Conference of Religious India (CRI) - has passed a resolution demanding a change from patriarchal culture to gender justice and collaboration.
KOCHI: And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to man (Genesis 2:22)
To correct millennia of patriarchal heritage with biblical foundations, the new generation of clergymen and women are falling back on the Gospels where women are collaborators of Jesus in his mission - be it Martha and Mary who were disciples of Jesus, or Mary Magdalene who was the first witness and apostle of Resurrection.
Armed with biblical passages and progressive encyclicals, a national forum of priests and nuns - Conference of Religious India (CRI) - has passed a resolution demanding a change from patriarchal culture to gender justice and collaboration.
The six-day national assembly, which ended in Kochi on Wednesday, recommended the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) to initiate a dialogue within two years towards a policy on gender justice at all levels.
The meet, attended by 486 major superiors representing about 1,25,000 religious women and men in India and addressed by social activists like Medha Patkar, urged the Church to join social movements for ensuring gender justice.
But the theme - A collaborative Church with Gender Justice - was a look within. The collective is even working on a document on sexual abuse.
“The meet is a step in the right direction. Nuns have to be given a say in the functioning instead of considering them mere workforce. But it will take time for us to shed the cultural baggage. We all - man or woman - are raised in a patriarchal culture,” said Sr Teresa Kotturan, provincial of the Patna-based Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.
The statement calls for deconstruction of the patriarchal image of God and renewal of theological and biblical studies that promote gender justice. At a more practical level, collaboration means the presence of women in responsible positions in ministries, participation in decision-making and sharing of resources.
“There has to be sufficient number of women theologians with a powerful passion to motivate the commitment of their lives to understand the feminine experience and in that light, the texts and religious traditions they study. Women also need to create institutional space where men are traditionally predominant,” CRI president Bro.
Varghese Theckanath said. The first woman to be appointed in a senior position in the Roman Curia in modern times was Rosemarie Goldie, who was under secretary for the laity in 1967.
It took another 24 years after her retirement to see another woman, Sr Erica Rosemaria, as under secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Such token representations apart, women in positions of power in the Church are negligible in number.
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