with the survivors of sexual abuse and slavery, who are now leading the fight against this social evil, were honoured.

An Indian woman has been elected to the board of the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) for a period of five years (2018-2022).

Juliet Ramamurthy was elected during the world body’s on October 15-22 general assembly at Dakar, Senegal. The last Indian on the board was 12 years ago. Ramamurthy is the only one from

India in the 27-member of the Board. Currently she is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. “I feel honoured and humbled,” Ramamurthy told Matters India after the election.

A Catholic prelate on October 2 apologized for recent scandals involving Church leaders around the world and justified some Indian nuns coming to the street for justice.

“We are in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, promoter of Satyagraha and the only condition is that our strikes should be of ahimsa and not of violence,” Arch-bishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara of Faridabad told more than 10,000 people attending a Bible convention in Thyagaraja Stadium in New Delhi.

The remarks of the prelate, a former Vatican diplomat, came in the backdrop of a sit-in by five members of the Missionaries of Jesus in Kerala to demand justice for a nun who was allegedly abused by Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar.

The nuns and their supporters led by the “Save Our Sisters” movement ended their 14-day demonstration on September 22, a day after the Kerala police arrested Bishop Mulakkal.

Archbishop Bharanikulangara recalled that it was not the first time that the Church has gone to the street for its causes.

He recalled the late Arch-bishop Joseph Kundukulam of Trichur calling for a rally to protest a controversial drama that depicted Christ in poor light. Recently several bishops joined a sit-in the national capital seeking the release of Salesian Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who was kidnapped by Islamic militants in Yemen.

He, however, admitted that the arrest of a brother priest and the nuns protest have shaken the faith many ordinary Catholics in India. These events have also affected the credibility of the Church systems and the clergy, he added.

He listed several scandals that hit the Church in the past one year such as the “land deal affair” in the archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly in Kerala and the breaking of confession seal by an Orthodox priest and subsequent abuse of a woman by several priests.

Other scandals that have caused “a great turmoil and tumult” among Catholics and others are punishment of an American cardinal, resignation of some Chilean bishops, and the recent sexual abuse report of the German bishops’ conference have, Archbishop Bharanikulangara added.

“I regret that these things happened. I publicly apologize for the scandals caused by the Church leaders to the common Catholic faithful,” he added.

The Association of Catholic Historians of India (ACHI) has chosen to deliberate on the contribution of missionaries for nation building for its forthcoming annual conference in Bangalore, next June.

“The right-wing Hindu organizations such as RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and the pro-Hindu BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) with their hidden and malicious agenda seek to destroy the contribution of Christian missionaries in India. That is exactly the problem we are facing for longer. Many a time the work of Christian missionaries is interpreted negatively. We need to put them in the right perspective,” Divine Word Father Rayappan Jesuraj, a member of the executive council of ACHI, told Matters India.

Fr Jesuraj, professor of church history at Papal Seminary-Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, is an author as well. He has decades of teaching church history in many major seminaries and institutes in India. He was also dean and principals of a few theology seminaries in the country.

“We chose the theme on the contribution of missionaries for nation building because there is a general feeling that either the missionaries did little for Indian culture and language or destroyed it entirely, which is not the fact,” he added.

The chief minister of India’s Jharkhand state, Raghubar Das, who heads the state government led by the pro-Hindu BJP, recently accused Christian missionaries of working to keep the tribal stronghold poor. Christian leaders and historians deny the charge saying he was trying to cover up his government’s lapses ahead of state elections.