Take more active stance to make religion relevant, Church told FN
PANAJI, Oct 4: From a greater role for women in the Church, to tackling the community's social evils and helping boost health-care in Goa, Catholics and the wider society are putting demands on their Church to take a more active stance that enables the religion become more relevant to wider society. These were some of the issues that surfaced on Saturday, the first of a two-day seminar on 'The Church in the Evolving Society of Goa', which saw a number of lay voices speak out their aspirations and hopes to the Church hierarchy, which paid an attentive ear to the issues coming up. Priests and clergy took the back-seat, and listened to lay voices at the well-attended meet organised at Old Goa's Pastoral Institute Pius X. Besides the Pastoral Institute, the other organisers were the seminaries at Rachol and Pilar and the Porvorim-based Xavier Centre of Historical Research. "There are seven women speaking among 16, two bishops and no priests (addressing this conference)," noted Dr Delio Mendonca of the XCHR, giving a hint of the willingness of the Church to listen to the issues being thrown up. Many concerns and critiques came in, reminding of the need to change and keep abreast with the times. Dr Evelyn Monteiro, describing herself as a "non-resident Goan but very much of a Goan at heart", made an articulate call for women to be recognised for the "historic role they have played in building the Church in Goa". She critiqued the "missing feminine dimension in understanding the word of God" and said women were mostly relegated to "backstage roles" whether in the sacristy, kitchen, as secretaries, or as catechist for youth and children. There were a number of other calls for change. Senior former bureaucrat, and the first chief secretary of post-1961 Goa Alban Couto called on the Church and Christians to get integrated into the "national mainstream". The advisor to the BJP government in Goa, Couto however termed communalism as "a kind of betrayal of the national interest". Besides the greater participation of Christians in politics, he called for equipping the community with professional expertise, and helping to fight the school dropout problem which so badly afflicted education in Goa. Former Goa University Konkani department head Dr Olivinho Gomes called on the Church and community to fight social evils like alcoholism, and sought more probity in the administration of Church property, and the promotion of lay people in responsible positions in keeping with Vatican Council II. He called on the Church to take advantage of the "large pool of talent" existing in the form of super-annuated and retired officers, who could be used to train youth take up civil, defence and other competitive exams. Bailancho Manch women's group leader and advocate Caroline Colaco called for the church to take an interest in Goa's growing divorce rates, separations due to violence, deaths due to alcoholism, and the like. "Many were becoming single-mothers not out of choice, but due to issues like these," she said. Citing figures, Colaco pointed out why issues like divorce, suicides, alcoholism, addiction, broken homes resulting in children ending up in orphanages, and the "unnatural deaths" among women were a growing concern in Goa. "There's a lot we expect from the Church. The Women's Desk at the Archdiocese needs to be very much strengthened, for documentation, awareness and training. We need for mechanisms from the Church to cope with half-way homes, counselling centres and suicide help-lines," she said. Anita Haladi pointed to the work of Bailancho Saad, and cautioned against getting mislead by statistics into thinking that women in Goa faced no serious problems. Fiona Dias-Saxena spoke on why children in the state too needed better support mechanisms to cope with their problems. Sociologist Dr Bernadette Gomes, in a trend showing new openness within the Church, was given space to discuss the lingering problem of caste within Catholicism in Goa. "This is not meant to point fingers at anyone... But there are problem areas in the church, including the confrarias, the wearing of different coloured capes, and the feasts and novenas where the 'dhol' and 'tasso' (local instrument) players traditionally belong to certain caste groupings," she said. Later in the evening, Dr V N Jindal of the Goa Medical College urged the Church to get involved in health education, health surveys, helping more people in crisis, community mental health, and blood donations. Former Caritas India director Averthanus L D'Souza drew the link between environmentalism and religion, while Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Neri Ferrao set the tone earlier in the morning with his keynote on the 'challenges for the Church in Goa'. Some of the issues that raised emotions during the meet included differing perceptions of women's rights campaigners and the Church over concerns like the teachings of the Church over abortion. (ENDS) ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
