Catholic women’s groups in India have expressed deep concern about events surrounding accusations of rape brought against the former Bishop of Jalandhar, Franco Mulakkal, by a nun in Kerala. The nun accused the bishop of repeated acts of rape over a two year period, but her complaints to church authorities were ignored until he was finally arrested in 2018, when Pope Francis temporarily relieved him of his duties. The bishop was released on bail, and in January 2022 a trial court found him not guilty of thirteen charges of rape.
During her long struggle for justice, the nun met with harsh opposition from members of some religious orders and clerics, and one politician described her as “a prostitute”. However, she also attracted the support of many Indian women religious who campaigned publicly to express their solidarity, even when it meant defying their superiors to do so. A letter-writing campaign has attracted widespread support from individuals and groups around the world who have written to the nun to express their solidarity. The prosecution is now seeking an appeal through the High Court.
Irrespective of the final verdict, one of many distressing aspects about this case has been the publication of a lengthy court judgement which makes serious allegations about the complainant’s character and past behaviour. In an interview with the BBC, one historian and feminist researcher, J. Devika, called the judgement “judicial porn”. She said that,
“The order was not just to exonerate the bishop, it was also to demoralise the survivor and the other nuns who had supported her. It contains graphic descriptions of sexual acts and assault as narrated by the nun. The judge even details a breast examination she underwent. What was the need for any of that?”
As has happened so often before, a man has walked free of all charges of abuse and rape, while the woman who accused him has been publicly vilified and humiliated.
We may never know the full truth of this story, but it belongs within a long history of misogyny when it comes to the treatment of women caught up in sexual scandals. There are biblical precedents which we might draw upon for guidance and wisdom in such cases.
Feminists point to aspects of the Bible that seem to justify misogyny or to advocate the denigration of women, but often this is a fault of scholarly interpretation. Biblical texts are multi-layered and multi-authored, with paradoxes intentionally or unintentionally written into them which invite deep reflection. Rabbinic sources speak of the Torah as black fire written on white fire. Beneath the words we read, there is a dazzling silence which reminds us of the incapacity of all human language to define or conceptualise the eternal mystery of the Holy which is the true source and content of the text. Revelation seeps up from the silences underlying the scriptures in ways that are sometimes disruptive of the status quo and challenge patriarchal authority. Through two millennia of Christian interpretation, the Bible has been studied primarily through the interpretative lens of a scholarly male elite which has assumed both masculine normativity and authority over women. There are many biblical stories within which feminist interpreters discover depths of meaning that remain unexplored.
In the case of the Indian nun and the bishop, I am drawn to the story of the woman caught in adultery in John’s Gospel (John 8: 2-11) to ask what it might have to say about Jesus in relation to women who become the object of public scandal and denigration. There are resonances between this story and that of Susanna and the elders in the Book of Daniel (Chapter 13). Two elders stumbled upon each other spying on Susanna as she bathed. We are told that they both lusted after Susanna and followed her back to her house, demanding that she have sex with them. She refused and they had her arrested and accused of adultery, but Daniel intervened and she was exonerated. In both these stories, a woman was set up for public humiliation and punishment by male authority figures. In the case of Susanna, the Bible makes clear that she was innocent. In John’s Gospel, the question of the woman’s guilt is not directly addressed.
However, even the name of that well-known story is misleading, because the main point is not about whether or not the woman had committed adultery, but about exposing the corrupt behaviour of male religious authorities. The men who hauled the woman before Jesus said that “she was caught in the act of adultery.” We might imagine that she was naked or that her clothing was torn and dishevelled when she was made to stand in front of the large group gathered around Jesus. Her accusers quoted the law of Moses, but under Mosaic Law both the man and the woman should have been punished in proven cases of adultery. Where was the man if the woman was “caught in the act”? There is so much in the story that does not stand up to scrutiny, but the point was to test Jesus. The woman was simply the object of the experiment. Would Jesus agree that she should be stoned to death? Would he perhaps insist that the man should also be brought before her accusers, showing that he knew and upheld the law better than her accusers?
