Reintepretation may see in a different light Whi knows?????
The Socio-Economic and Political Relevance of the Eucharist - Gabriele Dietrich Introduction The socio-economic and political significance of the Eucharist in the present situation of globalization is of enormous critical significance, but in order to understand it, we have to go into the history of liberation theology in Latin America and Asia. We also have to understand the Feminist as well as the Dalit critique of a class reductionist interpretation of exploitation and the theologizing on the body as a symbol of human suffering and the need for redemption. In this context, a Feminist or womanist interpretation is also of great relevance, but it needs to be connected with an ecological thrust. The overall context in the present situation is that of contestation for food security and land and the need to overcome violence. I am starting to write this paper on the day when Tata inaugurates the "people's car" at the rate of Rupees one lakh at Pragati Maidan in Delhi 10th January 2008. We all know that this kind of policy is related to the violent confrontation over agricultural land in Singur in West Bengal where the Tata factory is being built and in Nandigram, where people have fought relentlessly against the government acquiring land for a chemical hub. People have been shot by the coercive forces of the Left front Government by the dozen, and the numbers of disappeared and of women raped in the cowsheds is very high. We are also recalling the critical situation in Chhattisgarh, the State of the slain trade union leader Shankar Guha Niyogi, whose murderers are known, but have been left scot free by the highest court of the land. The State is now ruled by the BJP and human rights activist Binayak Sen sits in jail since the 14th of May'07 for no other fault than meticulously documenting the state policy of Salwar Judum, which has led to a civil war on the tribal population in interior districts like Dantewada1. In this war on people, very young tribal women (14-18yrs old) have been recruited into the police force by the State and have been physically abused without respite. 1. Some Reminiscences in a Social Analysis Perspective There are certain memories, which need to be revived regarding our ways of looking at the Eucharist in TTS. The book by Timothy Gorringe on the Eucharist has certainly been a mile stone2. His thrust is to connect the Eucharist with the memory of the feeding miracles of Jesus and with the emphasis on food sharing in the desert. He critiques the church mystifications which alienate the Eucharist from a real life situation and fix it in doctrinal schemes of sin and redemption. In the reformation tradition, the critique of trans-substantiation, a doctrine upheld by the Catholic Church is important. Trans- substantiation had led to a magical understanding of the Eucharist. The term "Hocus pocus", used for magical deception, derives directly from the Latin rendering of the words of consecration: "Hoc est enim corpus meus" (This is my body). However, this has led only to new protestant mystifications, which tend to over-spiritualise the experience of the Eucharist and to co-opt it into a highly personalized interpretation of individual sin and redemption. This takes the focus away from what Dr. M.M. Thomas has expressed in the term "structural sin". Thus, we have to keep in mind that sin and redemption are also corporate experiences, which have intrinsicall links with struggle for social transformation. Further, as far as TTS memories go, we have to keep in mind the history of Social Analysis and of Latin American and Asian Liberation struggles. One of the most significant experiences has been the life history of Camillo Torres, the Columbian Priest who had studied Social Analysis under Francois Houtart in Louvain in Belgium during sixties. At his return to his country, he not only established Social Analysis research, he ultimately decided to join the guerilla movement, because he felt he could not go on celebrating the Eucharist as long as people were not fed in his country and the gap between rich and poor remained unredeemed. He lost his life in the struggle, but is well remembered, similar to Che'Guevara, a revolutionary from Argentina who had joined the Cuban revolution in 1959 and who was later killed in Bolivia. It was this revolutionary history, which led Fidel Castro, who was a Marxist Atheist, to seriously look into the revolutionary left Christian Traditions and to take this history seriously3. In TTS, it was the visit of Enrique Dussel in 1992 which reminded us that this kind of critique goes back to Bartolomeo de las Casas, who was one of the catholic clergy, who took to a radically anti-colonial interpretation of the Eucharist early on in the colonial history4. This anti-colonial history has been revived again and again in other Latin American countries. E.g. it is at the root of the struggles of the Churches in Brazil, where the Bishop of Recife Helder Dom Camara5, took a determined stand with the poor in the impoverished Northern parts of the country. The same history was re-inacted in the struggle in El Salvador, where Archbishop Romero was murdered during celebration of the Eucharist for his valiant stand against the military junta. It was Romero who had taken a very radical stand after the murder democratically elected President of Salvador