Understanding controversy around Tellicherry archbishop

B y M K George

Rome, March 20, 2023: The statement of the Archbishop of Tellicherry in Kerala promising a Member of Parliament for the BJP, if the price of rubber is increased to 300 rupees a kilo, is highly regrettable.

There are four reasons why the archbishop does not sound credible. One, a failure to understand deeply the Catholic Social Teachings, second, an oversimplification of the problems of the farmers, third , a failure to look at the Christian Community and the minorities in its totality avoiding exclusivism, and fourthly the clericalism that is so loud in his proclamation.

The Catholic Social Teachings give primary value to Human Dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity. They are ‘a rich treasure of wisdom about building a just society and living lives of holiness amidst the challenges of modern society.’

The primary method that CST offers is ‘to see, judge and act.’ The problem with the archbishop’s stand is that he does not see the whole reality, does not judge properly, but have acted through his declaration. When a Christian is called to see, he or she has to see it with Divine eyes, with the Kingdom of Heaven, Justice, Peace and Love, in mind.

Or to see from the eyes of the Daridranarayan, as Gandhiji’s talisman puts it. When social analysis fails, social response and action fail. What kind of social analysis has guided the archbishop? To borrow Paulo Freire’s categorisation, magical, naïve, fanatic or critical? I guess it verges on the naïve or fanatical.

In reducing the problems of the agricultural sector in Kerala/India to the concern for pricing of rubber, the archbishop has naively oversimplified the issue. The agricultural problems in the country are primarily the result of the anti-farmer policies of the successive governments, particularly of the current central government. How can one forget the infamous Farm Laws of the current regime and how they were withdrawn after protracted struggle? The promises given to the farmers were not kept and the farmers are on warpath again. How can one fail to see the larger picture of the problems of the farmers?

In a critical analysis of the Farmers’ strike, Sheik Saaliq (2021) wrote , “Many agriculture experts agree that Indian farming needs reforms, but they question the way the Modi government introduced the laws and the corporate involvement in agriculture.”

“Leaving farmers to the mercy of the markets would like a death sentence to them,” said Devinder Sharma, an agriculture expert who has spent the last two decades campaigning for income equality for Indian farmers.”

Thirdly, when one aligns with a person or group, you can look for either one’s own personal gains or the good of the whole community. How can an archbishop forget what the Christians in Delhi had gathered for? It was just a month ago in February. A crowd of 22,000 Christians, bishops and people belonging to various denominations, gathered to say aloud, that ‘India’s Church is exhausted by the surge of anti-conversion laws and accusations of illegal proselytization.

They are tired of mobs driving out Christians from their villages and the possibility that many face property destruction and personal violence. Perhaps most significantly, they’re angry at a government that passively enables these actions at best and actively foments them at worst (Surinder Kaur). Does this not matter for the archbishop of Tellicherry that there were 1,198 attacks reported on Christians and hundreds more were unreported in 2022? Does he expect the party to attack Christians in the North and protect them in the South?

If any member of the minorities thinks that their problems in India can be handled by themselves, they are living in a fool’s paradise. It is a real mystery how the Church leaders fail to understand the declared intention of the ideologues of the ruling party at the centre, which declares the three internal threats as Muslims, Christians and the Communists.

In the new India, they dream of, and work assiduously for they want to either eliminate the three or teach them to live as second-class citizens. Naiveté, I am afraid, reaches its nadir in the archbishop’s position. May be he should remember the very scripture by which he lives: ‘For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush ( Lk, 6,43-45)

Finally, the clericalism so evident in the archbishop’s statement goes against the very principles of the Catholic Church and the incessant fight of Pope Francis against clericalism. Clericalism incidentally is “an expectation, leading to abuses of power that ordained ministers are better than and should be over everyone among the People of God.” (The Association of U S Catholic Priests). ‘In other words, clerics (bishops and priests) are often trained to think they are set apart from and set above everyone else in the Church. Their word is not to be questioned. Their behaviour is not be questioned etc.’ (Fr. Peter Daly in NCR 2019)

When Pope Francis is continually asking for dialogue and collaborative action, can the archbishop dictate from the podium how the Church members should vote?

The only hope remains the ordinary Christian who is politically conscious. Or will they also be clericalized? Time will answer.

(Father M K George in charge of the South Asian region at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome. He is a former provincial the Kerala Jesuit province.)