--- On Fri, 3/20/09, Dr. U. G. Barad <[email protected]> wrote: > > http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Nuns-treated-like-servants-by-priests-Cardinal/articleshow/4272890.cms > Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:07:51 -0700 (PDT) From: Carvalho <[email protected]>
Barad, I notice that perpetually you forward articles that show Christianity in a poor light. If I were you I wouldn't worry too much about what ails other religions, I'd concentrate on my own. Frederick Noronha fredericknoronha at gmail.com Sat Mar 21 11:50:41 PDT 2009 Selma, I think you're misreading things. Dr Barad obviously has a deep (possibly sub-conscious) love for Christianity that he would like to perfect its failings, and make it a better religion/ideology. We should appreciate his efforts and thank him unhesitatingly for all the efforts he puts in! Mario observes: Selma & Fred, Other than verbally kicking a hapless Dr. Barad in the rear end, you may have done a dis-service to Christianity in general and Catholic nuns in particular with your uncharacteristic defense of Christianity. The article was published in India's national newspaper of record, not some hostile blog. Dr. Barad posted the link without comment, for which he is to be commended. He could have gleefully quoted explosive excerpts from the article, as I have done below, but he did not. I'd like to see someone accuse me of being hostile to Christianity! Why wasn't this posted by one of the vaunted defenders in India of everything Christian. Did Marshall not see this? Where is Fr. Ivo? Where is Jason Keith? Don't any of our Indian Goans read the Times of India? I'd like to know what they have to say for themselves. The article in the Times of India was not about what some critic of Christianity had alleged, but what a very senior Catholic Cardinal in a position of leadership had said in addition to what a study by the Catholic Church had found. What they found made me about as sick as when I first heard about the pedophile atrocities. They found a disgraceful, long standing situation, similar in its evil nature to the priestly pedophile atrocities, and it is Christians who must be in the forefront of exposing such atrocities, making sure the culprits are exposed and brought to justice, and the problem fixed once and for all. My question to Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil is, "What the hell were you doing all these years if you knew this was going on? Why do we have to learn about this in a book by one of the victims and a book by YOU, who was in a leadership position and could have exposed this and stopped it! Why was this not reported to Pope Benny - or was it?" I'd sure like to know. Read this excerpt and weep: Early last year, a study by the Catholic church found that 25% of the nuns in Kerala were unhappy with life inside the four walls of a convent. More recently, a former nun dropped a bombshell revealing in a book about sexual abuse and mental harassment she suffered in the order. Now,there's further confirmation of their misery and it comes from the leader of India's archbishops. Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, who is president of Catholic Bishops Council of India, says the nuns are humiliated by priests and they live in fear. The cardinal's views have appeared in his biography, much like the nun's own. If Sister Jesmi's book was called `Amen! Autobiography of a nun', Vithayathil's book is titled `Straight from the heart'. The cardinal tells his biographer Paul Thelakat, the spokesperson of Syro-Malabar Church, that the time has come to free the nuns from the "pitiable situation'' they are in. "I would say to a great extent our nuns are not emancipated women. They are often kept under submission by the fear of revenge by priests. That's how the priests get away with whatever humiliation they heap upon them. It is a pitiable situation from which somebody has to liberate them,'' says the 82-year-old cardinal. [end of excerpt]
