LEON James Suseran’s letter “Not an easy time to be a Catholic” (GC30/9/10) has come to my attention. Suseran, a convert from Lutheranism, is horribly upset by the widespread stories of Catholic priests all over the Western World who have sexually abused thousands of children. After viewing the TV programmes on this subject, it has upset Suseran’s equanimity and stomach. I want to say a word of comfort and realism to Suseran and all Roman Catholics, but before doing so, I preface my remarks with instances of religious persecution which may put in better context the stories of the paedophile priests.
I am from the most ancient Faith in the world – Hinduism. It is a faith that has been attacked, reviled, despised and persecuted more than any other faith. For centuries, its temples have been destroyed and its adherents murdered by followers of the Semitic religions. In Guyana here, from the time Hindus arrived as indentured immigrants to the time they tried to find a place in the sun as teachers and students, they have had to suffer all kinds of humiliations and discrimination and oppression. Such foreign religious groups like the Presbyterians of Canada and the Lutherans of the USA have insensitively and shamelessly made it their life’s work to lead the Hindus away from their ancestral Faith to their own. And so do the recent American Fundamental Churches.
The main methodology of this process is to deprive the Hindus of any knowledge of the universal philosophy and ethics of their faith by a clever and expertly crafted system of misinformation and above all, to beat it into them that they are inferior. Young Hindus are again beginning to re-discover the magnificent ethical and spiritual teachings of their tradition and are pleasantly surprised to find that millions in the Western world are discovering the enlightenment, comfort and salvation which the Hindu/ Buddhist tradition offers.
The Roman Catholic Church has also been persecuted, discriminated against and despised in some eras and in some parts of the world, but it has survived. It has survived because there is far more good than bad in the Church. The numbers of priests who have criminally molested children are very tiny when compared with the hundreds of thousands of priests who bring civilisation, comfort, spirituality and salvation to the millions and millions. To focus on the few hundreds of priests and to hold them up as representing the Church is both non-sensical and unscientific. It would be more logical and correct to focus on the hundreds of thousands of priests who are good and devoted men serving humanity. It is they who characterise the priesthood of the Church.
For the few hundreds of criminal priests, the Roman Catholic church as a whole cannot be blamed. Many persons with paedophile tendencies decided to use the church as a cover to carry out their nefarious designs. They were wicked in the first place and were merely using the church’s priestly clothes and language as a disguise to practise their innate criminality. Schools, universities, colleges, businesses and other institutions have all suffered regularly from criminals, who have adopted their uniforms or other guises to pass themselves as members, yet we don’t blame the whole college, school, university or business; equally, we cannot blame the Catholic church because of these criminals who have exploited it.
And secondly, like in all other institutions, there are good and honest men who fall because of some quirk fate. And the good but unfortunate priests have fallen because of two things:- (i) Failure to practise their stringent spiritual discipline and (ii) because of incorrect dietary habits.
In the Catholic tradition, there is a corpus of stringent spiritual discipline which has been practised in the Middle Ages by such great men as Thomas  Kempis and St. Francis of Assissi. The Sanskrit word used in Hinduism to describe this kind of discipline is Tapasya. Tapasya is more organised and complete since it was developed over thousands of years of trial and error and as such is more effective than the more recent and individualist approach to spiritual discipline. Priestly training in the cultivation of spiritual discipline must use the methods within the Catholic tradition and supplement these with some of the techniques of Tapasya. By adopting some of the techniques of Tapasya, Catholic spiritual training would be perfected and would revolutionise Western spirituality. The use of Tapasya techniques does not in any way mean that one is becoming a Hindu anymore than the doctor who tells his patient to use some Yoga techniques or the heart patient who has to use digitalis, an Ayurvedic medicine.
Finally, the Hindu scriptures in the ancient writings of five thousand years ago emphasised the truth that the kind of food a person eats greatly helps in creating his mental and emotional life and temperament. This truth is of course known in the West but not enough notice is taken of it.
The three broad categories of food are Sattwic – foods which are soft and white e.g. milk and most vegetables; Rajasic – foods which are hot, pungent or red like peppers and meat; and Tamasic – foods which are black and have high odour.
Sattwic foods create thoughtful, meditative and intellectual temperaments and are used by priests, teachers and intellectuals while Rajasic foods create aggressive and violent temperament and are used by soldiers, administrators, etc, such Rajasic foods create strong libido. (All of this is found in Bhagwad Gita).
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic priests and monks did not eat much meat. Their diet was generally vegetarian, though on Fridays fish was eaten if available. To-day, in the modern West, priests like most of the middle and upper classes, eat a great deal of meat.
They also drink harder liquors, while in the Middle Ages they drank milder wines which did not stir the emotions like hard liquor and was a comfort in the colder climates with little heating. Today, this over-intake of meat and hard liquor increases libido and sexuality and leads to the difficulties faced by many priests who are deterministly driven to homosexuality and paedophilism against their will and consciences.
Accordingly, when the church re-discovers its medieval disciplinary and dietary traditions, the church would suffer no more priestly scandals. And I am sure the church will correct whatever deficiencies there are as it has done over the centuries and will continue to bring spiritual comfort to millions. Take heart, therefore, Leon Jameson Suseran, the Catholic Church will continue to survive just like your ancestral Hindu Faith, Sanatan (Eternal) Dharma (Faith).