By Jose Kavi
New Delhi, May 19, 2022: Indian Catholics, both lay people and religious, have welcomed Pope Francis ushering in equality and fraternity in religious congregations that have priests and brothers as members.
“It is not a small technical or legal change but a profound shift with enormous theological and spiritual implications,” Delhi-based Jesuit moral theologian Father Stanislaus Alla told Matters India May 19, a day after the Pope promulgated a rescript that offers dispensation from a Church law that stipulates that only priests could head such religious congregations.
The Pope’s move, the Jesuit theologian adds, “distinguishes the power of ordination and the ability to lead and govern and recognizes them as different spiritual gifts. Put simply, it overcomes discrimination in religious life and serves as a great equalizer,” explains the priest who teaches in Delhi’s Vidyajyoti College of Theology.
For Capuchin Father Suresh Mathew, the rescript is “a much awaited reform” and “a sign of equality and true fraternity” that his congregation has been requesting the Vatican for long.
Father Mathew’s congregation has both priests and brothers and the new change gives lay brothers “equal responsibility in religious congregations. It will also put an end to clerical domination. Fraternity now will go beyond words to action. Synodality speaks of walking together. Until now, brothers have been left behind.”
Chhotebhai, convener of Indian Christian Forum, a laity group, sees “a natural progression that non-clerics (Brothers) be accepted as major superiors of men’s religious orders.”
The lay leader recalls the Montfort Brothers getting permission from the Vatican in 1990s to ordain some of their members as priests to minister to their community. In another development, the Conference of Religious India elected Christian Brother Philip Pinto as its president, a post until reserved for priests. “Now an Apostolic Carmel sister is the CRI President,” he points out.
Salesian Brother P A Jose welcomes the papal gesture as “an overdue change.” The historic decision “will help us Salesians live and work together really as brothers sharing Salesian life as equals,” he told Matters India.
Presentation Sister Dorothy Fernandes too finds “a real welcome change” in the canon law. “By the very fact of baptism, we all share in the priesthood of Jesus. This change is a way forward to become inclusive and breaking the bonds of division,” says the national secretary of the Forum of Religious for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group for Catholic religious.
Sister Fernandes also called for the need to revisit other canons that enslave and work towards renewing the face and image of the Church. “My other concern is that this first move towards equality among the same gender also needs rectification in the other gender too,” she added.
According to Father Stanislaus, the change states that to be a leader in the Church one need not have the power of ordination.
He further said: “A good leader (of the faithful or of religious community -as a superior or a provincial or a general) need not be an ordained person. Priests are called uniquely and serve differently and priesthood need not be clubbed with authority. The faithful look forward to be served by good and holy and committed priests. In many ways, clericalism exposed the nexus between power and priesthood and this change will try to counter it, in a small measure.”
The change, if seen from the view of human dignity, rights and privileges, also corrects a distorted notion that has been prevalent for centuries that compared to priests brothers are second class citizens in the religious life, he says.
The Jesuit finds the change going with the overarching Synodal theme that places all of the Catholics on the same platform, based on the baptism, the great equalizer.
He points out that the director of Vatican Observatory is Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, under whose leadership many others including some priests work.
Father Stanislaus says the change could trigger vocations to Brotherhood. “Young men may join religious life with the assurance that they would not be discriminated but provided opportunities to blossom,” he added.
The Jesuits hopes the Indian religious leaders would not set aside the change with “lame excuses” such as our ‘Indian culture is different,’ ‘our people are not ready for this.’
“The real challenge is, are priests ready to work under a non-ordained person, be in religious life or in a diocese or under a lay person in a school or a college? A conversation on this is crucial and, the Indian Church, especially its clergy, will have to engage it,” the Jesuit priest added.