Our Country has always been blessed with plenty of vocations to religious life. In spite of ultra modernity and scientific progress, young men and women, full of zeal and enthusiasm, come forward to dedicate their lives to serve the poor and the marginalized of our country. Though the idea that religious life is one set apart or higher than married life is no longer widespread, it is admirable to note that the Christian families in India still consider their children responding to the call of the Lord as a blessing and privilege and encourage them to commit themselves to this state of life. At present according to the CRI directory, there are 125,000 religious – both men and women serving in every nook and corner bringing the Good News through educational, health, pastoral and social service institutions.  A recent researcher found 15,000 Indian religious serving in countries outside India !

We are also aware of the fact that once these young men and women join religious life they are uprooted from their culture and customs and become an elite group rather than being helped to be deeply rooted and identified with the life of our people. The Congregations in India , including the indigenous ones, still keep the Western model of formation which is hardly suited to the present day India and to the present type of vocations. Our big structures for those who come from ordinary families alienate them. They spend time either preparing for exams or cleaning and decorating and spending so many hours in adoration and prayer. We have taken mostly monastic elements to structure their life. We have continued with this transplanting process and no concrete and concerted efforts have been taken in our formation houses to train the young men and women to be rooted in our context and culture. Hence till today the Christians and especially religious have been labelled by various Indian groups as anti-Indians, foreigners and Europeans. To be considered a foreigner in one’s own country is a painful and bitter experience.

Vatican II had asked the religious Congregations to go back to the origin of their founding spirit and to translate their charism and vision according to the signs of the times and the context. Religious congregations started the process of inculturation by changing the pattern of liturgy, by simplifying their life-style, and introducing some ornamental changes like squatting on the floor, Indian dress and food habits and building styles. The popular understanding of culture as referring to dance, music, the fine arts, and literature comes out of a filled stomach. A hungry person has no time for music and painting.  Only the rich have time for these and also for rituals and rubrics. Unfortunately the Church and religious Congregations adopted only this aspect of culture, under the name of inculturation. This is a reaction to Europeans and we followed Brahmanic culture with saffron colour dress. We stopped there. Most of our Communication centres are also busy with propagating just this culture, while the rest of the people’s culture is either neglected or even forgotten, in fact conveniently and consciously. Ours is lop-sided formation. Are we forming people with IQ or social and religious reformers like Jesus in Palestine ? Of course when religious life was introduced by Europeans, as some Bishops mentioned at the Synod on Vita Consecrata, they brought pasta with the pater noster, which means that they gave us religion mixed with their cultural traits and traditions. We have failed to distinguish religion from culture and also thought that European culture was higher than the Indian.

* In general our seminarians/candidates are those who can score high marks but who may not have any compassion or sensitivity to others. They may conform to what is told to them but may not have any creativity. They may be quiet but may never question when things go wrong or when they see some injustice done to others. They may be punctual to all their community exercises but may not even go outside the seminary to visit the poor and the vulnerable.  

They are often kept in high esteem and shown as models to others. Till today our formation gives priority to academic qualification and it is syllabus-based and examination-oriented. The IQ is valued and not EQ and SQ. As a result, we have produced many Parish Priests who may be considered successful if they are able to say just daily Mass.

* Many priests and nuns are valued for the buildings they put up or the money they bring in for the Parish or the Congregation and not by the amount of poor and the marginalised to whom they give awareness to come up in human dignity nor by their contact with the deprived ones. The successful leaders are valued not for their integrity and spiritual strength but for their administrative talent and  management skills. As a result, the people at large are living as sheep without a shepherd and this is also one of the reasons for their leaving the Catholic Church and joining Pentecostal Movements.

* The temptation of establishing colleges, schools and hospitals is becoming stronger now than ever. This is considered a sign of success. A humble religious with innovative and deep commitment who toils hard amidst the poor is pushed to some social work sector in remote villages. Their convictions are not valued and followed. Today power, possessions and position play a vital role in religious life. Institutional welfare dominates over the prophetic and charismatic Church.

