Cathloic shenanigans in Cameroon over abortion and homosexuality

As a woman, I have learnt by trial and error (mostly error) not to believe automatically what large groups of men tell me. When the group is as large and exclusive of females (don’t give me that guff about nuns – can a nun be a cardinal?) as the Catholic Church, I am very, very, wary.
Why am I talking about the unam sanctam Catholicam church in which I used to profess belief? Because something has happened in Cameroon. It may well be said that a lot has happened in Cameroon, not least a dangerously wobbly Constitution, and a new Prime Minister who, I hear, refused to behave himself when confronted with Fons bearing gifts.
But other things have happened. The Maputo Declaration has happened. What’s that when it’s at home? I’s gonna tell ya. The actual document is a Protocol of the African Union additional to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. You can read it here , but I think the clause at issue is article 14 (2) (c). Article 14 deals with health and reproductive rights. Here is the offending text, (probably inserted in a perfectly innocent protocol by the Antichrist):

c) protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising
medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest,
and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental
and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus.

I hear there was a March of the Righteous. That’s my description, not theirs. The archbishop is quoted as saying:

The coadjutor Archbishop of the Douala Archdiocese, Samuel Kleda said in the homily during the Mass, "We are in agreement with this praiseworthy project (of protecting women). Who can remain indifferent to the suffering of a woman? At the same time, we cannot pretend to defend women by proposing that they have an abortion and use contraception, which threatens their dignity and nuclear family. No reason can be used to justify abortion or infanticide."

Then the Upstation Mountain Club published an article from The Mask about accusations that the Mother Church may have been economical with the truth. The Mask says: “Steave Nemande, President of Alternatives Cameroon, said this is a deliberate manipulation of the public’s opinion since nowhere in the protocol is homosexuality mentioned”.

In defence of the Sancta Catholica Ecclesia, they might not have known that they were lying. Maybe they just heard about the transnational declaration being endorsed by our parliament, that bastion of democracy, and tried to walk on water. Not being Jesus, they sank. Big time. Put less facetiously, they heard alarm bells and decided to come out swinging without first reading the text of the declaration.
But between you and me, what kind of person starts such an outcry without first checking what he is crying out about?

No, I’m afraid it looks like they meant to pitch an orchestrated public fit about this. Anyway, I’ll leave them to their pitching of fits and invite you to read this article about assumptions. It is called the Doctrine of Negative Inference.

One paragraph in particular stands out. Reference is made therein to a fellow called Harold Geneen, who said “The reliability of the person giving you the facts is as important as the facts themselves. Keep in mind that facts are seldom facts, but what people think are facts, heavily tinged with assumptions.”

Al Maxey adds: “It is a reality of human nature that we tend to assume much in the face of facts, and, quite frequently, these assumptions take on much more weight than the facts from which they were drawn. The danger of such an interpretive procedure is dogmatism. The facts themselves become mere incidentals; our inferences from those facts are what become determinative! This can be detrimental to Truth.”

At the end of his article, Maxey says: “If we would ‘stick to the facts’ of Scripture, and leave our many inferences and assumptions in the realm of personal reference, we would be infinitely closer to realizing the prayer of our Lord in John 17 for oneness.”

The article makes a great number of intelligent statements, only some of which strike a chord with moi. And my beef is not about scripture. That’s too complex for someone like me, who can barely find the time to blog these days much less get though my reading backlog.

I just want to go with this inferences thing for a while. I hear Cameroon is about to be overwhelmed by a great big wave of dirty and bad homosexuals. A putative presidential candidate for 2011 has referred to the homosexual lobby. I wouldn’t vote for him myself because I think such a dangerously prejudiced person should not be in public office. He would be the president of all Cameroonians, including homosexuals. Yes, I too have heard the rumours of homosexuality in high places. You really think that is the problem with our country? Come on!

What concerns me is this. Should we trust the Catholics when they tell us what to do? Are we about to be overwhelmed by a wave of evil that makes Nazi Germany and the slave trade look like church picnics? Talking of Hitler and slavery, were these bad times in humanity’s history not based on one group excluding and exploiting other people who were not like them? Did not  - do not - a great many people in the world believe the worst they can about Black people and Jews? So they are right because that was the way everyone did things and they had large organizations telling them that this was so?

(Oh. and while I think about it, I don’t want to hear that we-black-people-are-cursed thing. Speak for yourself. I’m not cursed!)

Back to the Church. Each time I feel like going back there, I am reminded of three things.
The first is Mary Magdalene. Put up your hands those of you who think she was a whore. Put your hands down. Now open another tab and google her immediately, you lazy so-and-so! As I have said before on this blog, the Church decided in 1969 that she was no longer a whore. I was born after that time, and I still grew up thinking that she was one. I’m afraid I spent a lot of my time in a Catholic school. I’m not saying I heard it there because I don’t even know where I heard this for the first time, but I am thinking that if they had told me in school and in church that she was not a whore, I would have remembered.

