Rome: Gayatri Lobo Gajiwala and her sister Nivedita were two young Indians who addressed the March 8 Voices of Faith meet in Rome on the occasion of the International Women’s Day. They shared with women representatives from all over the world their experience with the Church and their expectations from it.
Given below are the texts of their talks at the meet.
NIVEDITA LOBO GAJIWALA:
In tech, the conversation right now is focused on building diverse leadership teams. In fact we constantly get asked to present more women candidates for executive roles not because it looks pretty but because it leads to diversity of thought. How can you create a brand for the people unless you take different perspectives into account? Why would I buy a product created based on the insights of straight white men – how does that factor in my needs as a young woman?
I think the Church needs to start asking itself similar questions.
One of the reasons I’m here today is because I had a unique childhood.
I’m the child of a mixed marriage. My mother is a Catholic and father a Hindu. I was raised in an interfaith family. I learnt how to say the rosary along with Sanskrit Shlokas. I read the Bible and Indian mythology. I studied in a convent school and a Jesuit university.
The Church definitely shaped me and I learnt a lot of my values from there – to be kind and just and charitable, to find purpose in everything you do, and my favorite – to sing, to celebrate.
Growing up we got a lot of curious looks from other parishioners for being active in the community even though we were not baptized. “Who are those strange exotic creatures?” they probably wondered. I don’t blame them. I felt like a trespasser – in the church and in temples – like my parents were the only reason I was allowed in either place. My “get out of jail free card.” Alone I didn’t belong there. It makes me think of this poem –
“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here
Never enough for both”
Being exposed to different religions at an early age and being gifted with a strong feminist mother meant I had a lot of questions. “Why are there no Catholic goddesses?” “Why don’t I get to say Mass?” “I went to church, why didn’t I get the host?” “Why are all the apostles men?”
A lot of my catechism classes involved throwing questions at nuns who gave me the old “Let’s talk about this after class” slip. They weren’t ready to deal with this new train of thought and that really impacted my interaction with the church at the time. I was lucky to have a fantastic principal, also a nun, who took it upon herself to teach religion and together we discussed the Church’s view on sex, abortion, love, our relationship with God. Like the Pope says – “Faith is an adventure” and I think all the experiences you have either recharge your faith or diminish it.
I do feel however, that there was a gendered influence on the way we were raised in school – to be nurturing and empathetic and accommodating – so we could be good wives and mothers, and develop what today the Church calls the “feminine genius.” My brother on the other hand was raised to be strong, demanding, fierce, sure of his place in the world, in the Jesuit school across the street. It made me wonder – Why was being a “good” person given certain gender specific attributes? And who decided that only men could be in charge?
What does it mean to be Catholic?
My mom says she often gets asked if we’re baptized – even after 30 years of marriage. She hates the question because it’s used as a kind of litmus test for whether she’s been a “good” catholic mother. According to her the real test will be if we are good human beings. She’s always said to us “when you die no one is going to ask you if you are baptized. But according to Jesus you are going to be asked if you fed the hungry and gave the thirsty to drink and cared for the sick and those in prison.” I see this as my “catholic” identity – the priority to change people’s lives, especially those desperately seeking acceptance.
As a child my Catholic identity was linked with belonging to the catholic community. But the church as an institution is ancient and slow moving. Millennials on the other hand think fast and act fast. They are forming their own communities in the virtual world and the real world, and they are reinventing the values – diversity, inclusion, free speech, agency, intersectionality. To see none of these values highlighted in the church makes us feel like we don’t belong there. And so we prefer to find our own way to God.
My relationship with God is more personal and spiritual, I like to think of God as my friend – not this punishing all powerful entity. And sometimes God is male and sometimes God is female depending on what I’d like to talk to Her about. I connect with God most when I’m engaged in an act of service – I volunteer to teach high school students about sexual health and I practise yoga everyday – that is my prayer time.
Of the 3 of us I’m the one who is not baptised. The truth is I didn’t make a conscious decision to disaffiliate myself from the church. The older I got the less I saw myself in the rules and rituals. I saw myself in my mother and other strong women I encountered but not in the “ordained leaders”. The Church felt very removed from the reality I was chasing as a young woman – autonomy, agency, empowerment. I didn’t want my conversations with God to be censored by a group of men who didn’t really want to listen to me and who are so out of touch with the reality of my experience as a young woman today. And yet these men control my access to God.
