Among the new cultural trends that pose themselves as challenges to the Church today, Pope picks up ‘proliferation of new religious movements’ also for consideration in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. The term ‘new religious movement’ is used in broad sense to identify variety of religious, ethical, and spiritual groups and communities that have modern origins, and existing in the fringes of society’s dominant religious culture. They have only peripheral space because they attract converts who are dissatisfied with the spirituality and practices of the mainstream religions. Theosophist Society, Assembly of God and all other Fellowships are included in the broad notion of New Religious Movements.

Now, the EG says: “The Catholic faith of many peoples is nowadays being challenged by the proliferation of new religious movements some of which tend to fundamentalism while others seem to propose a spirituality without God” (# 63 a).

Further, probing into the causes of the rise of new religious movements, EG says: “This is on the one hand is a human reaction to a materialistic, consumerist and individualistic society. But it is also a means of exploiting the weaknesses of people who are living in poverty, people who are marginalized and who make ends meet amid great human suffering and are looking for immediate solutions to their needs” (# 63b).

Apart from the external factors, mentioned above, the Holy Father probes even deeper into the internal causes that may be found within the Church itself. He says: “We must recognize that if part of our baptized people lack a sense of belonging to the Church this is also due to certain structures and the occasionally unwelcoming atmosphere of some of our parishes and communities, or to a bureaucratic way of dealing with problems, be they simple or complex, in the lives of our people” (# 63c).

Strange as it may seem, Gandhi has something to say in respect of every one of these points mentioned above, although he did not use explicitly the term new religious movements.

1) Gandhi’s spirituality never meant a denial of personal God. Though he spoke of “Truth and Non-violence” as key notes of his spirituality, he clearly defined that “Truth for me is God” and his Non-violence was positively meant love to all creatures because they are all created by one God. The supreme reality of God, the unity of all life and the value of ahimsa (love) as a means of realizing God are core of his spirituality.

2) Gandhi was always voicing against the glamour of materialist and consumerist culture of the West.

3) Gandhi’s signal service to Hinduism lay in his attempt to take it out from its individual moorings. He went so far as to say that the only way to find God was to see Him in his creatures and be one with it (Nanda 10).

4) What Gandhi said of the past missionaries’ proselytizing work may be applicable to what the Pope refers to the exploiting act of the New Religion Movements. “It is travesty of religion to seek to uproot from the Harijans’ simple minds such faith as they have in their ancestral religion and to transfer their allegiance to another… (All Religions,113).

5) As against his earlier prejudice against, he developed a great respect for Jesus and particularly the Sermon on the Mount. In this vantage point of view, then, Gandhi said:“it seems to me that Christianity has yet to be lived, unless one says that where there is boundless love and no idea of retaliation whatsoever, it is Christianity that lives…But Christianity is not commonly understood in that way” (In Search III, 316-17).

6) Once an ardent admirer of Gandhi, after giving up his meat-eating habits, wrote to Gandhi whether he would be right to impose the same on his family. But Gandhi wrote to him in reply thus: “He may not impose the same on his unwilling or half-willing relations or dependents. Let him try to touch their hearts and reason by all the means of persuasion at his command, but anything more than that before the desired conversion has come about, would be compulsion and therefore unjustifiable.”

The same words if applied to parish administration, how different our communities would be! If we had not paid heed to the words of the Mahatma so far, at least now at the instance of our Holy Father’s Exhortation, we feel obliged to take to these points so that we would be in a position to face the challenge of the rise of New Religious Movements.