* The formators are usually those trained abroad or in sophisticated institutes in an European mindset. They are selected to go for higher studies primarily based on their intellectual abilities and not on their emotional and spiritual maturity. They are interested in providing information and not formation or transformation. As a result the young ones who long for models get only some intellectual stuff without any focus on the pastoral concern of the people.

What is Culture?

Culture is a way of life of a group of people - the behaviours, shared beliefs, values, customs, life-style and symbols that they accept and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. Since we are speaking of the Indian cultural context the following questions need to be clarified: What is Indian culture? Has India one culture?  Who are the authors of Indian culture? Who decides what Indian culture is and who dominates our culture? India is by and large a poor country.  One third of our people live below the poverty line. Are we to follow a culture that is forced on us by the oppressing group? Or are we to create a culture that will give meaning to the daily cries of our people?

When young candidates join religious life, unless they are helped to understand and appreciate our land, our culture and our people and their way of living and their beautiful practices and beliefs, our formation alienates them from identifying themselves with our brothers and sisters. Not too long ago a national survey had been conducted in various formation houses. It says: “For a large number of students, life in the formation house is an alienating experience. It alienates them from their native culture and life-style and do not help them to identify with the people”.

 I would like to recall here the National CRI Statement of 1991: “It necessitates a re-structuring of formation in mission. Formation in institutionalized structures and a programmed life-style runs the risk of preparing alienated religious for mission”.

In a pluri-cultural and multi-religious context we need to introduce a four-fold dialogue in our initial and on-going formation stages:

1. Dialogue with Cultures 

The Western culture is shown as superior and as the best culture. Tribals are ashamed of owning their beautiful cultural traits. In John’s Gospel 1:39, Jesus is asking His first disciples: “Come and see” - which means come and see for yourself what this life means and come and experience in the context; come and dialogue with me about my motivation, my style of living, the socio-cultural context of our country and how I respond to this situation and how I relate to our God etc.

Dialogue with cultures has become a non-negotiable element in today’s formation of religious in India . We are sinning and doing harm to the young ones through our mono-cultural pattern of formation. Today people are becoming more and more assertive about their own cultural identities. And religious are no exception. Take any religious house which has members from different cultural and language backgrounds. It is easy to identify them by their speech, by their manner of talking and their propensity to forming groups on the bases of their culture or the language they speak.

Culture is so intimate an aspect of human life that it embraces all facets of life including language, way of worship, thinking pattern and life-style. Therefore, it is a vital area. Formators cannot ignore cultural pluralism. It is their sensitivity to other cultures which should make the formees understand the importance of dialoguing with cultures. A multi-cultural or better, an inter-cultural religious community becomes an asset when there is a healthy and inspiring interaction among the members.

2. Dialogue with the Poor and the Marginalized

The Vatican II Document The Church in the Modern World, 1 says that the aspirations, struggles, anxieties, joys and sorrows of our people should be the anxieties and joys of our religious men and women. As Yahweh commanded Moses: “Go to my people”, suffering people should become our people. To quote Blessed John Paul II, “Religious should be more concerned about the people for whom they have embraced this life rather than worrying about their power, positions, vocations, finance or how to run their institutions”. In a situation like this, how do we expect our future religious men and women to dialogue with the poor?  Conducting surveys and analytical studies to learn about the condition of the poor is of little help going by the way religious behave even after experiencing the now mandatory “exposure programme” and “village experience”.

The fact that these studies have not helped them to internalise the condition of the poor so as to remind them constantly of their struggle for existence and motivate them to action, should force the formator to look for a suitable alternative which will instil in the formees not only love for the poor but a constant desire to be at their service. The internalization of their condition also should enable a religious to simplify her/his own life-style with regard to the use of money, items of luxury and comfort and other paraphernalia that project her/his image as somebody.