My mother tells me that even the gospels we use and the passages we get to hear on Sundays were chosen by the men, so stories about women in our past get filtered out even today. The Bible has different interpretations and obviously the people in power are going to interpret it for their convenience. Just look at the way women have been banned from ordination. I know it’s a taboo subject in the Church, but I look at this exclusion and wonder: Am I not created in the image and likeness of God? What if God called me to be a priest? Is the Church saying God cannot make such a call? Personally, I think that defies all logic.
Is the Church relevant today?
I think as young people we need something to believe in now more than ever. Politicians are failing us, love is digital, loneliness is universal, terrorism is a school event, and there is a large scale refugee crisis – who are we supposed to turn to, where do we put our faith? I think what we really need is a community which will offer us reassurance and acceptance. Which will say “I see you and I see that you are alone, or hurting, or angry with the cards life has given you and I will help you get off your couch, pick up those cards and step forward with me by your side.”
Instead, often we’re faced with judgment about our choices. Celibate men who never experience period pains, pregnancy, domestic violence, sexual abuse on the streets and in workplaces, or the stress of juggling a job, home and family, are calling the shots on marriage, family planning, domestic violence, sexual abuse, parenting, whom we fall in love and what we choose to do with our bodies. Sadly there is no place for women’s voices. These decisions are made at synods where the non-ordained, which means all women, cannot vote. Well, young women don’t want to be a part of this.
Pope Francis is making attempts to catch up with us, for example, he washed the feet of women and he’s taken an uncompromising stand on the refugee crisis. But there are still voices of dissent even amongst his fellow bishops. I would love to see (to quote Elvis) “a little less conversation a little more action”
Steps the Church needs to take
So, where do I see the future of the church? I think the church needs to regroup and figure out its values and priorities. Unless it is willing to allow a shift in its power dynamics and include women in leadership it is going to lose relevance for young women. The priority should be putting those that are disadvantaged at the center and implementing what Pope Francis advocates for migrants: Build bridges not barriers.
Create spaces for the voices of young people to be heard and listen to them with open minds. Get into their skins and experience their world. Learn from them and respect their agency to change the world. We may not be attending mass but we are out there transforming the world. Like the #MeToo movement to create awareness of the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment that went viral. We are moving ahead at a tremendous speed in a virtual world. They cannot be stopped, but they do need your steadying hand. Be honest and transparent and non-judgmental. Forget about the rules, help them to live the gospel message of love, justice and peace.
GAYATRI LOBO GAJIWALA
I would definitely love to see that in the Church too. We need female leadership, because we need female role models in leadership positions. Unfortunately the ones that did exist in the early Church like Mary Magdalene, Phoebe and Priscilla, are downplayed. The exception is Mary, the Mother of God who is either made out to be such an exotic woman that it is difficult to identify with her, or manipulated to further patriarchal agendas that glorify motherhood and confine women to passive spaces.
Another thing my job made me realize is the importance of identifying stakeholders. As a teacher, my key stakeholders are my students and everything I do positions their benefit at the forefront. I’ve been puzzling over whom the Church identifies as its primary stakeholders. Is it the flock or the shepherd or the institution?
Like Nivi, I was raised Hindu-Catholic, but for me there was always this feeling of being an outsider in whatever group I found myself, whether it was the Church or my convent school where I was never “Catholic enough,” or whether it was my Hindu family functions, where I was too “westernized and Catholic” to fit in. I eventually went to boarding school in an Ashram to finish high school and even there among children of hippy parents, and teachers who sought to find their own spiritual path, I was the outlier.
My mother and sister both speak of the wonderful sense of community that the Church has given them. But with my fractured sense of self identity, I don’t know if I experienced this sense of community in the same way. I found it suspect, because it was exclusionary, and while I suppose it gave a great sense of stability and community to those who were welcome, I wondered what it was about me that made me feel inadequate. Growing up, I had heard so many homilies on God’s unconditional love, but my Catholic card seemed to come with so many strings attached.
I think ultimately it was a battle between my sense of self – my own moral compass and compromising it in exchange for a “purer” Catholic identity, and I wasn’t ready to do that.
