Your
Grace,
When I
yielded to the earnest desire within me that I should write you, a friend
encouraged me to do so. I consented with something of the reluctance which I
developed when I thought of the huge and exalted task of writing you. I
rejected the thought of writing. After a little moment, I went on deep
thought, meditation and personal prayer about this issue. When I felt the call,
I held my pen and began writing until I arrived at this letter before you. It
may happen to some persons to feel surprised that it is a priest who is writing
an Archbishop. I do so with the happiness and conviction of speaking my own
mind, in conscience, about a situation which touches us all in Cameroon. These
are my own thoughts and solutions to our recent predicament - welling
from unshakeable convictions. I have written them freely without coercion from
anyone but only being guided by my conscience - a small voice telling me,
‘Gerald tell the archbishop and the world your own convictions about the crisis
bedeviling your homeland. Do so freely without any fear knowing that you and
the Archbishop are just citizens and Christians seeking to know and serve God’.
It is this voice in me that has enabled me send you this letter in its entirety
and helping the world also – by addressing it an open letter - to learn from
its ideas. I am happy to embrace this challenge.
Opening
Remarks
I wish
to begin straight away by informing Your Grace of the raison d’être of my
letter. I share the conviction of the Cameroonian who has recently commented
about your letter that “It is discernible from an anxious reading of the first
letter of the Bishops of Cameroon, that of the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical
Province of Bamenda and the present letter of the Bishops of Cameroon that the
latest letter of the Bishops of Cameroon is actuated by political rather than
Christian motivations.” To me the tone and spirit of your recent letter is not
only Pontius Pilating your brother bishops of the Southern Cameroons, but the
silence over what you were supposed to have done and have not done, is an
impeachment of your brother bishops West of the Mungo. What were you supposed
to do? I fear to expose my own ignorance of Episcopal policies and proceedings,
but I had thought that as leaders who feel for their suffering brothers of
English speaking Cameroon, you bishops of French speaking Cameroon would write
a public letter condemning the act of taking whole bishops to court. We know
who is behind these things; not so Archbishop? Why are we pretending to call a
spade a spade when we have been given the mandate as Apostles of Jesus (who is
The Truth) to defend the truth even on to the cross. To me it has been a
betrayal which the Church leaders of East Cameroon ought to hang their
heads in ashamed.
Your
silence has given the impression that the Bishops of our Church province
have been disobedient to the country. Our Bishops have not been unfaithful to
the State. They have been united to the State very much like a believing wife
to a husband who is about to commit suicide and so as a Christian wife holding
to the relationship, the Bishops have struggled recently to save not
themselves, but the government from the crime of political apostasy.
We of
the Southern Cameroons, if we act consistently with our history, we cannot be
loyal subjects to the despicable and tyrannous Yaoundé government. Archbishop,
you speak of Decentralization and you offer us it as the best gift you think
fitting for the resolution of this crisis? We are determined to decline a gift
so laden with spurious promises and deceitful propensities. And who can blame
us for so doing? Who should be surprised that Yaoundé would still do to Buea
what it did after the Foumban constitutional conference of 1961 – turn traitor
to the very constitution that bound them together as brothers with two equal
strengths (and not that spurious decentralization you are talking about that
wants to equate Buea with Garoua as if you do not know that Buea is the capital
of a country and Garoua is a mere region of another country) or turn Cain
against his brother Abel by killing everything we (Abel) had as culture,
economy, jurisprudence, education, politics, military etc. The Church is
the joy and happiness of all of us, and therefore, when justice cries out as it
did in the Southern Cameroons (with rapes and killings and abductions and
military bestiality over defenseless civilians), it is the duty of the Bishops
to speak out loud for the poor and the underprivileged. You spoke but we never
got that loudness and that weak voice gave the Yaoundé political cabal
encouragement to go ahead. Our Bishops of the Southern Cameroons took the
bull by the horns and spoken out loud for the poor and used history, scriptures
and the Church’s social teachings to state their case because they love the
Church which is people and not money.
The
world of politics has its own logic and truth that brooks no breaking. One of
them is that of nemesis – that any despotism that goes up would come down.
Yaoundé has perpetuated that tyranny on Buea and that tyranny is about to
have its nemesis. Remember history – that there are two states in Cameroon represented
by Yaoundé and Buea. That is why I will always equate the two capitals for that
is how it was supposed to be.
I wish
to let you know something of the people of the Southern Cameroons which many
French Speaking Cameroonians seem to be ignorant of. They are people who do not
distinguish between their love of country and their love of the Church. They
love those two things with their whole hearts. Their patriotism is ethical,
concrete, and religiously dutiful - reason why your brother bishops of Southern
Cameroons (in the example of that pragmatic culture) have spoken for their
subjugated and dispossessed people against such a stinking political tyranny as
Biya’s. That is why though many from East Cameroon are comfortable with
the atheistic political system glorifyingly baptizedlaicite, it has been
scandal of the highest order to the religious sensitivity of Southern Cameroons
who like true Africans (and tinged by Anglicanism’s reverence for God and
respect for the Monarch) believe that without God and indigenous culture life
is impossible. We know very well that this atheism we see in Cameron politics
is not from your own ancestors but it is borrowed from France. The people East
of the Mungo have been educated in Gallican opinions. We of the West have been
educated in Anglican opinions. The respect of each other’s opinions from those
educational systems have been what La republique du Cameroun has deprived us
of, and it pains us to the marrow. That is why our teachers and lawyers took to
the streets to peacefully demonstrate their anger and protest against an evil
system. They were met with an autocratic response by a government you fear to
criticize.