The study of the social agenda of the Church should be an integral part of the formation in this area of dialogue. Why the social teaching of the Church should be insisted upon is because all through it is an appeal, repeated again and again, to those who have the wherewithal to share with those who haven’t and to be just and fair towards employees and subordinates, especially the weak, the deprived, the voiceless and the helpless. The Social Teachings of the Church focuses on certain basic traits that are to be predominant in our methodology and they call for a paradigm shift in our approach and socio-cultural pattern. We need to teach them about modern saints and Indian martyrs.

3. Dialogue with Religions

In this day and age when so much tension is being created through fundamentalism and bigotry, no religious can afford to sit back and watch the mayhem and atrocities committed against people in different parts of the world in the name of religion. In our crises how many came forward to help us? Did we give any official response when they suffered? The idea that one particular religion is the only true religion in the world should be seen as one child telling the other that his/her mummy is the best in the whole world. People with genuine God-experience see this as no more than a child’s game of naming one’s toy better than the other and fighting over it. The religious of the future should be enabled to look upon all religions as God’s ways of entering into the lives of people of different cultures.

The formator’s role, therefore, is to give every opportunity to the formees according to their stage of formation, to have a deeper understanding of world religions. Appreciating another religion in no way is going to diminish one’s devotion and loyalty to one’s own religion. A formee should be capable of transcending even religious tenets if they come in the way of her/his relationship with God and His/Her creation.

4. Dialogue with God

It is the role of the formator to enable the formee to dialogue with God and thus experience God’s active presence in her/his life. Though there are negative aspects in other religions, there is also so much to learn from the Hindu and Buddhist monastic traditions. Our Asian culture is known for interiority, solitude, withdrawal and meditation and they are to be learned from other religions. We have taken unwanted elements from others and hospitality, dharma and spirituality are forgotten. Real God experience is when you are fully convinced that you are God walking and talking in flesh.

When you see your brothers and sisters in the world, you are convinced that God is walking and talking in flesh all around you. When you see all created things, seen and unseen, animate and inanimate, you are convinced that God is an integral part of them all. There is no sacred and secular in them. Vinoba Bhave went round and met nearly 2000 people and talked to them. He came back and still he looked fresh. The reporters asked him how? The frail looking old man said: “Why should I be tired? I met God 2000 times today”. When we see someone and recognize him/her as our brother and sister we have seen the dawn. It is also a call for introspection.

It is this kind of God-experience that enables a religious to be another Christ. The formator need not be a specialist in psychology or spirituality to help the formees to achieve this. Training the mind using the latest techniques available to us must go with traditional but renewed and revitalized methods that are still known to be effective. The time-tested value of prayer, reflection, spiritual guidance and spiritual reading, must go hand in hand with meditation using the latest techniques with the help of a guide. There are several techniques which have the backing of the scientific community all over the world. Neuro-scientists today will swear by the Buddhist form of meditation which, they say, is capable of resetting the energy-patterns in the brain by activating the desired spot. Destructive emotions in humans can be erased forever and replaced by positive emotions through a sustained and committed regimen of meditation, they claim. If practiced daily for half an hour in the morning or in the evening, meditation is said to do a world of good for one’s spiritual and physical well-being.

Our responses in today’s context:

It is high time that we think of formation in our cultural context. We have a special mandate to focus on the poor and the marginalised not only in service but also in forming those who will be committed to serve them.

1. Indian Christianity is by and large rural based. Most of our people are living in remote villages and slums in the cities. Often times, it is only the Bishop’s house, Provinical houses, pastoral centres, the cathedral and our English medium schools which are in the towns, while the majority of our people are away from us. Most of our formation centres are also in towns and thus we are cut off from our own people. Can our formation be rural-people-focused? This supposes that we need to move out of our formation houses in a large institutional set up. Let the formation house be attached to our mission field where they could spend a few hours everyday in the mission along with their studies. We do our training in practical teaching and nursing. Formation for religious life too cannot be given outside the field.

