TID-7: What could we have done better: The discontinuous Leadership?

TID-7: What could we have done better: The discontinuous Leadership?

In the last article, we saw the great things that IOC did to reach out
to the people of Idukki. This series would be a one sided story if we
do not look at where we could have done better. More over, our
strength is not in suppressing our mistakes, but to confront them and
make changes to better handle such situations in the future. In
addition to these reasons, we must try to understand why such
situations happen and why it is important for us to support bishops
who take up challenging tasks in such situations.

As we learnt, the time period of 1992-2005 can be considered the
blackout era of Idukki. In this period there was never a full time
metropolitan for Idukki. Either someone had an additional charge or
there was no bishop to lead Idukki diocese.

Why did this happen? May be we didn't have enough bishops.

Well, let's look at some statistics to see if this was the reason.

In 1992, IOC had 20 dioceses. In 2002, the historic unification
happened. At this time, four of the best 'cream layer' peace loving
metropolitans joined us. This resulted in the increase of the number
of bishops by 4. In addition to the dioceses that were formed as a
result of unification, we also formed new dioceses such as the
Mavelikara diocese. By 2002, number of dioceses went up to 25
dioceses. We also appointed bishops for all the 2002 newly formed
dioceses.

It is interesting to note that even in 2002, even though we were able
to find full time bishops for even newly created dioceses such as
Mavelikara, we were not able to find a full time bishop for Idukki
diocese, a place that has been thirsting for a bishop for more than a
decade. Idukki for some reason remained the neglected child.

To understand why this happened, here are some of the questions that
we should ask ourselves with respect to the inability to find bishops
for Idukki.

1. If there is a shortage of bishops, what should be our approach in
assigning bishops?
2. If we had a shortage of bishops, was it a good idea to form new dioceses?
3. If we have a shortage of bishops, is it fair for one diocese to
suffer for 13 years?
4. Even if we had a shortage of bishops, why didn't any bishops
volunteer to be the bishop of Idukki?

We will look at each of these of these questions in detail in the next
couple of articles.

Let us start with the first question by asking another question.

Assume that you are in charge of 25 children and that one among the 25
was handicapped. If you had 24 caretakers, which child you would
assign the first and the best caretaker. Undoubtedly, you would assign
the first and best caretaker to care for the handicapped child.

Based on this answer, Idukki being the most backward diocese must have
got the first and best bishop, but it did not happen at times,
especially from 1992-2005.

Idukki diocese is small diocese with just 34 churches, many of them
not even able to pay salaries to their priests. It is highly likely
that the reason why Idukki did not get a full time bishop was because
it was a small diocese. While making a decision of assigning a bishop
(full time Vs part time), we could at least have four view points.
They are

1. Being a small diocese, the needs might be less and hence let us
appoint a part time bishop.
2. Being a small diocese, we want to grow it into a large diocese,
which needs lots of effort and hence let us appoint a full time bishop
3. Even though a diocese is small, based on other considerations such
as geographical spread and developmental challenges, to be effective,
let us appoint a full time bishop.
4. Due to the distance and transportation challenges to the closest
dioceses, it might be ineffective for a bishop to execute his duties
in two dioceses. Hence let us appoint a full time bishop for the
remote diocese.

The situations in viewpoints 2-4 are very true for Idukki diocese and
hence a full time bishop is an absolute must, even if there was a
shortage of bishops. The ideal approach in a scenario where we have
shortage of bishops would be to share bishops between dioceses that do
not have these challenges.

Unfortunately there have been times when the IOC leadership made
decisions ignoring view points 2-4. The cost of these decisions
probably triggered the decay of Idukki diocese.

Next Article: TID-8: What could we have done better: Aggravating the
Bishop Shortage?

Thanks,
Rajesh Vargheese
http://www.stgregoriosaustin.org/