Having always been on the outside looking in, I could not in good conscience endorse a system that makes outsiders of people for their gender, sexuality, and life choices. How do you reconcile that with the teachings of Jesus, who hung out with “tax collectors and sinners,” basically pious society’s outcasts?
For the longest time, I struggled to understand why women like my mother didn’t just break away from the Catholic Church and just go find their own instead of fighting so tirelessly for change from within. Especially when it seemed like a losing battle. When I asked my mum she said, “Well, it’s my Church, too. Why should I give it up? Why should I let male clerics hijack it?” And I think I get that. I understand now why breaking away is in a way almost defeatist.
What does it mean to be Catholic?
I am the “success” story who got baptized when I turned 21. Why? Simple. I wanted to experience Mass in its entirety. After years of Sunday school, and confirmation class, and catechism classes in school, let’s just say i found it frustrating that I wasn’t considered Catholic enough to receive the host. And I think there was also this hope that finally, finally, I would feel a sense of belonging. But that didn’t happen.
The other thing was, I never saw it as an either/or transaction. I didn’t see myself losing my Hindu identity in exchange for my Catholic one. I’m baptized, yes, but I still identify as Hindu-Catholic. There is a duality, almost a multiplicity to my spiritual identity that rather than fracturing me, now makes me feel whole; complete.
And really when you think about the fact that Jesus was a Jew, and many religions have incorporated the old Hebrew Testament as part of their religions scriptures, I don’t see why it is so hard to see how this duality can co-exist. Indian culture teaches us to be accepting of multiple belief systems; I think this whole either/or thing is a very Western concept, although the Church is good at creating hybrid, culture-specific ways to worship when it chooses to.
When I was teaching in this little village in Gujarat, the nuns had prayer services in which the students sang bhajans in Gujarati, and had tribal depictions of Mary and Jesus and the Stations of the Cross on their walls. When you consider that Easter and Christmas are co-opted from Pagan festivals like the Winter Solstice…. well, it’s clear that the Catholic Church can be inclusionary, whatever its agenda. Surely it should be able to see that to be inclusive and accepting now, more than ever is the only way to maintain its relevance?
At a personal level for me the question, unlike with Nive, is: I’m baptized but am I Catholic enough?
Look, you can have a set of rules and follow them all and still, in my opinion, not be a good person. I think being a person with integrity requires a lot more than blind obeisance to a list of rules. Every single decision you make in your life needs to be weighed, measured and made in context of the situation at hand. With compassion, with an acute understanding of the specific situation, and above all, with the aim to do the best you can for the people around you, not just yourself. And to do this you need to build your critical thinking skills. How else can you assess and evaluate every situation with the differentiation it deserves?
In 2016, Pope Francis wrote that the job of the Church is not to exclude but to welcome; the job of priests is not to render judgment, but to listen and understand the context of people’s lives and decisions. I agree wholeheartedly. I just want to see evidence of this. But I don’t see the Church encouraging critical thought at all. And that’s sad, because I think to really embody the teachings of Jesus, you need to be able to approach life, not with a black and white rulebook, but with a well-developed ethical and moral code.
Is the Church relevant today?
The church could be relevant, but at the moment, no, I don’t think it is.
If you alienate the people who need you the most, in favor of not offending existing hierarchies, I think at some point, people who need unconditional love in a time of crisis will disassociate from a system that only fuels their self-hate. Millenials are rootless and searching for some sort of foothold in a world that they are actively trying to change for the better.
More importantly, the Church, which is supposed to be a place of sanctuary does not make me feel safe. It’s sad but true that women suffering abuse prefer to go to the police rather than bishops to seek justice.
And what about the violence LGBTQI individuals face in homes and communities? The church hasn’t even started looking there. On the contrary it excludes them too. Frankly, I am so tired of this constant talk of sin, the double standards – turning a blind eye to abuse within the church but taking a hard line against relationships between two consenting adults, because of their gender. Young people are suspicious and rightly so. Why should they return to a church that doesn’t even want them?
It’s really very difficult to reconcile this attitude with Jesus’ attitude. He built people up with love and forgiveness and acceptance. If the church tells people that it doesn’t believe in them, how are they supposed to believe in themselves?