Gurjarvani Video collection: The trigger in the heart - Why suicides among religious in the Church?

Final Cut

The trigger in the heart

John Dayal

I have a close relationship with the Church in India, across denominations, regions, languages, ethnicities. And though I came back to the church just about three decades ago, I have been blessed with unprecedented access to all echelons of the Christian community in the country, from the four Cardinals, the many Catholic and protestant Bishops, across religious and diocesan clergy and women religious. I have met them in their homes, in confidence, and in the public arena, travelled with them in deep forests and in the midst of violence, seen them in their glory on their academic and medical institutions, and admired their courage in the face of aggression and temptation. It is therefore not difficult for me to stand for them, and write and speak for them, when they are the victims of calumny and hostility, manufactured allegations and malicious barbs. In fact, I often articulate my love for the Nuns and priests, the evangelists and itinerant pastors, some of who second generation who have never had the benefit of long years in seminaries and Bible schools, and perhaps have not even been baptised in a manner that would be acceptable to most of us, but who have an abiding Faith in Christ and a deep personally felt experience of the salvation He assures.

If this makes me aware of their humanity and spirituality, it also makes me privy to their human nature, their anxieties, fears, weaknesses and often enough, their struggles with personal devils that seek to tempt them, or possess them. I am sure the Superiors and heads of congregations and dioceses, who were once themselves once young, are equally aware of this, though I am not sure how much are the men and women in the church reaching out to their spiritual siblings in distress or in need of a receptive and generous ear. The formal Confessional does not suffice.

I am therefore deeply distressed at a very personal, core level when I hear of a Woman Religious, a Nun, committing suicide, or once in a while, a clergyman or seminarian. I brush aside insinuations of criminality, or allegations of murder. Police and internal enquiries are the instruments of justice in such cases, and murderers eventually are traced more often than not. I will therefore not talk of the sordid affairs in the archdiocese of Bangalore which is beset with linguistic and ethnic rifts that echoes the violent fault lines in the Indian nation. There can be no defence, and no air-brushing of criminality, even though one priest’s death, and the arrest of several of his brother-clergy in the crime, is a strong reason for a deep investigation by Rome into what is happening in South India. The continuance of Caste in many other dioceses deserves a similar forensic enquiry.

But a suicide is a very different matter, in the secular everyday world, or in cloisters, convents and clergy homes. An old friend once said: “In a suicide, all of us are guilty”. India has perhaps over 125,000 women religious, and a quarter that of male clergy. The non-Catholic church in the country may perhaps have more than 200,000 clergy of various levels of theological education, but as a deep a commitment. The vocation regions, and reasons, have changed over the decades, shifting from the west coast across sought and central India to now reach the extreme north eastern districts of the country. Educational standards have risen sharply. And for those interested in social action, working in India’s developing society beset with economic, caste and gender inequity offers a tremendous and very satisfying challenge.

But, as in civil society across religions and economic strata, there are recesses of the mind, and the soul, which remain in ferment, sometimes in a state of torture. While in a family, a teenager or even an adult with signs of distress will be taken to a hospital and assessed by a psychologist or a psychiatrist, such care is possibly not available to those in religious orders.

There is also, perhaps, a loosening of the bonds that once knit religious communities together, a natural process which aggravates with the passage of time, and the advancing of age and the consequent accumulation of tensions of many kinds. Or external triggers.

Whatever be the reasons, it is time for those in charge, the Superiors and the Superiors General, to singly and collectively start a process of deep examination and assessment, taking help from experts in the secular world, to assess and address this issue.

The torsions and pressures on the mind remain unseen, and are more difficult to address that issues of moral turpitude which grab the headlines, or the impact of persecution which unfortunately is such a reality too in India.