The
Testimony of Early Church History
To
explain my case I make the first century of the Church my special model; It was
a virgin Church, yet, a period afflicted by the political autocracy of the
Roman empire and its emperors. When Emperors Decius and Diocletian slaughtered
thousands of Christians because they stood for truth, the Christian family stood
courageously strong against that political cruelty. Both bishops and laity were
one against such political tyranny in the example of the Bishops of Southern
Cameroons with their maligned flock. They publicly and formally abjured to
worship the gods of the Roman empire’s totalitarianism. The picture is what is
happening today in our land the Southern Cameroons by the colonial emperors of
La Republique du Cameroun. St. Athanasius as a result would go on exile and St
Chrysostom would be sent off to Cucusus to be worried to death by an empress.
St. Ignatius of Antioch would be arrested by the political authorities and
taken to Rome to be given to wild beasts to eat him up because of the Truth.
And that is why I am angry with the behavior of the Bishops of Southern
Cameroons to have allowed you walk around doing what you are doing and
giving the impression like they have no authority over their
jurisdictions as full consecrated bishops of Local Sees of the Holy Roman
Catholic Church. If the governance of that Church called Cameroon is beyond
your governance, the best thing is to inform the Pope to send a Vatican
delegate to do that job. I feel your going round Southern Cameroons for such an
exercise is the unwisest thing the Bishops of that Church province have allowed
to happen in recent times.
Good
Shepherds lay Life for Flock
Times
like this are dangerous times. Times when our future is decide by a clay footed
political clique that has bastardized the fortunes of the British Cameroons to
a shambolic muddle. Sacred altars have been desecrated. For if we are to score
the Church leadership performance in these times, it will be clear to all that
the tail has been wagging the dog.
In
moral and spiritual terms, much has been given to religious leadership, and
much is expect of her. That is why the tenacity and integrity that Christian
giants like Cardinal Christian Tumi and Cardinal Albert Malula, Mgr. Oscar
Romero and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. have mustered in the world, take us back
to the visionary words of President John F. Kennedy:
Of
those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the
high court of history sits in judgment of each of us…recording whether in our
brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state…our
success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the
answer to four questions:
Were
we truly men of courage…
Were
we truly men of judgment…
Were
we truly men of integrity…
Were
we truly men of dedication…
With
the towering paradigm of Pope Francis in recent times, the world correctly
recognizes that Christianity has the potential to lead the way as champion of
mores and faith. Perhaps it would be much truer in the Cameroon context.
However, the current Catholic national leadership certainly has not lived up to
its possibilities, for the most part because the majority of its bishops have
been intimidated into silence and inactivity. A Bayangi proverb goes that, “a
man who cannot challenge what is wrong is not better than a corpse”. We
are living in times where our political and spiritual shepherds have been found
wanting in challenging falsehood, and therefore Cameroon has turned in to a
graveyard, a cemetery of silence in the face of blatant half-truths, divide-and-rule
tactics, flagrant disrespect of human rights, mass abductions and killings.The
National Episcopal Council (NEC) has been silent because it concerns the
British Cameroons. Though it is disgraceful, we thank them. We thank them for
the powerful memento sent to the world that there are two countries in
this country. It reminds us of the evil of silence before evil.
We
know very well that when theNational Episcopal Council (NECC) speaks out, it is
listened to by the political powers in Cameroon. When tinged by the inspiration
and endorsement of Cardinal Christian Tumi in 2000, the NECC spoke against the
canker warm of bribery and corruption. The whole world listened and the
government of Cameroon adjusted. Those were prophetic times for the clergy.
Spiritual leaders the world over are always pace-setters; their intervention on
socio-political disasters has always been prototypical, precisely because it
sets the tyrants quaking. With the retirement and deaths among your circles, of
names like Ndongmo, Tumi, Etoga, Wouking, Verdzekov, Awah, the national
Episcopal Council all this while has been a sleeping bag. Today, NEC has been a
fiasco, if we must speak the truth.
Cameroon
should be courageous to accept they are flawed and stop blaming France or
Britain. The Bribery and corruption that we have been African champions for
more than a decade, is self-inflicted. Bribery and corruption are a moral and
spiritual problem. And therefore the moral and spiritual authorities are to
blame. If the Church truly cared for its members, the problem will not be
happening every now and then. And the oppressed people of British Cameroons are
undergoing something of a genocide now because the National Episcopal Council
(NEC) is on holidays, and the world knows that too well.
We know
what the bishops of the British Cameroons have gone through from the national
episcopacy because they kicked up the storm in the daring letter they wrote
(despite earlier hesitations) not because they were hoping the leadership of
NEC would notice, but precisely because they knew that with the 2016-2017 NEC
leadership in charge, every raped, maimed and unjustly imprisoned British
Cameroonian might as well add NEC to their laundry list of Do-It-Yourself. The
bishops of the British Cameroons came up with another communiqué by the very to
the effect that they have not closed down their schools and that they are
waiting for the Catholic pupils and students to return to school. But right up
till now, the pupils and students have not returned, meaning that the parents
have lost faith in the Church’s hierarchy. It is precisely because the Cameroon
National Church lacks the courage to support what is right that people are
going their own sweet ways. Is it asking too much from Church leaders to
say good shepherds must lay life for flock?
The
Writing is on the Wall
edevnews.blogspot.com/ Email: francoeko@gmail.com/Tel:+237696896001/+237678401408
No comments:
Post a Comment