1. Kerala Church Scandal – urgent need for reform or motivated allegations? 2. After allegations of land scams, the Kerala Church is now under fire for sexual exploitation of nuns and members. 3. In Kottayam, a nun has filed a complaint alleging sexual abuse by a Catholic bishop, and another woman parishioner in Pathanamthitta alleged that she was sexually harassed by four priests.
Opinion
01/09/2018
1378
1. Kerala Church Scandal – urgent need for reform or motivated allegations?
2. After allegations of land scams, the Kerala Church is now under fire for sexual exploitation of nuns and members.
3. In Kottayam, a nun has filed a complaint alleging sexual abuse by a Catholic bishop, and another woman parishioner in Pathanamthitta alleged that she was sexually harassed by four priests.
Ref :-
ThePrint asks: Kerala Church Scandal – urgent need for reform or motivated allegations?
1.
Believers can find path to Jesus, they don’t need Church for that :-
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Churches are steeped in material pleasures and commercialisation. They have gone from being places of spiritual fulfilment to corporate institutions.
They have managed to amass a lot of wealth. This in turn has provided them the leverage to wield political power. Moreover, their congregation is like a vote-bank. So the power is two-fold, political and social. The electoral advantage that they can provide and the funds that they can raise keep them protected politically.
These advantages make the Church act with impunity. The juniors know that the seniors will protect them, and the seniors know that they hold the cards. The Church is protecting oppressors; it is protecting rapists because they are wealthy and powerful. The priests think they have the license to act in any manner they want.
We need to bring spirituality back to these institutions. Jesus and materialism cannot co-exist. The situation in Kerala is worse because people are still afraid to talk about the abuse of power by the Church. The victims are ill-treated, shamed and ostracised. Look at what happened to the woman who went for a confession.
As someone who quit the Church and spoke against it, I am still abused by the priests openly. One can only imagine how people who are still part of the Church deal with it.
Another alternative is to have a central authority that can hold these people accountable. They shouldn’t just go around clamouring for minority rights. They can’t use that as a shield to protect themselves from such charges.
Religion is personal, not public. Believers can find a path to Jesus, and they don’t need a Church, a seminary or a convent for that.
2.
If you can’t trust your priest, whom can you trust?
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People, especially believers, often don’t want to talk about what is happening in the Church. They think that by commenting on the Church, the issue will turn political. What we need right now is dialogue. The Church has often been able to keep scandals and trespasses under the carpet. That must change.
There is a great need for transparency in the functioning of the Church. Women are scared of speaking out against ill-treatment. They are silenced or suppressed. A number of cases have already made their way to the public sphere. The woman who has been abused and blackmailed because of a confession is disturbing. Such stories make you lose faith in the world. If you can’t trust your priest, whom can you trust?
The Church has money and political power. It has people who speak up for it. What do the victims have?
The government or the National Commission for Women should form a committee comprising psychologists and set up an inquiry panel. We need to know the gravity of the situation. No one seems to be speaking against the Church. We need to change that. Women must feel that they are in a safe space and should be able to articulate their problems.
This a major issue that needs our attention.
3.
Church has failed people when it comes to incidents of sexual abuse :-
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Incidents such as these show that there is a need for reform within all religious institutions. Cases of sexual abuse are not unheard of and have been spoken about in whispers earlier. But the brutality of it seems to have been exposed now with more and more people stepping out to report instances.
The concept of confession is used to help people feel that they can admit to their sins and then turn over a new leaf in their lives. But if some people are taking advantage of this practice to assault someone, then it becomes a ground to initiate criminal action.
People trust the priest and hope s/he will give them a patient hearing and a solution. But it would be a lie to say that we have not heard of instances where people were blackmailed or sexual favours were sought.
The first complaint in all cases first goes to the Church. But if the Church delays informing the law enforcement agencies, it amounts to violation of a directive that had been issued by the Pope after sexual abuse cases were reported across the world in churches. The Pope had clearly said that any such incident should be reported by the church immediately to the police.
In the cases that have come to light in Kerala and Jalandhar, a police complaint from the church is missing. It is important to understand that the Church has not been able to distinguish between morality as a sin and as a crime under civil law. This is the biggest problem. The church can definitely take action on the morality bit, but it is up to the law to follow up on criminal actions.
This case has cast a doubt in the minds of many on whether they can trust the priest. Many I spoke to said that they believe priests are the messengers of God, and their faith in them remains unshaken. Few, however, felt that if the Church fails to instill confidence in people against incidents of sexual abuse, their trust will wilt.
