‘Women’s bill can teach Church’| Cathnews India

Published Date: March 12, 2010

Tags: India legislative bodies, Indian law makers, women’s reservation bill

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Montfort Brother Mani Mekkunnel

The upper house of Indian parliament or Rajya Sabha, passing a bill reserving seats for women in legislative bodies has profound lessons for the Church in India, says Montfort Brother Mani Mekkunnel, national secretary of Conference of Religious India.

The bill has to be passed by the Lok Sabha, the lower house, and should get the president’s signature to become law. However, the March 9 passage can inspire a change in the attitudes and spirituality of the Church, says Brother Mekkunnel in the following commentary he wrote for UCA News:

Discussions on gender issue are moving from mere rhetoric to concrete guarantees in the Indian society with the Rajya Sabha passing a bill to reserve seats for women as law makers of the nation.

The Conference of Religious India (CRI), with its more than 100,000 committed women among them, has all the reasons in heaven and on earth to rejoice over the development in our tradition ridden country. The CRI is happy for this milestone achievement that can direct many in this country to move towards gender equity in public life.

The move in the national parliament will inspire Religious sisters to put their subservient spirituality on the backburner and surge ahead to take up leadership roles. Their organizational structures that perpetuate subjugation and control, their social identities and symbols that suggest them to be weak, their cultural definitions that keep them wrapped in cloths and their model images that hide them in buildings, and even their spirituality of worshiping a male god and his male representatives, are all areas that need liberation.

Reserving seats for women as legislators may help society wake up to some of the negative realities of human conditioning. This may disturb even some Religious, who want to suffer in this world for the life in the next world.

The much sought after “convent schools” that Catholic sisters run across India will have to re-focus their stress. They may have to move away from training girls to become better house wives, and put more skill in creating legislators and leaders for an emerging new India.

The demands on Religious leaders are going to be immense. The women Religious have to empower themselves not only to play an important role in a changing society but also to lead others on a path less traveled. Will the CRI leaders show the way? Their gender initiatives have set a new momentum in the Church with the release of a gender policy early March. Now they need to walk the talk.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), in their 2008 biennial meet, passed a resolution to give 35 percent representation for women in all Church bodies. Will they now move from rhetoric to action following the example of our political leaders?

The representation of women in Church bodies is still an idea that waits commitment to blossom. The signs of the time are clear for all people of good will. We can change. We shall change. The prophetic role of the Religious, especially the women who have vowed to change themselves and society, are on test now.

The CRI national executive and the CBCI Standing Committee that is meeting during the last week of April are likely to make path breaking options and decisions. God created Adam and Eve and both of them have to be reinstated into His Kingdom for wholeness of salvation.

Source: ‘Church must learn from women’s reservation bill’ (UCAN)

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