Two thousand years of libel against this woman and when they clear her name, they’re not shouting it from the rooftops? If the news that she is not a sinner after all is not Good News, what the hell is?
The second thing is the issue of the earth’s shape. You see, the bible says that the thing has four corners, like a towel or a tablecloth. So when Galileo said it was actually round, the pope had him tortured. What did the pope think when he saw the horizon curving away? That it was a trick of divine light? Now the earth is recognized as round by everyone. Admittedly, many more people than the Catholics thought the earth was flat. It was the prevailing view at the time. But is it right now? No. Have you heard any publicity for church conferences organised around the theme “When we get it wrong, we tell ya”?

The third thing is the hundreds of thousands of new Christian churches. Most of them have a very distant relationship with Christ, poor man. The short way of putting this is that if all those people knew what they were doing, they would not have so many organizations. And I won’t trust people who don’t know what to think but still insist on “sharing” it with you. That’s not good news. That’s totally bad news.

Following on from that, I think if the Catholic Church had got its act together, people would not be so quick to go off and form their own churches. The Church failed them. It has gone on failing them all through the ages. In trying to twist the issue of the protocol to prey on people’s fears, it had certainly failed the women of Cameroon.

And now what does it do? If we are to believe the report in the Mask, it is now whipping up public hatred and prejudice in Cameroon for its own ends. If it turns out that the Church knew that the Maputo Declaration dealt with abortion and not homosexuality, how will that make thinking Christians feel? It’s one thing to go on quietly using condoms because you know the priests have got it wrong and who the hell is going to tell them. It’s quite another to take to the street because the majority view holds a thing to be wrong.

I have also looked at that protocol whose clause has aroused mine ire. It is, in fact, a protocol on the rights of women in Africa. It has many interesting clauses, including the right to inheritance and the right to the special protection of elderly women. The document is about 32 pages long. It is full of good things for women. The church ignores all that and focuses on the one paragraph, ignoring all the other things that might be of benefit? This document has been in the public domain for ages. Why did they not try to change the wording at the time it was being drafted?

They want to throw out the baby with the bath water merely because they do not know why babies are important. This is what happens, women, when you let an organisation of supposedly celibate men speak on your behalf. What do Catholic priests know about abortion, incest and rape except when they are interfering with parishioners?

Even if you agree that if a girl or woman gets pregnant because of rape, incest or some such bad thing, she should live with a perpetual reminder of her powerlessness, or that if pregnancy threatens her life, she should risk death and have the child (you’ll find that most men would prefer their wives to live, actually) would you throw away all the other rights she might enjoy because you do not like just the one? What does the archbishop quoted above propose in place of what he decries? I see some crackpot in the article above saying this is a ploy by white people to limit our population. Do this fellow really think that a significant portion of Africa’s birth rate is accounted for by the victims of rape, incest and by pregnant women who are very ill and may risk their lives to give birth? Why does the Church not use the pulpit and its considerable resources to advocate its stance and convince its faithful? Why is it trying to force all other people – including those who do not believe in its teaching – to live according to the sometimes dangerously flawed precepts of its own faith? Especially when history has shown that it can and has been wrong time and again?

Are conciliation and understanding such scarce commodities within its organisation that the Catholic Church is ready to deny African women their rights – the  women who sweep its churches, bear the children who are its priests and who make up the bulk of its faithful – employing the cynical ploy of combining the issue with homosexuality, which many people hate not because they have actually seen practicing homosexuals do things they do not like, but because they have been told that it is a bad thing?

Are they peddling hate as righteousness?

Is this the faith of my father? I think not.

Oh. Another thing. Those of you Africans who say homosexuality is a white man’s thing shut the hell up. Suits are a white man’s thing. Why, when it is often so hot that it is the only reasonable option,  aren’t you going to work in a grass skirt?

Comments

[Avitus Agbor]

Hi Rosemary,

I call this a succinct and thorough visitation to a very serious issue in our country. I like the approach taken. I have been in debates on this same-sex relationship issue. The views of the differing sides are educative and interesting. However, I discern some dangers when I listen to the guys who militate against same-sex relationships. They found their arguments based on Christianity/Christian values. That is quite acceptable and understandable. I am a Christian. But what worries me is they fail to look at the position of atheists, and non-Christians. They select these individuals and levy all kinds of criticisms against them. Oh yeah..it is the worst sin. God Himself has not used any formula to calibrate sin. A sin is a sin. A man who tells a lie to his partner is no different from the man who massacred six million Jews. They fortify God's condemnation of homos, forgetting that God Himself asked us to love one another irrespective of our differences, and to be tolerant. Those who labor their minds and castigate homos, citing His Scriptures for their purposes simply misunderstand God. This misunderstanding leads to mischaracterisation and misrepresentation, and in the end, God is demonized.... It is a very interesting debate, and I am actually working on a paper on this issue. The Catholics.... I didn't want to talk about them, but the happenings in the Catholic Church in the USA depicted the true nature of these vicars who coat themselves with some self-righteousness and are a moral danger to kids... the worst pedophiles are in the Catholic Church, and are ministers of the Word. They should spend time addressing that rather than focus on the life choices of others. As Chaucer asked, if gold can rust, what should iron do?

[Ma Mary]

The Catholic church hierarchy have a serious vaginophobia. Until they come to terms with their feelings towards that power between a woman's legs, they will keep having these problems. They keep ruling on it. They cannot mention it. They attract men who are afraid of it into the priesthood. Not all priests, for sure, but far too many.