4.
If accused is found guilty, disciplinary action will be taken by Church :-
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There is an internal inquiry, which is taking place, there is a court case and the police inquiry is also going on simultaneously in this matter. Our own investigations have come to a standstill because we do not have the woman’s statement or the priest’s. We do not know if there has been an application for bail.
We do not think these are motivated allegations against the Church. When a woman has given a statement, we will have to take it at face value. She told her story before the magistrate therefore we cannot disbelieve it.
There are two aspects of reform in a Church. The first aspect is about the government, the police and the courts being legally bound to take a decision. The second aspect is about the Church taking an independent action vis-à-vis the priests.
There is an accusation of sexual assault so even if the government sets the accused free, we will have to take disciplinary action against them if we find them guilty. This will be done independently.
When we take action, it will also send a strong message to churches across the country that such incidents will not be tolerated. We cannot and will not ignore the failures on the part of the members/disciples of the Church.
In the light of this event, should the system of confessions stop in India? No, it should continue. If there are corrupt politicians, will you ban the political party? There are so many issues that have come to light regarding the election procedure, but we do not stop elections. There have been cases of sexual abuse on children going to kindergarten, does that stop us from sending our children there? No, it does not.
This week, a lot of people turned to our churches for confessions. They’re not bothered about what has happened.
5.
NOTE :-
I. Catholic Church sexual abuse cases :-
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1. Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries has been widespread and has led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions, as well as revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents. The abused include boys and girls, some as young as 3 years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. The accusations began to receive isolated, sporadic publicity from the late 1980s. Many of these involved cases in which a figure was accused of decades of abuse; such allegations were frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
2. By the 1990s, the cases began to receive significant media and public attention in some countries, especially in Canada, the United States, Australia and, through a series of television documentaries such as Suffer The Children (UTV, 1994), Ireland. A critical investigation by The Boston Globe in 2002 led to widespread media coverage of the issue in the United States, later dramatized in Tom McCarthy's film Spotlight. Over the last decade, widespread abuse has been exposed in Europe, Australia, Chile, and the USA.
3. From 2001 to 2010 the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, considered sex abuse allegations involving about 3,000 priests dating back fifty years,reflecting worldwide patterns of long-term abuse as well as the Church hierarchy's pattern of regularly covering up reports of abuse. Diocesan officials and academics knowledgeable about the Roman Catholic Church say that sexual abuse by clergy is generally not discussed, and thus is difficult to measure. Members of the Church's hierarchy have argued that media coverage was excessive and disproportionate, and that such abuse also takes place in other religions and institutions, a stance that dismayed critics who saw it as a device to avoid resolving the abuse problem within the Church.
4. In a 2001 apology, John Paul II called sexual abuse within the Church "a profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ". Benedict XVI apologised, met with victims, and spoke of his "shame" at the evil of abuse, calling for perpetrators to be brought to justice, and denouncing mishandling by church authorities. In 2018, Pope Francis began by accusing victims of fabricating allegations, but by April was apologizing for his "tragic error" and by August was expressing "shame and sorrow" for the tragic history, without, however, introducing concrete measures either to prosecute abusers or to help victims.
II. Non-disclosure :-
1. Church authorities are often accused of covering up cases of sex abuse. In many cases, as discussed in the sections on different countries, clergy discovered by Church authorities to be criminally offending are not reported to civil authorities such as the police. They are often merely moved from one diocese to another, usually without any warning to the authorities or the congregations at the destination. While offending clergy could be subject to action such as defrocking, this is rare; the intention of the Church until recent times has been to avoid publicity and scandal at all costs.
2. In some cases offenders may confess their wrongdoing to a priest under the Sacrament of Penance. Church canon law unconditionally prohibits a priest hearing such a confession from making any disclosure about the existence or content of the confession to anybody, including Church and civil authorities—the "Seal of the Confessional". This obligation is taken very seriously throughout the Catholic Church; for example all serving archbishops in Australia told the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that they would not report to police a colleague who admitted in the confessional to child rape.[52] This is not necessarily in contradiction with civil law; the law in many, but not all, countries confers confessional privilege, a rule of evidence that forbids judicial inquiry into certain communications between clergy and members of their congregation
III. Prevalence : India :-
1. In 2002, Mathew N. Schmalz noted that Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in India are generally not spoken about openly, stating "you would have gossip and rumors, but it never reaches the level of formal charges or controversies."