Allende on the first 9/11 in human history, i.e., the bombing of the Almeida (Presidential palace) by the CIA in Santiago the Chile, in 1973. This led to fascism in Chile under Pinochet for decades and to the death of thousands of people over the decades. The Dutch camera team of Koos Koster and his three associates who were shot in El Salvador in an ambush while documenting the uprisings in the jungle against dictatorship, way back in 1983, were commemorated in the TTS chapel as a radical witness to the true meaning of the Eucharist. The text which inspired Bartolomeo de las Casas to his radical anti-colonial critique is written in Jesus Sirach Chapter 34, vs. 21-31 – Offering Sacrifices If one sacrifices ill-gotten goods, the offering is blemished; the gifts of the lawless are not acceptable. The Most High is not pleased with the offerings of the ungodly, nor for a multitude of sacrifices does he forgive sins. Like one who kills a son before his father's eyes is the person who offers a sacrifice from the property of the poor. The bread of the needy is the life of the poor; whoever deprives them of it is a murderer. To take away a neighbor's living is to commit murder; To deprive an employee of wages is to shed blood. When one builds and another tears down, what do they gain but hard work? When one prays and another curses, to whose voice will the Lord listen? If one washes after touching a corpse, and touches it again, what has been gained by washing? So if one fasts for his sins and goes again and does the same things, who will listen to his prayer? And what has he gained by humbling himself? It is the memory of people like Bartolomeo de las Casas, which has also fed into the tribal uprising in Chiapas, on the Southern border of Mexico6. These tribal uprisings in turn have led into the worldwide attempt to critique the World Economic Forum and to bring about the World Social Forum. Very sadly,even such attempts at a worldwide critique on globalization have been co opted in our country by the communist parties and the NGO sector, the same forces who today take a stand that capitalism is there to stay and we have to go along with it. It is therefore, amply clear, that we need to renew a radical interpretation of the Eucharist, if we want to do justice to the radical option, which Jesus took in his own life. We therefore, need to turn to sources, which help us to deepen our understanding of the Eucharist. 2. Feminist Interpretations Feminist interpretations are of great relevance here, though they have not become part and parcel of the TTS heritage to the same extent as the class-related positions which were outlined above. This has to do with the fact that "the big TTS family" over the past thirty years has not really succeeded to incorporate women in their own rights. I am not saying "as equals", because the very term of "equality" much of the time pre-supposes men as the point of reference. The point is not "being equal with men" – the point is that men are of incomplete humanity as long as violence rules the world. The aspiration for "equality" has led to the incorporation of women into the capitalist world system under highly disadvantaged conditions. It is the World Bank and the corporations, who have incorporated feminist conceptualizations and who have also succeeded to obscure the reality of patriarchy under the smoke screen of an elaborate rhetoric of "gender". In the churches, we find a culture which is steeped in middle class consumerist modernity of neo-liberal capitalism, while at the same time the feudal values of caste, hierarchy and an oppressive family ideology are also alive and well. It is therefore important to widen our perceptions beyond an all-male Trinity of Father, Son and (supposedly male) Holy Spirit and to understand that incarnation cannot be conceptualized without taking on board women's bodies, abused, bleeding, polluting, sexually active, life giving, nurturing, and widely advertised, venerated in motherhood as well as feared, glorious as well as wretched. This female reality is normally banned from the Eucharist when it comes to understanding "the body". It was the reality of child bearing and child rearing in TTS while being a full time faculty member, which triggered my anger, my despair as well as my rebellion to cope with the patronizing attitudes I encountered all over the place. One of the outcomes of this experience was a poem, which has made it into various theological publications7. As the poetry is self-explanatory, I am rendering the poem in full. The Blood of a Woman Hiroshima Day August 1984 I am a woman and my blood cries out: Who are you to deny life to the life givers? Each one of you has come from the womb but none of you can bear woman when she is strong and joyful and competent You want our tears to clamour for protection. Who are you to protect us from yourselves? I am a woman and my monthly bloodshed makes me aware that blood is meant for life. It is you who have invented those lethal machines spreading death: Three kilotonnes of explosives for every human being on earth. I am a woman and the blood of my abortions is crying out I had to kill my child because of you who deny work to me so that I cannot feed it. I had to kill my child because I am unmarried and you would harass me to death if I defy your norms. I am a woman and the blood of being raped is crying out. This is how you keep