Come again, bishops and Bawumia, Please!!!

I had in prior slots here advocated a hope that the politics pre-2024 would be devoid of insults but in content, a patiently countering ideas, away from the conventional ideologue box-agenda for conviction to vote at all. It seems some sec­tion don’t appreciate where the country stands—bankrupt ; we all appear too grossly unmindful of rotten-corrupt; but excessively quickest to point fingers.

But there are two present reali­ties: it is apparently hard to confess our collective guilt. Unfortunately, as matters bubbled, we had either shrugged shoulders, ‘beggar my neighbour’, or, just thought the complaints are borne of envy—“n­na ne nna” …if “wishes were…’, or, stuck in dissuade about neither debating because of the hitherto populists—alleged ‘’bought votes,’’ would work out, scuttling present­ing equally achievable alternatives; nor that indeed the old howlers remain credible and would do. On the contrary, the better second is that this country has changed from gullible to evidence. We heard that active phenomenon during recent primaries, despite the illiterate and poverty-inflicted growing majority, which needs no empiri­cal statistics for proof; and [ii] or, one could be bereft of fresh ideas because the decline has been too precipitous, lame.

In any case, candidate Bawumia was reported in Social Media milieu recently that he said he has ideas to work our walk out of the mess. He was said reportedly to either had been confronted with the effrontery to contest or volun­teered in a quasi-campaign back-up. [The implication is he having allegedly led the country into a ditch. What else new supposed­ly?]. That needs short discoursed before descending into matters arising from the Vatican through the Roman Catholic Bishops’ entry presumably seconding our own Peter Cardinal Appiah-Thompson’s about LGBTQ and remarks about Pope Francis’ quoted earlier as say­ing he [Pope Francis] “will be open to” blessing same sex marriages. Let me label them as conjunctive. I shall bury the “at all” in the belly of the Types of voters there are as mere reminders.

It is normal to have those who would vote with their feet as deliberate forfeiture of choice or protest. The latter bred “skirt and blouse” in our national ballot’s parlance. The first are either not impressed or could be not concerned or travelled, our system’s ability to capture that outside of the Diplomatic corps with quasi-official or on duty UN-forces etc country-political parties’ branches abroad, being neophyte, apparently and vexed transferred votes, un-tackled yet as standard. In the middle of the polarisations are the floaters which consists bets-hedgers, opportunists and the instant. These may swing outcomes. All that are common knowledge except the group of shadowy mavericks.

Candidate Bawumia’s is tricky in two senses: [a] did he, did he or not say that; [a] the tricky is that he might have been taken out of con­text, a Reporter’s daily inadvertent error –not seriously mischievous. But it is clearly an advantage for the attributed source to impera­tively correct both ordinarily and this time running to a ballot in which he has high stake. [b] The summary is that the report alleged­ly said he (Bawumia) apparently knew how to turn things around, elected president. (It reminds me of comparably ensued-question, I repeated to Edward Heath, leader of the British Conservatives which I had previously asked Prime Minister Harold Wilson during routine daily morning campaign news conferences, what he had found as the final panacea for the seriously ailing British economy. (I think I have referred to that several times in this column but relevant to re-mention). I have a compelling obligation to fairness that [i] Bawumia had headed the proposed, pursued and presided the economic policies of govern­ment, results are dismal; [ii] both logic and history would question his work relative to party and gov­ernment for effrontery now, if the attribution is left stuck, emphasis­ing my earlier ‘’if’’.

Well, I think that our Roman Catholic Bishops had either caused confusion or latterly found its shortfalls and came up with a second (II Dec. 2023) apparently to clear up prior misunderstanding of their prior statement on the same LGBTQ controversy. But the latest has led more questions than answers. Protestants and others have begun to wonder if the Church was developing new definitions for instances of “sin”; “abuse” and “crime”; ambiguities of its official position as parlia­ment equally confuses itself the more. A re-appearing theme in public general opinion, gathering to crystalise could be concurring with earliest reportedly-felt-suspi­cions that private pressures, possi­bly with huge inducements might or could be being be infiltrated. The aim is to finally filibuster the Bill, it was opined without proof, irrespective of what we read from parliament about “other import­ant” legislations ahead in the queue of House-business-calen­dar. But among its unfavourable consequences are: trust [with likely backlash] and the essences of the role of ‘’Private Member’s Bill in parliamentary democracy—not only government Bills but one among principal FIVE means to make laws. I hope this won’t be authentic to give meaning to the Twi proverb: “eeba, ne eyo”—presage.