2. In 2014, Raju Kokkan, the vicar of the Saint Paul's Church in Thaikkattussery, Thrissur, Kerala, was arrested on charges of raping a nine-year-old girl. According to Kerala Police, Kokkan had raped the child on several different occasions, including at least thrice in his office during the month of April. Kokkan promised to gift the child expensive vestments for her Holy Communion ceremony before sexually assaulting her. The abuse was revealed after the victim informed her parents that she had been raped by Kokkan on 25 April 2014. The priest subsequently fled to Nagercoil in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, and was arrested by police on 5 May. Following the arrest, the Thrissur Archdiocese stated that the vicar had been removed from his position within the Church. Between February and April 2014, three other Catholic priests were arrested in the state of Kerala on charges of raping minors.
3. In 2016, the Catholic Church reappointed a convicted and jailed priest in the Ootacamund Diocese in Tamil Nadu, with little regard for victims rights and children's safety.
In 2017, Father Robin or Mathew Vadakkancheril of St Sebastian church in Kannur was arrested in Kochi on the charge of sexually abusing a minor girl who later gave birth to a child. A writer for the weekly magazine, Sunday Shalom, wrote "consumerism" and bodily "temptations" played a role the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl.
IV. Legal charges : India :-
In 2002, Mathew N. Schmalz noted that Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in India are generally not spoken about openly, stating "you would have gossip and rumors, but it never reaches the level of formal charges or controversies."
In 2014, Raju Kokkan, the vicar of the Saint Paul's Church in Thaikkattussery, Thrissur, Kerala, was arrested on charges of raping a nine-year-old girl. According to Kerala Police, Kokkan had raped the child on several different occasions, including at least thrice in his office during the month of April. Kokkan promised to gift the child expensive vestments for her Holy Communion ceremony before sexually assaulting her. The abuse was revealed after the victim informed her parents that she had been raped by Kokkan on 25 April 2014. The priest subsequently fled to Nagercoil in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, and was arrested by police on 5 May. Following the arrest, the Thrissur Archdiocese stated that the vicar had been removed from his position within the Church. Between February and April 2014, three other Catholic priests were arrested in the state of Kerala on charges of raping minors.
In 2016, the Catholic Church reappointed a convicted and jailed priest in the Ootacamund Diocese in Tamil Nadu, with little regard for victims rights and children's safety.
In 2017, Father Robin or Mathew Vadakkancheril of St Sebastian church in Kannur was arrested in Kochi on the charge of sexually abusing a minor girl who later gave birth to a child. A writer for the weekly magazine, Sunday Shalom, wrote "consumerism" and bodily "temptations" played a role the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl.
V. Purported declining standards in prevailing culture :-
In The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, author George Weigel claims that it was the infidelity to orthodox Roman Catholic teaching, the "culture of dissent" of priests, women religious, bishops, theologians, catechists, Church bureaucrats, and activists who "believed that what the Church proposed as true was actually false" was mainly responsible for the sexual abuse of parishioners' children by their priests. Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, blamed the declining morals of the late 20th century as a cause of the high number of child molestations by priests.
The hypothesis that a purported decline in general moral standards was associated with an increase in abuse by clergy was promoted by a study by John Jay College funded by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The study claimed that the liberal 1960s caused the increase in abuse, and the conservative Reagan years led to its decline. The study was branded the 'Woodstock Defence' by critics who said that the study's own figures showed a surge in abuse reported from the 1950s, and the passage of time meant that reports of abuse from earlier decades were unlikely.
VI. Priest shortage :-
"It has been argued that a shortage of priests caused the Roman Catholic hierarchy to act in such a way to preserve the number of clergy and ensure that sufficient numbers were available to serve their congregations despite serious allegations that some of these priests were unfit for duty."
"Others disagree and assert that the Church hierarchy's mishandling of the sex abuse cases merely reflected their prevailing attitude at the time towards any illegal or immoral activity by clergy."
