By Franklin Caesar Thomas
New Delhi: I have read in Matters India an article written by A. Pushparajan on August 5 under the headline, “Caste discrimination in Indian Church: Should Pope intervene?”
This article is trying to explain some points raised by Pushparajan.
According to the Vatican website (Week of Prayer 2013, Resources for the week of prayer for Christian unity), 16 million Christians belonging to all denominations in India come from the Scheduled Castes communities, and among them Catholics account for 10 million.
The Pope had asked the Indian Catholic Church authorities and lay people to follow the canon law and get rid of the caste discrimination, racism or apartheid.
When the upper caste clergy and others who control the Catholic Church in India do not follow the Pope’s order or the canon law to eradicate the obnoxious caste discrimination, the lay people have the mandatory right (under Section 224 to 231 of the canon law) to complain to the Pope. Also, India’s ordinary citizens have legal right to approach the Supreme Court when their fundamental rights are infringed.
Canon law section 208 says: “From their rebirth in Christ, there exists among all the Christian faithful a true equality regarding dignity and action by which they all cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ according to each one’s own condition and function.”
Another canon (222-2) says, “They are also obliged to promote social justice and mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor from their own resources.”
Canon 223 (1) asserts: “In exercising their rights, the Christian faithful, both as individuals and gathered together in associations, must take into account the common good of the Church, the rights of others, and their own duties toward others.” (Courtesy: Vatican website).
Pope Francis has said that inequality is the root of social evil.
Earlier on November 17, 2003, Saint Pope John Paul II told the bishops from India during the “Ad Limina” visit: “All the times, you must continue to make certain that special attention is given to those belonging to the lower castes, especially the Dalits. They should never be segregated from other members of society. Any semblance of a caste-based prejudice in relations between Christians is a countersign to authentic human solidarity, a threat to genuine spirituality, and a serious hindrance to the Church’s mission of evangelization. Therefore, customs or traditions that perpetuate or reinforce caste division should be sensitively reformed so that they may become an expression of the solidarity of the whole Christian community.”
Pope Benedict XVI told the Tamil Nadu bishop during their “Ad Limina” visit on June 18, 2011: “The witness of the reciprocal love and service between you and your priests – without regard for caste or ethnicity but focussed upon the love of God, the spread of the Gospel and the sanctification of the Church – is earnestly desired by the people you serve.”
The caste discrimination and the racism should be condemned and removed by the papal authority since they are against the Church’s social teaching. The racism or caste discrimination is illegal, but continues as an invisible customary practice in the universal Church and in its Indian unit. Caste discrimination can only be withdrawn with the Pope’s intervention.
Pope Francis on his @Pontifex twitter account on March 21 said: “Racism is a virus that quickly mutates and, instead of disappearing, goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting. Instances of racism continue to shame us, for they show that our supposed social progress is not as real or definitive as we think.”
The office of the Pope has accepted hundreds of African and Afro-American (Non-White people) candidates in the preliminary selection for bishops and many of them finally became bishops, archbishops, Vatican diplomats. One of them Cardinal Peter K A Turkson became the prefect of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
When African-American Catholic priests could become bishops, archbishops and cardinals why can’t morally upright, theologically educated, wise and committed Dalit priests become bishops in India? But qualified Dalit candidates are not recommended to the nuncio’s office in New Delhi because of the caste discriminatory prejudice.
This is against the canon law section 377 (2) that says preliminary names of candidates for bishopric should be sent to the Apostolic See without prejudice to the right of each bishop individually to help it appoint worthy and suitable person for the episcopal function.
Does the caste discrimination is only a sociological virus that we, Indian Christians, have inherited from the ancient stratification of society? Can the Church and the lay people have the onus to destroy caste discrimination ourselves? Is it any crime or mistake to ask the Pope to stop the obnoxious caste discrimination?
Although the caste discrimination is partly sociological and hereditary, the Indian Church has not taken sufficient or solid steps to eradicate the untouchability practice among its members.
The Bull of Pope Gregory XV, “Bulla Romanae Sedis Antistitis”, dated January 31, 1623, acceded to the requests of the missionaries to accommodate themselves to certain caste practices and usages of the new converts. Why not the then or the present Pope annul the papal bull which promotes untouchability practice.
It is also alleged that sub groups among the Dalit Catholics fight among themselves, sometimes leading to murder. But such incidents are negligible. Those making this allegation forget that tussles are there between different groups of dominant upper caste Christians.
The fact that Dalits form 50 percent of the Indian Catholics was acknowledged in December 1991 by Pronuncio Archbishop George Zur while address the bishops’ biennial plenary in Pune.
He said: “Though Catholics of the lower castes and tribes form 60 per cent of Church membership they have no place in decision-making. Scheduled caste converts are treated as low caste not only by high caste Hindus but by high caste Christians too. In rural areas they cannot own or rent houses, however, well-placed they may be. Separate places are marked out for them in the parish churches and burial grounds. Inter-caste marriages are frowned upon and caste tags are still appended to the Christian names of high caste people. Casteism is rampant among the clergy and the religious. Though Dalit Christians make 65 percent of the 10 million Christians in the South, less than 4 percent of the parishes are entrusted to Dalit priests. There are no Dalits among 13 Catholic bishops of Tamil Nadu or among the Vicars-general and rectors of seminaries and directors of social assistance centres.”
The situation of the Dalit Catholics have not changed much even after 30 years. Only one of the 18 Catholic bishops in Tamil Nadu is a Dalit. During the past 15 years, 13 high caste priests were identified as bishop candidates in the state that has approximately 500 qualified Dalit Catholic priests.
In the same way, only 11 of the 200 Catholic bishops in India have Dalit background. The country has approximately 3,000 qualified Dalit Catholic priests.
Some of them would have become successful bishops smelling the sheep if the Church authorities had not followed caste discriminatory and untouchability in overt and covert manner.
Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, had stressed the necessity of bringing more bishops from the Dalit community during his pastoral to India, February 9-16, 2013.
He told the bishops: “A missionary-minded bishop pays pastoral attention to all the categories of people present in his diocese, without regard for caste or ethnicity but focused upon the love of God and the spread of the Gospel. No ethnic group, low-caste group, or minority group, must feel side-lined, marginalized or left out from the initiatives or pastoral works in your Diocese – I am thinking in admission to the Seminaries, in promoting to important parishes and curial duties, and episcopal candidates.”