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The one whom I’d like to hold up this month as a shining candle is a person who seems to be an extraordinary combination of intellectual prowess and spiritual depth, somebody whom we would always admire, applaud and praise God for.

But you may not have heard of Dr Francis Collins, the Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is not as widely known as Dr Anthony Fauci, who has been interviewed dozens of times by the American TV channels, on the country’s fight against COVID 19 that has killed more than 500,000 Americans in less than a year. But, in fact, it is Dr Francis Collins, who, as the boss of Fauci, oversees his contribution and that of so many others to the fight against the killer pandemic. The media have highlighted the fact that the way Collins has handled his job as the Director of NIH will help his country not merely contain this virus soon but also be prepared for the next pandemic.

Francis Sellers Collins, 70, is a physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. Homeschooled by his mother during his childhood, Collins was interested in science from the beginning. In 1970 he received a B.S. from the University of Virginia, and went on to Yale University to earn an M.S. and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. But he realized he wanted to be a doctor – not just a scientist. “I’m a physician scientist,” he says.  “It’s interesting when you read the life of Christ how much of his time he spent healing the sick. There must have been a reason for that—he was modelling for us what it is we are intended to do by following his path.”

After earning an M.D. at the University of North Carolina, Collins joined the University of Michigan as an assistant professor. His work there earned him a reputation as one of the world’s foremost genetics researchers. While leading the National Human Genome Research Institute, Collins was elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Collins and his colleague, Craig Venter, were honored as two of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report and the Harvard University Center for Public Leadership.

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Fr M A Joe Antony SJ

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KEVIN

Greetings beloved Magnet family, or perhaps more appropriately, “Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 1:3)  As I write to you this month, I am filled with a great appreciation for who we are as children of God, members of the same family, the Body of Christ.

Memories at Mother’s Funeral

We are just back from my beloved mother’s funeral.  My mom, Marie Louise, was a wonderful, faith-filled mother of nine children. While partings are always somewhat sorrowful, I find myself full of joy and hope. Marie was 89 years old and suffering with dementia over the last six years. She remained a faithful woman who regularly shared with the Lord her readiness to be called home. God blessed her with a peaceful death and I am sure a rousing welcome into eternal life.

While the sadness comes naturally as a result of the death of a loved one, joy returns quickly when I reflect on what is lost.  As the song writer Joni Mitchell once sang, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” The days leading up to the funeral Mass were filled with family members sharing vivid memories of a woman of great faith and service. We all remembered our mother gathering her rambunctious brood around the radio to pray the family rosary on a Saturday night or standing over a hot stove preparing another freshly cooked meal for that same crowd every night of the week. In retrospect, it appeared as a gift of true grace, Christ Himself loving and serving our family.  I felt so blessed by God to have only positive memories, especially since I know that isn’t always the case for others.  Nine Kids and seventy years of loving and giving… wow!

Dad: Not Perfect, but a Blessing

It was so easy to be flooded with grateful memories of my mother, but one of the surprise blessings of the past week was the call of the Holy Spirit to reflect on the blessing that my father Thomas was in my life and the life of the family.  …….

Crystal and Kevin Sullivan

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Introduction

The scope of this article is limited to the understanding of “member” and “membership” in a Society (registered under the Societies Act/s) and not with other forms of organization, such as Trust or Company or Corporation, etc.  References will be made to the Society Registration Act 1860 (SRA-1860) legislated by the Central Government.

1.     Who is a member?

According to the SRA-1860, an individual human person will be considered a “member” of the Society when: (a) the person has been admitted according to its Rules and Regulations (R&R), (b) has paid the subscription fees, (c) has signed the roll or list of members, and (d) has not resigned according to its R&R.

Membership in a Society is a free act. A person cannot be forced to become a member of a Society, nor is it a matter of the religious vow of obedience. A Society too cannot be forced to admit a person to its membership against its R&R. The provisions of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 (such as, minimum age limit, sound mind, no moral culpability, communication to be done in writing, exercising free will, etc.), will apply when admitting/rejecting a person to membership. In a Society governed by Religious Congregations, admission to membership can be limited to the permanent members of the Congregation, and such a clause can be inserted into its R&R.

Granting of membership to a person is the prerogative of the Society and not an inherent right of any individual. A person cannot demand that he/she should be given membership. The key word in understanding membership is “admitted,” which supposes that there should be defined rules and procedures to be followed while accepting a person as a member.

2.     Procedure for admission

The rules for admission to membership should be clearly mentioned in the R&R of the Society, and these should be strictly adhered to. The procedure about application form, time-frame, etc., can be mentioned in the accompanying manual of administration of the Society. The procedure for admission may be along the following lines:

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Fr Trevor D’Souza OFM

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Christianity is said to have been introduced in India in the first century by St Thomas, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, who might have landed on the Malabar Coast in AD 52. Christianity is the first foreign religion to be introduced to the natives of this country. It is today the third largest religion in India, making up 2.35% of the total population.