VII. For failure to prevent further abuse :-
“ It is easy to think that when we talk about the crisis of child rape and abuse that we are talking about the past – and the Catholic Church would have us believe that this most tragic era in church history is over. It is not. It lives on today. Pedophiles are still in the priesthood. Coverups of their crimes are happening now, and bishops in many cases are continuing to refuse to turn information over to the criminal justice system. Cases are stalled and cannot go forward because the church has such power to stop them. Children are still being harmed and victims cannot heal. —?Abuse victim, Mary Dispenza"
VIII. For lack of transparency in Vatican proceedings :
To place the cases under the competence of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been criticized by some as making the process more secretive and lengthening the time required to address the allegations. For example, in his biography of John Paul II, David Yallop asserts that the backlog of referrals to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for action against sexually abusive priests is so large that it takes 18 months to merely get a reply.
Vatican officials have expressed concern that the church's insistence on confidentiality in its treatment of priestly sexual abuse cases was seen as a ban on reporting serious accusations to the civil authorities. Early in 2010 Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the head of the Congregation for Clergy, finally said that instances of sexual abuse by priests were "criminal facts" as well as serious sins and required co-operation with the civil justice system. Italian academic Lucetta Scaraffia (it) described the conspiracy involved in hiding the offense as omerta, the Mafia code of silence, and said that "We can hypothesise that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of these misdeeds with silence".
Some parties have interpreted the Crimen sollicitationis – a 1962 document ("Instruction") of the Holy Office (which is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) codifying procedures to be followed in cases of priests or bishops of the Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents – as a directive from the Vatican to keep all allegations of sexual abuse secret, leading to widespread media coverage of its contents. Lawyers for some of those making abuse allegations claimed that the document demonstrated a systematic conspiracy to conceal such crimes. The Vatican responded that the document was not only widely misinterpreted, but moreover had been superseded by more recent guidelines in the 1960s and 1970s, and especially the 1983 Code of Canon Law.
6. COMMENTS :-
1. The public reaction to the sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Vatican and Roman Catholic churches worldwide is causing rank-and-file Catholics to leave the church in droves. But concerned parents need to be wary about more than just the Catholic brand of clergy. The public rightly became disenchanted with an institution that claims moral authority while acting like those who it would condemn for their immoral behaviors.
2. The trend of less-than-holy behavior is not limited to the Catholic Church, although they have received the majority of the media’s attention and the public’s criticism. Recent cases such as that of Pastor Tony Alamo, who was convicted of abusing several young children and forced the government to remove children at his ministry from their negligent parents, shows that sexual abuse exists in different religious communities. It appears as though many institutions that have a tradition of powerful clerics that guide the community also suffer from allegations of child sexual abuse. This situation is often worsened when the religious institutions attempt to handle the matter internally by trying the offenders in a religious court instead of reporting the abuse to secular authorities.
3. Take for instance the allegations of sexual abuse in several Hasidic Jewish communities, where young boys were routinely abused at religious schools and community gatherings. These children weren’t able to come forward with their allegations for years because they feared being cast out from the religious community for accusing one of their “holy” leaders of such a despicable crime. When the boys finally did come forward the rabbis were tried in an ecclesiastical court, much like the Catholic priests who were accused of similar crimes. These courts exonerated the rabbis of their crimes and halted efforts to pursue secular justice against the offenders.
4. Sexual abuse of children is seen in other religions that emphasize a strong clergy and utilize religious courts, such as in Islam and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In Pakistan there are many allegations regarding sexual abuse of children in Islamic religious schools called madrassas. This abuse of children is not widely discussed by the victims, as the religious community routinely shuns those who come forward and “dishonors” their religious leaders. The same situation occurs with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose leaders are accused of wide-spread sexual abuse of children. American Southern Baptist churches also suffer from the same problem, as a bishop was recently accused of abusing a group of young boys in his mega-church. It appears as though these different religious communities, all of whom abide by distinctly different scriptures, share common ground in their efforts to silence victims of sexual abuse through marginalization and exclusion from the community.
5. Sexually repressive religions suffer numerous allegations of sexual abuse, which makes sense when you consider the effect that their scripture might have on normal sexual behavior. Statements such as “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28) and the emphasis by religions on abstaining from sex until marriage creates a repressive sexual environment that prevents healthy discussions about sexuality. This repression of sexuality discourages victims of sexual abuse from discussing the traumatic event because of the emphasis by the religious community on refraining from discussing sexual matters.
6. Sexual abuse occurs not only because of the specifics of a sexually repressive religious doctrine, but because the leaders of the religious community are given extraordinary power over their followers and are nearly immune to prosecution for their crimes because of the emphasis by those religious communities on handling criminal matters in religious courts. This method of self-prosecution is an obvious conflict of interest, as the community will be less to pursue any action that embarrasses the faith, even if such inaction comes at the expense of justice for the victims.