2. The Indian formation system must rid itself of the Western mould and be immersed in the lives, beliefs, values and traditions of our ordinary people and their cultural ethos. Formators who are just trained abroad or in our sophisticated institutions and who have not had an experiential knowledge of the ground realities of India will not be adequately equipped to undertake such a task. The location and setting of formation houses, life-style and outlook should facilitate a common interaction with the grass root realities of our country.

3. Jesus’ disciples were asked to be with him observing his mission and they were also sent to be with people in the mission filed. In fact, our main contribution to the world is not just the work we do in our institutions. To run a hospital, to be an effective teacher or to do most of the things we in fact do, we do not need to be vowed religious. In a world of suffering, rivalry for power and exploitation, we bring another way of relating, a very different way of seeing human beings. People speak not only of how the religious serve others, but how they relate with others. We should make a difference by our very being and doing! More than what we do, who we are – our integrity, simplicity, availability, justice, truth, sense of equality and humility - is more important. Candidates should learn all these values in their cultural milieu.

4. Equally important is constant contact with the people. The problems, needs and struggles of the people must touch the person in formation in the depth of her/his being. Our degrees and qualifications need not alienate us from the less privileged. They are for better service. After contemplating the realities, the situation should pain us, hurt us and disturb us and should leave us restless. Hence, the real-life situation is a better place for formation than hot-houses like the novitiates away from the realities. Obviously, there is also need for silence and periods of withdrawal to deepen one’s experience of God (Lk.6:12; Mk: 1:35 ) and awareness of peoples’ needs.

5. A special focus on the tribal people is needed in our formation. The psycho-social nature of the tribal people must be given special importance in the formation in their region or for their regions. A great number of vocations come from the tribal communities of India - the Santhals, the Bhils of Chattisgarh, the Mundas, Oraons and Kharias of Chottanagapur, the Khasis, Garos and Nagas of the North East. Though there are features common to all tribals, each tribe has its own distinguishing characteristics. One thing that is common to all is their understanding of family. For a Keralite, for instance, a family consists of father, mother and children. Even first cousins are not counted as immediate family members.  But tribals have a very wide understanding of the family. They have an inclusive family system which goes far beyond blood relations. For them the family extends first to their own clan, then to the tribe and even to other tribes of the same village. This extended relationship can cause misunderstanding in religious communities with people from other areas that may have little knowledge of tribal culture.

Similarly, the understanding of celibacy in religious life or in ordained ministry will not be as clear to the tribals as to the others. Married life and rearing a family is a sign of maturity among them. A single life, therefore, is considered a sign of weakness or sickness. All the same, such a person is never ostracized or derided but is treated with understanding and compassion. With the advent of Christianity, however, the status and dignity accorded to an unmarried person who is totally dedicated to the service of the deity as a priest or religious is of a high order in these cultures since s/he is seen as one “with a wider responsibility, looking after the extended ‘World Family’, the Church”. Popular religious expressions like ‘worldly’ and ‘worldly ways’ may send confused messages to the same tribal for whom the world/the earth is permeated with God’s own life. Insistence on silence goes against the culture of spontaneity of the tribals. We would have to find new ways of communicating the Gospel values. Therefore the challenge before us is to re-structure our formation programmes to empower rural, tribal and dalit candidates who join us.

6. Formation today therefore needs to be programmed in the context of diversity and not uniformity, of creativity and not exclusivity. It will then make us searchers and not settlers. Here the language of love should reign supreme. We should consider their cultural roots, family background, traditions, customs, beliefs and myths that they have grown up with. The spirituality and charism of the Congregation and the Gospel-values would have to be communicated in a manner that is understandable. For instance, an emphasis on the ‘acceptance of the Will of God’ and humility for the Dalits would be aggravating their subordinate status and low self-worth. If doing God’s will is understood as co-operating and participating in God’s plan of liberation, women religious would appreciate their special role and place as co-partners and not subordinate-workers in God’s work of restoring wholeness of life to our fragmented and wounded world.