The Catholic faith is today practised by over 19.91 million people in India, which represents just 1.55% of the total Indian population, and 65% of the total Christian population. Most Catholics reside in South India, with significant numbers in North East India. Though Catholics are a small minority community in India, their contributions in the fields of education, culture and languages, health care, social services, administration, defence, and tribal welfare and development are significant and well known.

Catholic Education: Numbers and Quality
Education is central to sustainable and overall development. It empowers people and builds a nation. Investment in education benefits the individual, society and the world as a whole. Education is the answer to many socio-economic and political problems.
Catholic involvement in educational work in India has a long history. It is part of the larger educational system in the country. The original purpose of Catholic institutions was to impart education to Catholic children, but, in due course of time, it was extended to children of other faiths as well.

Fr J Felix Raj SJ

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Sahana vavatu sahana bhunaktu saha viryam karvavahe …: “Let us live together, let us eat together, let us do deeds of valour together.” These lines from the Katha Upanishad, uttered in the context of students gathered together to learn, remind us that the physical realities and necessities of life and the intangibles are inextricably linked. They are particularly apposite for educators in the present scenario, both world-wide and in our country. Education has become the last bastion of quality, integrity, justice, compassion, values. Even when these are crumbling everywhere else, it is expected that educational institutions should enshrine these virtues, should live by these principles.

It is a heavy responsibility that we shoulder, especially when we think of those for whom education is a longed-for but distant dream. The grant-in-aid system certainly makes it possible to make education more broad-based, but it carries its own challenges – overflowing classrooms, overworked teachers, admission policies dictated by the state, government and university influence brought to bear on admissions as well as evaluation processes, and many more. How does one continue to impart quality education, continue to ensure that education is more than rote-learning, is indeed empowerment? The new National Education Policy has outlined a road map towards excellence, but there are a number of aspects of it that are a cause for concern. These will need serious attention if our educational institutions are to survive and continue to provide the kind of dedicated service that has been our hallmark. Nor is this all: for all those who are involved in tertiary education as a service, this is increasingly a challenge, since we are faced with a rapidly morphing world. We need to take a number of elements into account in considering this.

Sr Ananda Amritmahal RSCJ

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Are we really educators who make a difference? Here are six tips for making that difference.

If to be Christian means to have ‘Christ in,’ then Christian education is a ‘Christ-in’ education—one in which Christ is seen more than heard, practised more than preached. This means that the educator must have ‘Christ in’ before he/she can give ‘Christ out.’ To have Christ in means to see Christ everywhere. How can we make this happen?
Perhaps, the first step is to visualise Christ in others—students, staff and parents. “I see Jesus in every human being,” said St. Teresa of Kolkata, “I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.” This is to be a mystic daily. It leads us to desire deeply their good and to bless them from the heart. Tshering Palden Thinley, a Bhutanese Buddhist alumnus of our college, remembers the respect, cordiality and acceptance she experienced which soothened the initial apprehension she had about joining a Catholic college outside her country.
The second is to bring into the campus the ‘joy of the Gospel’ through one’s joyful life manifested in a smile. I can still see the smiling eyes of Sr Cyriac CMC of happy memory, who taught us science in middle school. The contents may be forgotten, but not her smiling countenance. A smile does the magic of putting others at ease. “We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do,” said St Theresa of Kolkata.

Fr Tomy Augustine SDB

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“Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” sang the poet Wordsworth. It need not be for all infants. Each and every baptised child has a right to Christian education. From the security of a home, when the child is transported into a nursery school, the parents expect the child to grow up into a healthy personality. The school starts playing an important role in the life of this growing child. In olden days, in the case of Catholics, admission in a Catholic school run by educated priests and nuns was considered to be a great blessing. When it was time for a Catholic girl to get married, the advertisement in the matrimonial column ‘convent-educated girl’ was highly appreciated by the bridegroom’s party. Girls and boys educated in Catholic schools and colleges had special qualities. They were spiritual, and they appreciated the values inculcated in them in Catholic Institutions.
Today, in following the established process of admission, institutions face rigid constraints and all Catholic students do not get access to Catholic education.

Inspiring Pioneers
As a child, I had the good fortune to study in one of the leading Catholic educational institutions of Kerala, St Teresa’s Convent School, Kochi, run by the Carmelite Sisters. The majority of nuns at that time were Europeans. They were all well versed in the art of teaching, singing, dancing and all other extra curricular activities. Great importance was given to the Catechism classes everyday. The holy nuns inculcated in the students the values of Jesus Christ. Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and attendance at Holy Mass on special feast days was looked forward to with great longing. Everyday a short passage from The Word of God was read and explained by the sister in the Catechism class. The holiness, kindness and love of the sisters was so transparent that we sat awestruck at their demeanour and the words of wisdom. This much is ‘emotion recollected in tranquility’ about those good old days – that is, about seventy years back!!