7. As human beings, we must feel for the plight of the victims and work to ensure that religious courts have no legal authority to protect criminal behavior. Victims of sexual abuse should not be ostracized or marginalized; rather, they should receive support and legal justice for the crimes that have been committed against them. Religious leaders are never above the law, no matter what faith they hail from, no matter their claims of moral superiority. Their “moral authority” does not grant them permission to do what they please, especially when they use that authority to silence their victims.
7. OPINION :- Swami Krishnananda
1."The great problem of spirituality is a reconciliation of ourselves with the evil which is standing before us and which has taken various forms of the so-called evils of the world. Originally it is a philosophical evil, a metaphysical evil in the form of the whole of creation outside consciousness. Then it becomes a cosmological evil, an epistemological evil, a psychological evil, a social evil, a political evil, a business evil, a moral evil, an ethical evil, every blessed evil. These are all the multitudinous children born to the original evil, the mother of all problems; and we are not going to be saved until we strike a balance between ourselves and this great foe in front of us. The foe happens to be reality, unfortunately for us. We do not struggle against an unreal foe."
2. "The problem of religion, spirituality, philosophy, is the problem of this indescribable relationship between ourselves and the ugly world before us, the evil Ahriman, the immoral principle. The immoral is a dreaded principle before us. People are frightened by the words ‘immoral’, ‘unethical’, ‘wretched’, ‘downfallen’, but there is no use crying like this. The moral, so-called, has to reconcile itself with the immoral, so-called. The Deva and the Asura sampat mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavadgita are the moral and the immoral. But there is no use simply saying, “It is immoral. I shall not have anything to do with it.” We shall have something to do with it, if not today; we shall have to confront it and make it our own, and cannot brook it standing outside us as our enemy forever. It is not for nothing that the great Christ told us that we cannot make friendship with God unless we first make friendship with man. We must first make peace with our brother before we make peace with our Father in heaven. But we are always trying to make peace with the Father in heaven by condemning our brother, who is an evil before us. “Our neighbour is an evil, and therefore I condemn him in the name of the great Almighty who is my friend.” This will not work, and it cannot cut ice."
3. Our religion, as it appears today, has to be shed. I have often been under the impression and am becoming convinced that it is high time that we abolished all the religions of the world and be without any religion. This idea arose in my mind because of the sorrow that I felt at the deceptive attitudes of religions and the camouflage which they put on in the name of morality and divinity, which is to their own ruin and the harm of society itself. We are grinning at God and mocking our own selves, and suffering a sorrow which has arisen because of our idea of morality, ethics, religion, spirituality, God-consciousness. This is the fate of religion today. And the great yoga, the union that we speak of, is a union with everything that is confronting us as other than ourselves. The so-called ‘other than ourselves’ is our fear – dvitiyad vai bhaya? bhavati (Brihad. Up. 1.4.2). Whenever there is another near us, we are afraid of that ‘another’. We cannot tolerate that ‘another’ sitting there. “Oh, that wretched thing is there. I want to abolish it.” We would like to be dictators of the whole world if it would be possible. The dictators are the peculiar distorted affirmations of this unitary being which cannot accept the presence of another outside."
4. Such peculiar affirmations of a unitary existence manifests itself as the problem of the evil which is a problem in the scriptures of every religion. The moment we become religious, we close our eyes to the realities of life, condemning them as ungodly, irreligious, immoral, and unworthy of any consideration at all. Here begins our sorrow. That is why I said our sorrow begins the moment we start becoming religious. A wholly social, materialistic person is also happy in his own way. He doesn’t bother about anything. Everything is reconcilable to him. He is able to reconcile himself with everything, even with the worst of things in the world, and so he is happy in a way. But we are very virtuous persons, and our virtue is our sorrow. This is again something very unfortunate."
5. "The evil that we speak of is a seed of irreconcilability that is present in our own minds. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, in the famous section on creation, we are told that there was no ‘other’ to the supreme God. Brahma va idam agra asit (Brihad. Up. 1.4.10): In the beginning, the One alone was, and that was the state of utter blissfulness. The One appeared as another to its own self. This is the story of every religion. The cosmological hymns of religions are of a common nature everywhere. If we read any scripture of any religion, it will tell the same thing about the way in which God created the world. The ‘I’ became a ‘you’. The ‘you’ is the evil, the ‘I’ is the principle of the affirmation of the righteousness of God. Fortunately or for any reason, God was the supreme ‘I-ness’, and there cannot be a ‘you’ before God. But we have been told that there was a ‘you’ in the original state of things and, curiously, the scripture tells us that God Himself felt a kind of uneasiness within Himself, as it were, the moment the ‘you’ of creation appeared before the ‘I’ of Himself. A very fantastic description is in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. A mystery is creation, and a mystery cannot be explained by any language."
