Re-imagining the Church in India

In this 75th anniversary year of India’s Independence, a number of initiatives have been taken to make the celebration authentic. One of these was the online series of discussions by various public figures entitled, “Re-imagining India”.     

It’s this which provided the inspiration for this article.                  

So briefly, let’s re-imagine the Church in India: what are we, and where would we like to go? Isn’t this is what Pope Francis envisaged for the universal Church in his call for “synodality”?

When we think of the Church in India, the first thing which comes to mind is what a diverse lot we are — how varied and pluriform, in looks and skin colour, in language and culture, in socio-economic background and faith experience.

We are Catholic and Protestant, Orthodox and Pentecostal. In some cases, we are ruled by a domineering and self-serving clergy; but more and more, also by a strident, self-assertive and fractious laity.

In this country, we are a small community that punches far above its weight. The quality of our education encourages every Indian who can to get into a “convent school”; or into a “mission hospital”, where “Sister” has now become everyman’s name for a nurse.

At this moment in our history, however, we are a persecuted minority. This is largely because the political party in power has spread the canard that all that Christians are interested in is conversions “by force or fraud”.  Worse, our bishops have been too timid and disorganized to rebut this charge.

Other religious groups, like Muslims, are persecuted too; and so are Dalits and adivasis (aboriginals), and sadly too, so are women in almost every sphere. In fact, the government persecutes every group that does not conform to its mendacious ideology, using its probe agencies, police and various laws. Crimes such as sedition and terrorism are easily slapped on people to send to indefinitely to jails.

We certainly need a more organized approach to the body politic. But this will come only when authority in the Christian community is shared more proportionately between its hierarchy and its laity, and when the several Christian churches in India share resources in a spirit of greater ecumenism.

This, alas, does not happen overnight.

One of the healthy effects of synodality is that “one size doesn’t fit all” — in other words, the problems of the local Churches differ one from another.

The recent synod on the Amazon brought several issues of those indigenous Catholics to Rome’s uncomfortable attention. Elsewhere, in Germany for instance, the moot issues are admission to the Eucharist of divorced Catholics, the perpetual celibacy of priests and ecumenical relationships.

These are not India’s problems, though inter-faith marriage in spite of being a growing reality, meets with hostility from Hindu, Muslim and Christian alike!

The ‘viral infections’ which beset the Indian Church are generally seen as three: clericalism, gender oppression, and caste.

Can we imagine a Church without clericalism? Of course, we can, and indeed, we must. Here is where an ecumenical spirit can help Catholics, who can learn much from their Protestant brothers.

For too long have Catholics ceded to their clergy all authority and power, and as laypersons, have  been content just to “pay, pray and  obey.” The results are there for all to see — lack of financial accountability, and the pedophile crises which have virtually wrecked the churches of the West.

Lay people need to reclaim their Church. This demands considerable re-imagining: shared authority between clergy and laity for one; a new kind of priesthood, for another, in which permanent celibacy is not the only option. Other choices could be for a married priesthood, for women priests, and for a priesthood not for life but for a term.

If gender oppression is an issue in the Church in India, it is because the status of women in the country as a whole is so dismal. The recent case of a nun accusing a bishop of raping her brings this home so clearly: the religious sisters who supported one of their own were threatened, sanctioned and ostracized. Not a single bishop opened his mouth in their support. 

To re-imagine the place of women in the Indian Church one must begin to deal with all women in a spirit of justice and equality of opportunity. Feminism is a growing reality in the world, and our Church is largely out of sync with it. No longer.

Just as the Church in the west is not yet free of racism, the Church in India is not yet free of casteism — our local brand of racist discrimination, often a blend of ethnicity and skin colour. This is especially true the more the Church is indigenized, as in the South. 

To free ourselves of caste prejudice requires the economic uplift of the whole community. It also requires equality of opportunity to office in the Church, something from which Dalits have been hitherto precluded. Both are immense challenges, and make one ask:  Can we really re-imagine an Indian Church without caste?

Bernard Shaw, the playwright, put it aptly when he said, “You see things that are, and ask why?  I see things that are not, and ask, why not?” 

To re-imagine the Church in our country is not a task for the faint-hearted or the dull-minded. It calls for imagination, intelligence, courage — and an openness to the Spirit.  It is not a task for the next millennium, or of the next century.  It is our task for now, for today.

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