Born-Again in Christ and Proud to Be So
By Martin Etwop
Monitor
July 23, 2007
http://www.monitor.co.ug/oped/oped07233.php
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2007/07_08/2007_07_23_Etwop_BornAgain.htm
Uganda — After reading Fr Larry Kanyike's Opinion Article, "Is Jesus for sale" (SM, July 22).I thought I should respond. I am a born-again Ugandan Christian, working as a missionary in California. I feel so ashamed about what has been going on within the Balokole church in Uganda.
I have long admired Fr Kanyike since my Makerere University days because I respected him as a person who speaks out against political and social injustices. But I never knew that he was a very intolerant, religious segregationist.
True, some pastors of some of the Balokole churches have been crooked. They ought to be sent to Luzira prison for a minimum of 14 years. Jesus said, "many will come in my name saying we drove out demons, spoke in tongues, etc, but I will say unto them, I never knew you, away from me you workers of iniquity."
Back to Fr Kanyike, it is interesting reading how he talked of ecclesial communities, primacy of originality, etc. But he do not tell us that the Catholic church presided over some of the most murderous like regimes in world history.
The Vatican Secretary signed a concordance with Adolf Hitler July 20, 1933. It was only because the church did not gain as much as they thought they would that they fell out with Hitler in 1944. Five years after the start of the war.
Why does Fr Kanyike think Protestants broke off from the Catholic community in the 1440s, if it was not because people were being ripped off by the church, through corruption, blackmail and manipulation? The so-called indulgences.
People who studied European history know that the injustices by the Catholic church was one of the causes of the French Revolution. Sexual abuse cases by the Catholic priests a many.
Just a week ago, Cardinal Maloney of the Los Angeles Catholic Diocese(Los Angeles, California), the biggest and richest diocese in the United States, presided over the biggest payout compensation for people who had been sexually molested by priests. It was more than S600 million. But can that buy back the dignity of a little boy who has been raped.
I wonder whether Fr Kanyike read Pope Benedict XIV's apostolic constitution Sacramentum Poenitentiae of 1741. That is how far back the recorded issue of priests molesting altar boys goes.
Did you also know that it was reported that for a very long time, some of the Catholic clergy participated in homosexual molestation of young boys, this they considered a religious rite, a rite of passage for altar boys and young priests.
In May 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later elected Pope Benedict XVI on the death of his predecessor Pope John Paul II, sent a letter to all Catholic Bishops declaring that the Church's investigations into claims of child sex abuse were subject to the pontifical secret and were not to be reported to law enforcement until investigations were completed, on pain of excommunication.
Tell me what this is if it is not a means of covering up the church's sins
And will Fr Kanyike tell us why on March 25, 1992 Pope John Paul II wrote the apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobes, one of the longest papal documents in history?
And finally, the Kibwetere issue. The worst mass murder committed on a single day in the history of Uganda. Much worse than even the LRA rebels' atrocities. Hey, they were Catholics.
Being a member of the Uganda Joint Christian Council is not what makes you a Christian. And concerning being tax exempt, how about all the churches stop being tax exempt and we see who would be the greatest losers. If you want others to be tax exempt, let us play fair and we say we are all no longer tax exempt. Maybe then shall we realise how our existence is grounded.
So please, before you go about bragging of having primacy of originality in its fullness, take a look within and see if the "Original Primate" if that is what I should call your all powerful church is doing it right and think of why you are losing your congregation to these non-churches you talk about.
I hate what is going on in some of these Balokole churches and I pray that those people are arrested and treated with the ridicule that they deserve and if it were left to me, I would pronounce life imprisonment for these thugs-cum-pastors. But I will always be proud of my born-again heritage and I am proud of my pastors at all the pastors out there who are teaching people the truth of the gospel and impacting the community with love and self sacrifice, not greed and power struggle
I am proud to be a born again Christian, will always be.
The writer is a church minister in San Jose, California: metwop@gmail.com.