your power intact, how you make me tremble when I go out at night. This is how you keep me in place in my house where you rape me again, I am not taking this any longer. I am a woman and the blood of my operations is crying out. Even if I am a nun you still use my body to make money by giving me historectomy when I don't need it. My body is in the clutches of husbands, policemen, doctors, pimps, there is not end to my alienation. I am a woman and the blood of my struggles is crying out. Yes, my comrades, you want us in the forefront because you have learnt you cannot do without us. You need us in the class struggle as you need us in bed and to cook your grub to bear your children to dress your wounds. You will celebrate women's day garlands for our great supporters. Where would we be without our women? I am a woman and the blood of my sacrifices cries out to the sky which you call heaven. I am sick of you priests who have never bled and yet say: This is my body given up for you and my blood shed for you drink it. Whose blood has been shed for life since eternity? I am sick of you priests who rule the garbagriha, who adore the womb as a source of life and keep me shut out because my blood is polluting. I am a woman and I keep bleeding from my womb but also from my heart because it is difficult to learn to hate and it might not help if I hate you. I still love my little son who bullies his sister he has learnt it outside, how do I stop him? I still love My children's father because he was there when I gave birth. I still long for my lovers touch to break the spell of perversion which has grown like a wall between women and men. I still love my comrades in arms because they care for others who suffer and there is hope that they give their bodies in the struggle for life and not just for power. But I have learned to love my sisters. We have learned to love one another. We have learned even to respect ourselves. I am a woman and my blood cries out. We are millions and strong together. You better hear us or you may be doomed. I think it is self evident that the understanding of a woman's physicalness and the spirituality arising out of this physical existence needs to inform our understanding of "full humanity". I have dealt with this extensively in other contexts8. It has been recognized widely that such enhanced theologizing on the incarnation has Christological significance. Over recent years, Dalit women's theologizing on poverty, land, women's bodies has found a voice. A good overview over the complexities of Dalit feminist/womanist positions can be found in a special issue of In God's Image, which was guest-edited by Monica Melanchton9. While many of the articles focus on the rampant atrocities committed on Dalit women as "triple oppressed", there is also clear reflection on the "duality of patriarchies", i.e. not only the upper caste patriarchy, but also the internal patriarchy within Dalit communities. Likewise, while the specificities of Dalit women's experiences are fully acknowledged, the commonalities with women's experiences of purity and pollution and day to day violence are also integrated10. Apart from this, several of the articles point beyond the immediate experiences of grinding work and physical violence and open up perspectives of not only protest, but social transformation, based on connection with the land, a culture of transgression and transcendence and a vision of healing in the spirit of Mary of Magdala11. Obviously, the Eucharist in this day and age can only have full meaning if it commemorates and expresses such crucial experiences. The question is how this can be done effectively and creatively. 3. The Challenges and Burdens of "Community": It is in the nature of the Eucharist that it is trying to create community, overcome barriers and to make the vision of the "Reign of God" or the "Kinship of God" visible. "Kingdom values" is certainly not a fortunate term, as it warms up a feudal political form, giving it eschatological sanction. We are told by Jesus that we cannot serve God and Mammon (Mk. 10,17 – 31) and that the new community will be one without fathers. The Eucharist needs to express this vision. It is unavoidable that in a caste ridden society, the history of the Church has also followed the cultural expressions of different communities, usually more high church for upper castes and more Lutheran for Dalits. The cultural expressions were anyway borrowed from the missionaries and an indigenous idiom was slow to form. Parattai, in his grama isai vazhipadu, has used the rhythm and the idiom of rural Dalit communities to express the social alienation and the need for redemption and healing. He has clearly expressed the life world of Dalits, in which sin is not of an individualistic nature, but has to be understood as "structural sin", where people are either coerced to participate in their own oppression or try to resist in anger and despair. There has been debate whether addressing God as "swamy" re-inforces sub-altern cultural patterns. But there is no doubt that the Eucharist in this rural context is deeply tied up with the earth, with nature, with food security and the desire to share food beyond all the barriers of purity and pollution. This is an endeavour which is deeply life-affirming. In an attempt to strengthen this life affirming tendency, not only the words of blessing for the Eucharist have been adjusted