7. Festivals are another occasion to build cultural integration. Many of the tribal festivals are pregnant with spiritual meaning. The eco-spirituality that each festival signifies can be made suitable for community prayer and worship. Who is the focus of our festivals? It should be reflected upon. The way we celebrate our feasts and Jubilees is a mockery. Sometimes we need to join people outside to celebrate the festivals. Again it depends on the formator to use her/his initiative in promoting and celebrating cultural diversity. The world is moving fast towards a multicultural society in which differences need to be understood, esteemed and appreciated. The eventual outcome of all this should be that our religious of the future should come out as women and men for all cultures capable of joining forces with like-minded people to create a better world for humanity.

8. Another area for caution is the tendency of the dominant group to impose its culture on the minority. It can also happen that the one-time dominant group, now reduced to a minority, continues using its old clout to impose its cultural traits on to the majority because this small group still holds the reins of power. The formator should make every effort to create harmony and good will among different cultural groups. Creating a more intimate understanding and appreciation of one another’s cultural traits will go a long way to facilitate greater integration and cohesion among the members. Group discussions, seminars, study circles on cultural differences and behaviour patterns should become part of the formation programme at every stage. 

9.  Formators have to demythologize a package of images, concepts, and language which they use to communicate to God that are products of a patriarchal culture. We need to help them to de-code their minds from reciting rituals to reflecting realities, from being devotees to disciples, from conducting pious associations to be involved in the struggles of the poor. The type of God given to us was a time and space bound God. In this women and poor have no place, because God is male. When Israelites had to wage war, they needed such a God. Today we need to re-image God and read the Scriptures from our cultural ethos.

10. Gender-sensitivity programmes have to form part of our formation syllabus in order to inculcate love and respect for one’s womanhood and sexuality and to be at home with ourselves. We also need to create awareness among men of the need for gender sensitivity for effective partnership in mission. Priests of tomorrow have to be freed from male-chauvinism and made aware that the ‘feminine genius’ has so much to contribute to the Church and to society.

11. Another important element of good formation is to foster in the young persons a questioning mind and a critical spirit. We need to develop an analytical mind to draw the riches of our traditions and critique oppressive realities that need to be changed. In religious life, this will call for great courage and inner freedom on the part of the formators. They have to be prepared to face uncomfortable questions and challenges. That is the only way we can nurture prophets. We talk about our founders who were courageous. But we don’t allow our young ones to come out as courageous men and women. What India and the Church in India need today are religious men and women who are prepared to speak up clearly, act courageously and pay up personally.

12. Culture is not merely a way of life.  It also involves creativity.  If the goal of our mission is creating a new heaven and a new earth we need creative people for it who seek to transform minds and attitudes by their symbolic and literary creations.  Such people are found not only at elite but also at folk levels.  These creative talents need to be recognized and encouraged.  Option for the poor need not mean being culturally poor. As a matter of fact the poor are often creators of culture, even if it is often a counter-culture.  Besides in a multi-cultural society, dominated today by the global media, our prophetic witness must also reach out to the cutting edge of cultural development.  This will be seen in our spiritual movements, theological reflections, and literary and artistic productions.

Conclusion 

A conscious and conscientious effort is needed to develop social equity auditing in all areas of our formation. Only then, can we speak of a formation that is focused on the Indian situation, according to the Indian ethos and the Indian socio-economic and cultural context. Or else, we will continue to develop ritualistic priests and nuns who will continue to be cut off from people, especially the poor and the downtrodden. This is not what Christianity is for.  

The real challenge is whether we can protect our formees from being alienated by the forces of globalization, whether civil, commercial or ecclesiastical and encourage them to be prophetically creative in the cultural situation where they are living and working.