Nuns treated like servants by priests: Cardinal

via http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4272890,prtpage-1.cms published on March 18, 2009
Author : Ananthakrishnan G
Source:www.timesofindia.com

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Early last year, a
study by the Catholic church found that 25% of the nuns in Kerala were unhappy
with life inside the four walls of a convent. More recently, a former nun
dropped a bombshell revealing in a book about sexual abuse and mental harassment
she suffered in the order. Now,there’s further confirmation of their misery and
it comes from the leader of India’s archbishops.

Cardinal Varkey
Vithayathil, who is president of Catholic Bishops Council of India, says the
nuns are humiliated by priests and they live in fear.

The cardinal’s
views have appeared in his biography, much like the nun’s own. If Sister Jesmi’s
book was called `Amen! Autobiography of a nun’, Vithayathil’s book is titled
`Straight from the heart’. The cardinal tells his biographer Paul Thelakat, the
spokesperson of Syro-Malabar Church, that the time has come to free the nuns
from the “pitiable situation” they are in.

“I would say to a great
extent our nuns are not emancipated women. They are often kept under submission
by the fear of revenge by priests. That’s how the priests get away with whatever
humiliation they heap upon them. It is a pitiable situation from which somebody
has to liberate them,” says the 82-year-old cardinal.

“A big
complaint of our nuns is that the diocesan priests are treating them like
servants, making them wash their clothes, prepare their food, wash the churches,
etc and that too without getting paid. These are all unjust ways of treating the
women religious.”

About the criticism against the clergy in the
controversial Sister Abhaya murder, the senior priest says he believed that the
Church had not tried to hide anything in the case. “The Church does not want to
protect anyone.”

Vithayathil admits that there has been erosion in
values in religious life. “I think asceticism has gone out of religious life.”
He also points to the growing gap between the clergy and laity.

Also,
in what would be music to the ears of the Sangh Parivar, the cardinal lends
legitimacy to arguments against religious conversion. “I must add that there is
some truth in their contention that certain Christian groups are going about
making mass conversions without any real conversion of heart.”

He
says the Church believes in admitting to its fold “people who have belief in the
Church” and not in mass conversion of people “who have no faith and become
Christians only nominally”. He, however, slams anti-conversion laws, which he
says, have banned even legitimate conversion.


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