Guilty of cardinal sin

Julio Ribeiro

I am a practising Catholic, by no means even remotely fanatic in my beliefs. But the teachings of Christ have always fascinated me as these had obviously moved my father, who died when I was eight. I hit upon his interest when I discovered a well-thumbed copy of Thomas a Kempis’ ‘The Imitation of Christ’ among his books.

A judge presiding over a Sessions trial has to judge if a law has been breached. He cannot sit in moral judgment.

Here is my conclusion after studying the judgment acquitting the Catholic Church’s Jalandhar bishop Franco Mulakkal in a rape case. A trial judge has to determine if the accused arraigned before his court is guilty of an offence punishable by law. He does not and cannot sit in moral judgment like most interested citizens are wont to do.

The bishop seemed to have had consensual sex with a senior nun over whom he held some ecclesiastical authority. If he had used the threat of the power he wielded over her to force her to submit, he would have been found guilty under Section 376, IPC. Since such threats had not been proved, he was rightly acquitted. His neglect of his vows of chastity, made at the time of his priestly ordination, can only fall under the head of ‘moral turpitude’, over which a Sessions Judge has no jurisdiction.

All the evidence adduced in the court of judge Gopakumar shows that the nun, who incidentally was no spring chicken, had personal ambitions to rise in her own order, and to that end had even suggested the creation of a new unit in the Missionaries of Jesus, the order to which she belonged. She had suggested that the new unit should be under the diocese of Bihar!

She was not happy with the appointment of one Sr Tincy as the Mother General of her order. Her new superior obviously did not allow her and her group of nuns the latitude in the use of the convent’s facilities that they once appeared to have enjoyed. This was a minor issue for the rest of the laity but a matter of concern for those shorn suddenly of the importance they had become accustomed to.

Evidence proves that the nun wielded considerable influence with the bishop. She used this proximity to push her suggestions on appointments and transfers of other nuns of the order. When relations soured, this influence also evaporated, as often happens in such cases. The nun then seems to have sought a lateral shift to the Syro-Malabar Catholic denomination from the Roman Catholic one. The request was made to the Cardinal Archbishop of Kochi.

There are many photographs that show the victim happily interacting with the bishop after the alleged rapes. She had even travelled on a long journey by car with him on a day after one of the alleged sexual encounters. The evidence on record does not show any unwillingness on her part nor any friction in their relations at that stage.

Sometime in January 2017, the victim conveyed to the bishop that she would not allow him to come to her convent. A nun who can convey such a stern message to a bishop is certainly not one who will submit to an atrocity of the type she alleged during the trial. She was already in a supervisory capacity when all these alleged atrocities took place. I have not come across a nun, or for that matter, a priest who has attained a supervisory level if she or he is of a submissive temperament.

When and why the cosy relations between them soured are known only to themselves. Some scanty details of a complaint by a cousin of the nun against her for illicit relations between the cousin’s husband and the nun had come up in the course of the trial as part of the accused’s defence. It did not impact on the conclusion reached by the judge because the allegation was not pursued. It strikes me as unethical that the bishop should have introduced this in the course of his defence. But here again, it is an issue of morality over which the State’s judicial bodies have no part to play.

I read the arguments of Flavia Agnes, a crusader for women’s rights, in a leading English daily yesterday. I have great regard for Flavia, who I can boast of knowing, though only casually. I respect her views, but in the matter of the State v/s Bishop Franco, I beg to differ from her conclusions. A judge presiding over a Sessions trial has to judge if a law has been breached. He cannot adjudicate on charges of moral turpitude.

These will now be scrutinised by the Ecclesiastical Courts in Rome. Instances of bishops and priests breaking their priestly vows of chastity are not uncommon. In the US and Europe, such cases are more numerous than in India, which is comparatively conservative.

Some two or three centuries after the advent of Christianity, the Church decided to enforce priestly celibacy. Before that priests were predominantly married. In other Christian denominations like the Orthodox, the Anglican and the other Protestant communions, the priests are thankfully married. The union of man and woman is in the natural order of nature. The propagation of the species is dependent on such unions.

Unfortunately, today no Pope can dare to reverse this dictum. The Catholic Church will split down the middle if it is permitted.