In the interim the Roman Catholic Bishops might have inad­vertently caught themselves into the milieu of political miss-mesh, whatever pans ultimately over the LGTBTQ palaver as it gets more complicated divisively politicised. Our ancestors were in sync with human rights and there is abso­lutely nothing different about its undergirds between then and now. It is not a small statement to point, comparing the benign attitude of our culture’s reaction– an uncompromising distaste of LBGTQ–placed aside in “discreet disapproval and containment’’ to weigh against the seeming local and international striving– black­mail of Kulturkampf.

Peter Cardinal in that BBC interview which re-sparked in the Church, links the subtle (or crude) attachment-conditionality in request for credit help for devel­opment is primary as what has lifted to the excess ‘hoooooooh’ on a long simmering African-Ex­ternal cultures-rift. I estimate that he inwardly admits we Africans have our let-go deviants of the taboo and he proposes education. That is to emphasise how disso­nant LGBTQ is in the scheme of native cultural morals’ decent repugnance to LGTBQ as well as religious belief ante-imposition of Euro-Judeo Christianity, not as successful as was intended. We don’t forget that the practitioners also attend church services. The other veritable truth is the Church [orthodox and unorthodox] have no documented regulation which specifically bans membership to any, unlike the former US-‘’don’t tell-advisory’s injunction’’ (law) ’’ to qualify enlisting in the military until president Obama’s openness to unblock the embarrassment, which remains because it is their culture, being popularised over others beyond their borders; and ours says “NO”.

(Note the comparative similar­ity between African benign and containment and don’t-tell. WHY? All along, from Pope John Paul II through Benedict XVI to Francis, what we have heard about what the Church describes as “ABUSE” are: apologies, some unconfirmed com­pensation, forgiveness and prayers for victims and culprit-Priests. We need sober thinking than be pushed around over a humbug).

Our inheritance finds the be­haviour not acceptable—culturally and biblically. Our society rather hopes that self-imposed recluse shows awareness of something wrong and hope that awareness shall induce correction. The Church hitherto preaches ‘pray for them.’ Some may have or not have happened. It is not recorded. The clearest of the scenario would be the Cardinal and the Roman Catholic Bishops breaking the quandary into crime and act for which the Church had been seen as are a doyen opponent. And that is in sync with culture and com­mands in the Holy Book. Subject­ed to any line of enquiry, did the Church know these differences because the presumptive belief is that the act implicitly runs parallel with crime. And indeed, could the Church be un-aware that our culture has that critical intrinsic. This is why it is strange and has given cause for questioning where it stands, considering Its claim separating crime from the act– something the pro-international bandwagon hardly trumpets that “Rubicon”.

There is therefore a wits-war of truth-claims—culture-religion-law, definition of crime. The latest from the Vatican and our Bishops have issued that separation more forcefully, perhaps widening the antennae to beyond ‘human rights’. However, the primary point about truth-claims in religion is that it is found as divisive mundanely, and also about identity of “us” and “them” but of course not to marginalise dissenting truth-claims, because it can safely recognise the dignity in others to push to pro­tect. But gleaning from Memos to parliament in a poignant reference to the Church in dogma claims that the church cannot be part of the ideologies that tend to foster any rights that runs roughshod over the church.

It is obvious the Bishops shall have to come again [i] which way more succinctly than stating “while the church does not condemn homosexuals, it condemns the ho­mosexual acts that they perform;” thus it is “an inclination” which must be seen as an “objective disorder.’’ But as again, it appears an uneasy drama is unfolding. A current typical Ghanaian coinage of humour denies Ukraine as cause for the economic mismanagement they had short while ago expressed misgiving concerns. That dispo­sition questions if the absence of being lucid is not Covid-pause; or, perhaps indicative lack (more disturbing) of strong and incisive church leadership. [ii] In this ulti­mate light, it is not unlikely that the Vatican and the Bishops wouldn’t have to quickly polish clarity than stay an apparent circus-opera, whose ending is neither predictable nor was it scored yet, or indeed, composed.

By Prof Nana Essilfie-Conduah.

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