Our today’s topic is about the present state of nuns in Church. Nuns are known to be a member of religious community of women who make radical choices to live life outside the standard mode of living and dedicate their entire life to Jesus. But Now this nun tradition, which has been dedicated to Christianity in the court for centuries by accepting Jesus as her husband, is slowly weakening. The Church, which claims to improve the standard of living of the people, is busy expanding its imperialism and the nuns are just becoming the land of disregard, torture, and exploitation. Recently a nun in Kerala was expelled by a Synod (religious meeting) under the Roman Catholic Church for publishing 5 poems on nuns, buying a car and for participating in protests on behalf of 5 nuns against rape accused Pastor Franco Mullakal held in Wayanad last year.
In some ways, the curtains have started to rise slowly from the life of nuns that were once considered completely spiritual until some time. For the past several years, many nuns who have either left or have been removed from the churches after been stricken by the church are opening their hearts. For a long time, the Church had been prominent in women’s career opportunities in the South Indian states, especially in Kerala. But after many cases of exploitation of Nuns inside and outside the church become public, the women from these south Indian states including Kerala today are avoiding to be part of Church over the years.
Till now the state of Kerala was sending the largest number of girls to become nuns. But recently, this number is seen to decrease by 75 percent. Given this declining percentage of nuns, Christian institutes from the south Indian states are now turning towards the North and North-eastern states of India, and tapping the girls from poor families from states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, and Himachal Pradesh.
If we look at the figures from the mid-1960s, then at that time about two dozen nuns were being recruited from each state every year and this went on for almost a decade. In 1985, this number was gradually reduced which is still decreasing. Looking beyond India, sixty years ago there were 180,000 Catholic nuns in the United States, but at present, the number has fallen to less than 50,000.
In the 60s, it was a common practice especially among poor Christian families that poor Christian parents were required to send their one daughter to the convent by considering it the order of Jesus. But today most of the Christian families ignore this order. One reason is the stories of exploitation of nuns came out of the walls of the church day by day. The same can be read in the books written by many former nuns, including Mary Chandy and Sister Jashmi. Another reason is- in today’s families, there are only one or two children, who have many career options to choose from. Women of Kerala are now making their mark across the globe in the professions of healthcare, IT and other industries. The situation has changed today, women have opened themselves for many fields from the private sector to defense, foreign health, where there is no religious burden of Christianity on him.
Sister Federica, a former nun of Europe, who is no longer a nun, spent a long life in the church and after seriously studying the life of the convent, Federica wrote that the nuns’ homosexual relationships are often called religiosity. Or the lust of the priests has to be extinguished to remain a nun. There is no democracy within the church, only hierarchy, and male supremacy. You can infer from the same point that while the number of nuns in the convent is decreasing, on one hand, the interesting thing is that the number of men coming forward to become clergy is increasing.
There are several reasons for the declining number of nuns globally, with the magazine Woman’s Church World exposing the case sometime back, revealing stories of hundreds of nuns being forced to abort. The magazine wrote that the nuns who refused to have abortions later kept the children born to them in the convent by showing that they were orphans. However, the editor was forced to leave the magazine a few weeks after this editorial article appeared in the magazine. At the same time, Pope Francis admitted that sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops has become a major problem in the church.
One of the most important sacrifices for the church is- the Virginity of women. The nuns take the vows as the wife of Christ, that is, instead of choosing a human life partner, they dedicate themselves to Jesus. But the clergy do not shy away from exploiting these alleged wives of Jesus. If a nun breaks his vow, it is okay and if she does not break her vow, then she will be crucified for abuse, torture, and expulsion.
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