Professor Kunjannam Andrews

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Part II of the discussion on mental illness presented in the previous issue.

Two Cases
Edward came to therapy because he could not get along with his wife. He believed his wife does not want him to be happy. “She does everything possible to make sure I am not happy,” he said. “I am most unfortunate to have married her. She is ruining my life.” As an example, he narrated how his wife would deliberately rattle the dishes in the kitchen so that he could not sleep. He believed that she is actually the devil in disguise. As he unfolded his story in subsequent sessions, it became quite evident that he had misgivings not only about his wife, but about almost everyone around him as well. He believed, for instance, that all South Indians were against him because he was a North Indian and were trying to get him into trouble. The woman he worked with at the office was deliberately plotting to get him dismissed from the job. Auto-rickshaw drivers were honking as he passed them on the road to deliberately annoy him. His cousin was turning his aunt against him. His mother-in-law was sending him bad vibes, so that he would get sick and die….
Maryann was brought to therapy by her husband. He had been noticing strange behaviours in her for a year. She believed that building contractors in the town were out to poison the water supply. She had to protect people against them. God had chosen her specially to do this. She alone had the power to thwart their attempts. She does this with her own specially concocted water that she carries around wherever she goes. She intrudes into the houses of her neighbours and blesses them, assuring them that they will be protected from an impending disaster. She would also see very big ants and scorpions and other dangerous creatures swarming the houses—her own and the neighbours’. When she visited homes, she would point to these non-existing creatures and warn the family to be wary of them. Her actions have alienated the neighbours and affected her family relationships. These beliefs and behaviours began a year earlier, when her husband, who was in the construction business, faced some serious setbacks. Some developers had cheated him, and he suffered a huge loss. The family was thrown into acute financial distress….
Both Edward and Maryann were suffering from Schizophrenia—Edward with paranoid delusions, and Maryann with paranoid and grandiose delusions, as well as hallucinations.

FR JOSE PARAPPULLY SDB

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ANIMATION
“He is the life and soul of the community.” This is the observation I heard, just last week, about a priest in one of our formation communities. This is the meaning of animation – being the ‘life and soul of the community.’
In fact, the word ‘animation’ comes from the Latin word, ‘anima,’ which means soul, life. The superior has to be for the community what the soul is for any living being. What does the soul do for a living organism? The soul does mainly three things: i) it gives identity; ii) it gives unity; iii) it gives dynamism (life). As long as the soul is present, an organism manifests these three characteristics. Once the soul leaves, it loses these characteristics. Take the example of a human being. Till a particular moment we say he/she is alive, that is, he/she is a human being and has a name (identity); every part of the person is glued together and works together for the good of the whole (unity); and the person has vivacity, energy (dynamism). After a particular moment, we say he/she is dead. He/she becomes a corpse (loses identity); each part disintegrates (loses unity) and becomes inert (loses life). Like a soul, the superior has to give identity, unity and life to the community and its members.
The superior guarantees the identity of the community in two ways: i) The superior is the steward of the charism of the congregation and of the vision/ mission of the community. The superior ensures that only those things that promote the charism and mission are pursued by the members. ii) It is said that, over a period of time, every organization takes on the characteristics of the one who leads it. The superior cultivates in himself/herself those characteristics that are in keeping with the charism and mission, so as to be able to bequeath that to the community.

Fr Jose Kuttianimattathil SDB

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In continuation of the Finance column in the February issue, this article explains “objective clause” more thoroughly.
The “object clause” forms the heart of the Memorandum of Association (MA) or Trust Deed (TD). The main reason for the entity coming into existence is to carry out the purposes/objects laid down in the object clause. The objects should be drafted in a very simple, clear and unambiguous language. The objects should clearly portray the intentions of the subscribers to the MA and the settlor of the Trust. Much attention and thought should be invested in drafting the objects.

OBJECT CLAUSE UNDER THE INCOME TAX ACT
Under the IT Act 1961, it is necessary for the entity to be registered under sections 10(23) and/or 12A to be designated as a notified or approved entity. This registration entitles the society or trust to file its return as a charitable / religious / public utility entity and avail the benefits thereunder. The registration under the above sections is granted based solely on the objects of the entity. The income tax officials will thoroughly examine the objects and then classify the entity as charitable / religious / public utility. Once this registration is granted, then the entity acquires the identity and tag noted in the certificate. As 12A is a basic registration, the classification it receives matters.
Once the 12A registration is completed, the entity is obliged to utilise its funds only for carrying out the objects noted in the MA and TD. An entity cannot utilise its funds for objects not mentioned in its object clause. An entity cannot subsequently enlarge the scope of objects, on its own accord, without first amending the object clause.

Fr Trevor D’Souza OFM

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