Kerala church rape case: Let Church adopt Vishakha guidelines

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Sr Jesme, who quit her convent life of 33 years, says the Supreme Court's Vishakha guidelines on harassment at workplace should be implemented within the Church to protect nuns who suffer under a matriarchal superior, often a puppet at the hands of the powerful clerical hierarchy.

The Vishakha Guidelines were a set of procedural guidelines for use in cases of sexual harassment laid down by the Supreme Court in 1997. They were superseded in 2013 by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. Sr Jesme said the mother-general of the Missionaries of Jesus should have alerted the police as soon she learnt of the allegation that Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal had "raped" the mother-superior of the MJ convent at Kuravilangad in Kottayam.

However, given the system in the convent, reporting to the police is easier said than done; the mother-superior or the mother-general would dare not expose and get exposed by annoying the officers of the Church. Nuns are indoctrinated to resolve issues within the cloister than approach the "gentile" court. "An aspirant, who joins a convent and takes the vows, is reborn into a new order. She integrates into another world, which I would now call the 'underworld'. That world is a law unto itself", said Sr Jesme, the author of Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun.

The Church always stands by the aggressor rather than the victim/survivor. There are institutional mechanisms within congregations to redress complaints, but they are mere technicalities because congregational heads are puppets; even very spiritually inclined superiors prefer to hush up sandals than court infamy for their congregation. The Congregation of the Mother of Carmelites (CMC) to which Sr Jesme belonged has a council elected every three years. But even this body is powerless.

"Symbols of male chauvinism and patriarchy are the worst within the convent. A veil of secrecy shrouds the convent unlike the outside world that discusses even a minor indiscretion, let alone rape," says Sr Jesme, who retired as the principal at St Mary's College, Thrissur. Perhaps ending the practice of compulsory celibacy might help reduce sexual crimes. The Church should give that freedom to the religious. Even then there would be at least one per cent of the religious, who prefer the path of mysticism.

Celibacy ultimately is not the issue. If allegations against priests of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church are true, it shows rapes have to do more with power and lucre than sex. "When the religious person is sapped of spirituality and is engrossed in temporal matters, the rot sets in. "The Constitution should be amended to make religion a private affair. That way the faithful would be left to pursue spirituality on their own than hanker after Church officials, investing them with the power to rule over the rest," said Sr Jesme.