Catholic Priest Says Justice-Work Demands Spiritual Discipline: Working for the poor requires sacrifice
Alexa Smith, Presbyterian Hunger Program
Protest in the Sea of Nuclear Power Plant in Koodankulum. Photos courtesy of Father Thomas Kocherry.
Father Thomas Kocherry sees little separation between his work as a Roman Catholic priest, a lawyer, a labor leader, and an ecologist of sorts in southern India, where he helped found the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers (WFF).
Those may be multiple titles, but as Kocherry understands it, it is one job description. His calling has meant that he has been jailed nearly 20 times, fasted as a non-violent witness, preached and prayed – all part of his work to change environmental policy, and, foremost, the poverty among India’s fisher people.
He has worked to galvanize workers to protect India’s coastland from aggressive forms of development that threaten the livelihoods of vulnerable fisher communities and the pollutants and industrial-style fishing that put the ocean and its fish population at risk. In 1981, Kocherry fasted to support a trawl ban. By 1982, he was president of the National Fishworkers Forum and by the mid-1990’s, was at the forefront of a national campaign that included marches, fasts and blockades on ports to stop the government from opening its waters to foreign trawlers. Ultimately, the Indian government conceded.
The work still goes on.
But, at 73, with a weak heart, he’s now put down on paper his theological reflections. Why this life? This faith? This call? This work?
He calls his book, Faith in Jesus: A Passionate Call for Liberation. It is his contribution to what the Roman Catholic Church is calling the “Year of Faith,” a season ending Nov. 24, 2013, that marks the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, an assembly of Roman Catholic religious leaders tasked with modernizing the doctrines of the church, and calls all Catholics to study and reflect on those documents and the catechism to deepen faith among practicing Catholics and to draw in new converts.
There is some urgency for clarity now. He recently collapsed during a sermon during Sunday worship. His older sister is on hand to help with his care. He has had a series of heart attacks and is acutely aware that he will not be here for forever. It is a bit like hearing thunder in the distance, while waiting on raindrops to fall.
“In my life, this is what I’ve been trying to say,” Kocherry says, referring to his booklet, which contends that the liberating force of Jesus’ life and ministry can only be understood through the experience of enslavement, oppression and prophetic opposition to power-brokering within institutionalized religion, fundamental themes in Jewish history and religious thought.
March to Delhi of the Land Less to Protest Koodankulam Nuclear Plant.
Redress sought in the calls of Abraham, Moses and the classical prophets, as well as Jesus, are a lens to view discipleship now and to formulate a faith-based response to a globalizing world. If you ask, he’ll talk about wealth that is amassed by a few at the expense of the many, about the few limits placed on tapping environmental resources, about people who are seen as consumers rather than creations of God. He also speaks of those who are deprived of education because of color, gender or caste – seen most vividly in the lives of fisher folk in India and Sri Lanka, who’ve been caught in the globalization struggle for decades now - whether it is fighting industrial over-fishing, an end to industrial pollution, and, now, protections for beachfront villages that corporations are grabbing up for tourist development.
“In that (prophetic) tradition, everyone is called to the mission of Christ. And, you have to pay the price for it to respond to the call,” he says, adding that his own trajectory was set as a 22-year-old seminarian challenged by a working priest to recapture the “charism” of the tradition by working for the poor.
“It is not very easy,” he says.
The data proves that.
Kocherry believes that followers of Jesus are innately Suffering Servants and the witness is “a passionate call for liberation through non-violent means,” catching its proponents in the eternal conflict between life and death. The hope, he says, is that the “old world” will be overthrown one day and Jesus’ kingdom alone “will arise from the ruins.”
This work puts followers at odds with corporate, government, social and, often, religious power because institutions protect the systems that protect them. The church is no different, he says. Usually it is single individuals, not churches, who step forward in fights like these. What is necessary is to “realize your call within your institution,” Kocherry proposes, knowing that struggle is simply a part of the work of justice and that we are inescapably part of institutions.
That is a mantra that he repeats out loud.
In 1997, Kocherry was awarded the PEW Foundation Award of $150,000 (U.S. dollars) for marine conservation and he turned it down. The award itself is funded by the Sun Oil Company, which, he says, is a polluter. He has been recognized for human rights work – without incident – by the FIAN International for Socio-economic Human Rights Protection. The Earth Society Foundation in New York recognized his work for marine ecology in 1998 at the Earth Day celebrations at the United Nations. In 1999, he was one of the winners of the $100,000 Sophie Prize from Norway to honor contributions in the field of alternative politics and development.
But this is not work for the weak or the spiritually lazy.
“What is your inner strength to face such a struggle? … How can you face opposition left and right?” Kocherry challenges, adding that contemplative practice is the only way he knows to clearly see patterns of deception in the world that conform people unwittingly to a money driven culture.
Father Thomas Kocherry.
It is the struggle Jesus faced in Jerusalem, he says, when he pled with God to take his cup away, and then, finally, sacrifices his life. Without such struggle, he says, our search for justice is another exercise in human will and self-deception, rather than the deep internal transformation that is spiritually revolutionary and helps people live “truthfully, honestly and lovingly.”
Whatever the practice, Kocherry says, it must be liberating and life-giving, not mere ritual or dogmatic. Each follower must find his/her practice.
“This is the crux of the problem of spirituality: If we are called by God or by Jesus … we are seeking the kingdom and justice. That is all-inclusive, not exclusive, the spirituality of any church. And naturally, you’re going to be opposed by the institutions of the world [who do not] stand for justice, [who do not] stand for truth,” he says.