Jesus did neither. What follows tells us much about his understanding of the plight of women caught up in situations of sexual humiliation, as well as his insight into the behaviour of religious authorities. He bent down and wrote on the ground. Scholars speculate as to what he was writing, but I think he was refusing to add to her shame. He averted the male gaze while he considered how to deal with her accusers. Then he stood up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (There’s a Catholic joke about Mary which says that a stone went whizzing past Jesus’s ear, and he said: “Mother!”) Then he bent down again, and we are told that those who heard him went away one at a time, beginning with the eldest.
I think of Jesus saying that “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’” (Matt. 5: 27-28) Again, the male gaze stands condemned. Some among that woman’s accusers may have been guilty of adultery themselves. The man who was with her might even have been one of them. But everyone who found lascivious pleasure in staring at a sexually humiliated woman stood condemned of having committed adultery in his heart. Eventually, Jesus was left alone with the woman. The dialogue that follows is I believe of as much significance today as it was then:
“‘Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” This was the first time that the woman herself was acknowledged and invited to speak. Only when they were alone and her privacy was assured, did Jesus look at her. She had become a speaking subject rather than a silenced object.
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
I cannot count how often I’ve discussed this passage, only for a man to remind me that he told her to stop sinning. There seems to be more concern to ensure that the woman is branded as a sinner than to reflect on the failings of her accusers. But what was the nature of the woman’s sin?
Of course, she might have been caught in flagrante delicto with her absent lover, but she was set up by the religious leaders to test Jesus. She was the victim of an attempt to humiliate Jesus by humiliating her, and indeed to have her stoned to death (though such punishments were probably rarely carried out). Does she constitute a kindred spirit with Jesus, anticipating the day when he would be stripped, accused, humiliated and put to death before a jeering crowd?
It may be relevant to consider Valerie Saiving’s pioneering study on the gendering of sin, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View”, written in 1960. Saiving suggests that women’s failings might have less to do with traditional sins such as pride, lust and ambition, and more to do with a lack of self-worth and a sense of inferiority. She writes that, far from masculine sins of pride, self-centredness and ambition, women are conditioned to self-denial and care to such an extent that “a woman can give too much of herself, so that nothing remains of her own uniqueness; she can become merely an emptiness, almost a zero, without value to herself, to her fellow men, or, perhaps, even to God.” (p. 108).
With great insight and subtlety, Jesus turned attention away from the woman and towards the accusing crowd. By remaining alone with her and speaking directly to her, he restored her sense of dignity and self-worth. He affirmed that she was not an emptiness but a person of immense value, worthy of respect.
This reading is a personal reflection which makes no claim to biblical scholarship. Nevertheless, I think it is relevant to the story of that Indian nun.
The media report that the Bishop was smiling and praising God as he left the court, while his supporters showered him with flowers. Whatever the facts of this case, his accuser has become the victim who, like the woman in the Gospel story, stands in the lascivious glare of the court’s judgement and its humiliating impact on her reputation. We might ask why any woman would put herself through such a lengthy process of exposing herself to public scandal if she were not telling the truth, but that is not the point. We know without doubt that, whatever the outcome of this particular case, there are many, many bishops and priests who have been proven guilty of rape and sexual abuse. Pope Francis has acknowledged that nuns are victims of sexual abuse, even being kept as “sex slaves”. Of course all such allegations must be given a fair hearing, but if the result is that those who bring charges of abuse themselves become the victims of public degradation, they are unlikely to risk coming forward.
In the same week that the story of the Indian nun was in the media, a report was published which said that the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) was one of several senior German archbishops who failed to take appropriate action with regard to priests found guilty of sexual abuse. As Head of the CDF and then Pope, this was a man who was zealous in his pursuit of theologians who questioned church teaching around issues such as homosexuality, abortion or women’s ordination. The hypocrisy is truly sickening, and that is what we should be calling out again and again. As in the time of Jesus, so today, too many religious leaders are so preoccupied by their obsessions with controlling women’s sexual bodies that they lose sight of the corrupted hierarchies of which they are a part.