6. "Unfortunately, the world is contending before us as an independent existence, and we have never felt that it is a part of us or we are a part of it, though in our loves for things we have unconsciously accepted a participation of ourselves in it and its participation in us, though we have spoken to the world with tongue in cheek or a little bit of salt in our mouths, not accepting it fully. We have not fully accepted that the world is a part of us, nor have we completely rejected it. We cannot reject it because we love it, but we cannot make it a part of ourselves because it asserts its independence. Even one’s wife, one’s son are independent individuals. They would not like to merge in us. The wife asserts her independence, the husband asserts his independence, the son and the daughter assert their independence. Though we may say they are ours, they are ours in some way only, under some conditions. Wholly they are not us. When even the dearest of objects has an independence of its own and it would not like to get absorbed in us totally and lose its individuality, the world would also not like it. So much love it cannot evince in regard to us. The world does not want from us so much love as to lose its independence totally and get absorbed into us. That is not possible. “No. I am what I am.”
7. "The reason why we do not seem to be achieving anything worthwhile even in a noble pursuit called religion or yoga is that we are the same old bandicoots, whatever be our feeling of advancement in yoga, spirituality, etc. We have not changed a whit, and we cannot change so easily, whatever be our imagination about our own selves. We always put on appearances of religion, very unfortunately. We are religionists and yogis only for other people. In our own selves we are nothing, and we cannot be anything other than what we are. We have been forced to somehow appear as religious men, as otherwise we will be cowed down upon and spat at by the society outside. So we would like to be comfortable religionists and yogis, and who can face this devil of the world even if it be affirming a totally contrary attitude to that which is expected of us as a truly religious attitude?"
8. "Thus, this peculiar relationship of ours with the world, with our friends, with our family members, with society, etc., has to be reconciled and cut through before we really become Godmen. We cannot simply shirk our responsibilities in this arduous task, which was the task before Arjuna’s irreconcilable attitude and a problem before every spiritual seeker. The whole of spiritual life is a series of confrontations and reconciliations with the problems arising out of the notion of evil, externality and the undesirable, the immoral, the unethical, the dark principle, the Satan, the Ahriman, whatever we call it."
8. Conclusion :-
1. Today, Religion is mockery, confined in structures called church, mosque, temple etc... where rituals are done, followed : a mechanical activity, involving large sum, all sorts of funny activities in the name of religion;
2. Today, the priest class, living in heights of luxury, wearing all sorts funny joker uniform of colourful costumes, having poor moral standards, wonder even criminals are hiding in those garbs, their teachings are all ignorance, stupidity, by which humanity never uplifted ever;
3. Followers, mostly, live in external shows, with poor knowledge of religion or spirituality or Yogam, live in demonic life, never having a chance of self realisation;
4. Religious institutions are amassing huge wealth, handled by corrupt people involved in management;
5. ANCIENT BHARATHAM, UNDER GREAT RISHI PARAMPARA GUIDANCE , LIVED PIOUS LIFE, IN SATISFACTION, PASSING VARIOUS ASRAMAM-S, PROGRESSING SPIRITUALLY ENDING IN REALISATION; ALL THESE ACHIEVED WITHOUT ANY PRIEST CLASS THEN;
6. THEN PEOPLE WORSHIPPED NATURE AND PRESERVED, LIVED ACCORDING TO THE NATURE;
7. THEN NO NEED OF ANY STRUCTURES TO WORSHIP, PEOPLE USED ANY SPOTS IN NATURE;
8. THEN MONEY IS NOT NECESSARY FOR SPIRITUAL LIFE, VERY LITTLE NEEDS ONLY THEN TO PEOPLE;
9. THEN NO CONFLICTS AMONG HUMANITY IN THE NAME OF GOD OR ELSE;
10. LET US GO BACK TO REALITY OF SPIRITUALITY FOR THAT NO STRUCTURE AND PRIEST ARE REQUIRED.
JAIHIND
VANDMATHARAM
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