to the cultural setting, but also the elements. Bread and wine being very much part of the Palestinian cultural space and having been flattened into wafers and grape juice in a ritual setting, are limited in the meaning they can transport. So variations have included kanji, karuvadu (dried fish), chukkukapi, keppai rotti and many more. If this happens, controversy arises about how much these elements can "represent the body of Christ", are they not too crude? Since the body of Christ consists now of the people of God, those who do his will, it is only natural that it can be represented by the food which people are willing to share. This willingness is tested by cultural constraints. If people have been brought up in a ritualistic environment and with strong doctrinal notions, this will be causing consternation in unexpected situations. While in Parattai's liturgy a certain doctrinal decorum is observed, I have frequently substituted the part of the blessing of the elements with a blessing from Sri Lanka, which comes directly out of the context of the feeding miracle. This blessing existed in Sinhala as well as in Tamil and was very meaningful in the situation of the strife ridden ethnic conflict. The meaning of sharing all we have, is immediately called up. The memory of the boy with the fishes also stands for the fishing community of the Lake of Galilee. There was no blessing over the wine though, to correspond to this. We therefore created a wording, which connects the blood of Jesus with the blood of women. This has led to a lot of speculation, what the connotation of "the blood of women" may be and whether this blood is equated with the blood of Jesus. Some of my colleagues have walked out over this blessing. However, the underlying important observation is that the world is full of violent bloodshed. In the caste hierarchy, the kshatriyas, who are professionally recognized as a warrior's caste shedding blood, are not polluted or polluting. There is no stigma attached to their profession. Likewise, among tribals in North East India, the warfare of the men for protection of villages and conquest of new territory is heroic and meritorious, while women's work in agriculture is rendered much less visible and is considered insignificant. In the mainland, women are routinely seen as polluting and polluted due to the very life-processes of menstruation and child bearing. Not only that, women endure violence in the family for the sake of protecting their children and for upholding their family life. They are also violated in communal riots and caste confrontation as a pawn of community identity. At the same time, they can usually not retaliate. Their effort is constantly to affirm life and to keep it going. Only in rare cases, women take recourse to suicide and even take their children with them. Women's life-blood shed for the survival of humanity and of community is not normally understood as sacred or redemptive. This has to a large extent to do with the fact that women are misrepresented as the origin of sin and the wage of sin is death. Thus, the life givers from whom we all stem are depicted as the origin of death. This is a powerful politics, which affirms destructive violence, but does not acknowledge suffering which is life-affirming. The disciples were weary of the women in Jesus's company. Thy also tried to ward off the children. The logic of purity and pollution is deeply interwoven with artificially created boundaries, which keep women under control. While one has to be extremely careful not to romanticize women's suffering or even to glorify it, it is important to acknowledge women's contribution to the production of life and livelihood. It is also necessary to acknowledge the inherent discrimination which goes with being born female. The very decline in the juvenile sex ratio which goes on deteriorating, witnesses to the fact that female children are undesirable and considered a liability. The tenacious struggle against undeserved and unwarranted suffering is in itself life-giving. This struggle transcends class and caste, as foeticide is rampant among middle and upper classes and castes, but spreads among Dalits as well. Jesus's birth amidst the murder of boy children – designed to prevent the new King from coming into this world – has a strange and inverted resonance in today's situation of girl children. This struggle for life and dignity also has a commonality with Dalit struggles for human dignity, be they male or female. It is clear that Dalit women are Dalits among the Dalits. But this does not single them out as champions of victimhood, as the goal is the end of discrimination and the affirmation of life and wholeness. This struggle for wholeness becomes more difficult in a situation of displacement and destruction of natural resources. Adivasis and peasants are massively being displaced by development projects and SEZ's and Dalits, especially Dalit women, lose their livelihood as agricultural labourers and are pressed into migration and destitution or prostitution. Food security is more and more in jeopardy. The bread and the wine were the most ordinary agricultural products in Palestine. The Eucharist is a symbol of sharing simple food without discrimination of class, caste and sex and it includes the memory of God's covenant with his good creation, the memory of the exodus from slavery, during which food became scarce and the memory of this struggle against slavery, which is expressed in the celebration of the Passover and the Sabbat. It is clear that such sharing presupposes a society in which exploitation of human beings and of nature has to be ended. In this sense, the Eucharis also reminds us that capitalism is not a form of production and of organizing society, which is sustainable or could implement social justice and peace with nature. It also reminds us of basic democracy, because it can only fulfill its meaning if every one can participate. 4. Let the Children Come to Me This leads us to the final question of participation of children. Traditionally, children have been excluded from the Eucharist, because the assumption was that they could not comprehend the depth of the mystery. This is of course only applicable if one pre-supposes a very complicated doctrinal understanding of the Eucharist. If the material socio-economic and political connotations of the Eucharist are taken into consideration, then the bar on children's participation makes no sense. Children love to share food and being excluded from it creates a barrier, which is deeply alienating. Children also should not be sent off with a sweet instead of bread, as this is bad for their teeth and encourages wrong and consumerist food habits. On the contrary, socializing children into participation in the Eucharist can enable them to have respect for food, for agricultural labour, for the earth and can teach them to transcend barriers of caste, class and sexism. This however presupposes deep changes in our Sunday school teaching, e.g. the sexist interpretation of the creation narrative in Gen. 2 and 3, especially the rendering of chapter three, which implies a certain amount of justification of woman's subordination, must be dealt with sensitively and creatively so that woman's life-giving quality can be affirmed and honoured. After all, the very name Chavah (Eve) connotes that she is "the Mother of all Living" and not the originator of sin and death. Conclusion: There is no doubt that such affirmation of Life is of enormous importance in times of global warming, where the energy crisis can lead into a new World War. The "new Fordism"12 of the Tata's which tries to awake aspirations of individual horizontal and upward mobility, creating competition between fuel crops and food crops, is deeply divisive and destructive of democracy. It has been shown clearly that globalization has fragmented the working classes and destroyed natural resources and agriculture. It has also led to farmer's suicides and to rising violence against women. It is of great importance that the revolutionary implications of the Eucharist are better understood in today's situation. This is a challenge to our Faith and our Creativity. In a way, the Eucharist implies an integration of economic and political human rights, which in the history of the cold war have always been polarized against each other. It also affirms the redemption of nature from the ruthless exploitation of human beings. We have to move the congregations to abandon consumerism and to see the meaning of sharing and of democratic participation, free from casteism and sexism. 1 Gabriele Dietrich, Why Does the Prime Minister not lose sleep over Dr. Binayak Sen, Mainstream, Vol. XLV, No. 49, Nov. 24, 07, pp. 17-19. 2 T. Gorringe, Love's Sign. Reflections on the Eucharist, TTS, 1986 3 Fidel and Religion: Conversation with Frie Betto by Frie Betto, New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1987. 4 Enrique Dussel, Ethics and Community, Orbis Books, Mary Knoll, NY 10548, 1988, p. 13 ff. 5 Chiapas: Resistance and Rebellion by Subcomandate Marcos, Coimbatore: Vidiyal Pathipagam, 2005. 6 Bas Wielenga, Social Movements in India Pose Questions that have World-wide Import, Dom Helder Camara Chair, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1995. 7 Gabriele Dietrich, One Day I shall be like a Banyan Tree, Dileep S. Kamat, Belgaum and ECC, White field, Bangalore, 1985, p. 73 ff. Quoted in Chung Hyun Kyung Struggle to be the Sun Again, SCM Press, Orbis Books, New York, 1991, pp. 66-71. See also Fr. Michael Amaladoss, S.J.: Life in Freedom. Liberation Theologies from Asia (Orbis Books, Mary Knoll, 1997), pp. 40-43. 8 G. Dietrich, "Towards the Full Humanity of Women and Men" in : A New Thing on Earth, New Delhi: ISPCK, 2001. 9 In God's Image Vol.26, No 3, Sept. 2007: "The Haunts of Pain. Theologizing Dalits". 10 See e.g. The sensitive article by Philip Vinod Peacock: " Untouchability is the Key", op.cit. pp.56-58. 11 See e.g. Bama: "Politics of Everyday Protest", Adlin Reginabai: "Mary Magdalene and Kuladaivam of Dalits in Kaltil Ventran Pettai in Tamil Nadu" as well as my own article: "Emerging Dalit Feminisms". 12 Fordism was an important concept of the founder of the Communist Party of Italy, Antonio Gramsci, who developed into a sharp theoretician in Musolini's jails under fascism. He analysed the car production of Gerald Ford as the motor of capitalist economy in the US and of the "passive revolution" which led to the hegemony of capitalist economy and ideology. Tata uses the "people's car" in a very similar way and the middle classes in India are happily fooled by this. On Feb 2, 3:08 pm, Maya <[email protected]> wrote: > http://www.feministing.com/archives/012718.html > > -- > Maya S. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
