African Bishops Speak Out To Defend The Family, With Support From Pope Francis

[powerpress]

PRI president Steve Mosher reports how African Bishops, Emboldened by Pope Francis, Denounce the “Ideological Colonization” of their continent by the West; African bishops speak out at Synod on the Family, while Pope Francis valiantly defends the Family in the US and in Rome

PRI Review

News From Africa, Rome, and the Synod on the Family

October 22, 2015

Out of Africa Comes a Cry for Help Against the Culture of Death

PRI president Steve Mosher reports how African Bishops, Emboldened by Pope Francis, Denounce the “Ideological Colonization” of their continent by the West

Arriving in the Philippines last January, Pope Francis warned his millions of listeners to resist “ideological colonization.” This destructive assault on families, the Pope continued, included efforts to “redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”

Africans, above all, know what he is talking about. After all, their continent has been the playground of Western imperialists for centuries. Their bodies were enslaved, and their countries were colonized. Now the target is their very minds.

The assembled African bishops—all 40 or so of them—recently denounced this new kind of colonialism. Their joint Declaration, drafted in June but only released this month, begs wealthy Western nations, and I quote, “… to end the filthy campaigns that promote a civilization of death on our continent.”

The Declaration continues:

[There is] a terrifying resurgence of a colonialist spirit under the guise of the appealing names of liberty, equality, rights, autonomy, democratization and development. Condoms, contraceptives, sex education programs fabricated elsewhere, purely technical and deprived of moral content, so-called “safe abortions”, have become commodities that are more accessible to Africans than the way of delivering integral development, of which we have such a vital need.

It can no longer be denied that under the euphemism of “sexual and reproductive health and rights”, such programs are plainly imposed as a condition for development assistance. Such is also the case of the so-called “gender perspective,” according to which motherhood, the filial and nuptial identity of the human being and the family based on marriage between a man and a woman would be “discriminatory stereotypes.” No! Women and men in Africa are not mere individuals, autonomous from their parents, spouses, children: women, men, children, we are all persons, created out of love and for love, and we all belong to a family and a community, vitally, ontologically and emotionally united!

Africans are becoming aware of the ongoing manipulation. Africa is not developing in harmony with her soul. The agents of the civilization of death are using ambivalent language, seducing decision-makers and entire populations, in order to make them partners in the pursuit of their ideological objectives. They are co-opting a great many in partnerships of which they are, in reality, the masters. They take advantage of poverty, weakness and ignorance in order to subject peoples and governments to their blackmail.

enquote

To the Western reader, all this may sound a little overwrought. Is it really true that “agents of the civilization of death”—the United Nations and Western governments—are really “seducing decision makers” and “subject[ing] peoples and governments to their blackmail”?

Sadly, yes. Enormous sums of money are being spent in sub-Saharan Africa in order to promote Western ideologies peddled with euphemisms like “sexual and reproductive health” (which really means abortion on demand), “gender identity” (which really means homosexuality) and “sustainable development” (which really means population control).

In 2010, for example, the Obama administration spent an estimated $23 million illegally lobbying Kenyan lawmakers and bribing opinion makers to legalize abortion in their country—and succeeded. I think that qualifies as “seducing decision makers.”

Then there is the U.N.’s so-called Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which routinely rails against African countries that refuse to ditch laws protecting life. Last November, Senegal was on the receiving end as CEDAW demanded they “legaliz[e] … abortion in cases of rape, incest and severe foetal impairment.”

CEDAW also arrogantly demanded that Senegal produce statistics on maternal mortality from “unsafe” abortions. The U.N. committee obviously hoped these numbers would provide a further justification for legalizing abortion, despite the fact that, as recent studies have shown, liberalizing abortion laws has no effect on maternal mortality rates.

Another Western ideology that is being forced on the African people is homosexuality and other sexual aberrations. President Obama has made the so-called “gender issues” a priority of U.S. foreign policy, instructing all “agencies involved with foreign aid, assistance, and development” to promote them, and promising “swift and meaningful” consequences for nations that do not comply.

Here the “blackmail” that the African bishops have complained about has been even more blatant. In 2011, the Administration withheld almost $350 million in foreign aid to Malawi as punishment for a Malawian law criminalizing sodomy. One of the poorest nations in the world, with an annual per capita income of only $790, the Malawians soon agreed to do our bidding.

These new imperialists are so determined to impose their ideology around the world that they are willing to kill for it. I do not exaggerate, says Mosher. When Nigeria passed a law protecting marriage, the U.S. government threatened to cut back its funding for lifesaving malaria and HIV/AIDS prevention programs.

And then there is the perennial fixation of Western donors on population control in Africa. In 2014 alone, The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) spent almost $160 million in Sub-Saharan Africa promoting and distributing contraceptives, including abortifacients.

The goal is to drive down the birth rate. One of the UN's principal targets is Kenya. In its recent report on that country, UNFPA set a target to reduce Kenya’s total fertility rate (TFR) from 4.6 to 2.6 by 2030.

In an interview with Aleteia , Bishop Emmanuel Badejo, Chairman of Communications for the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) and Bishop of the Diocese of Oyo in Nigeria, spoke of the West’s “inordinate alarm about the exploding populations in Africa. And anything that can be done to decrease or limit the growth of the population in Africa is quite welcome.”

And he is tired of it. He and other African bishops, in the new Declaration, denounce this ideological colonization as “a new type of slavery! …the hour has come to demystify what global governance calls “national ownership” and “country-driven” initiatives. No, these agendas are by no means African! They are, from A to Z, piloted by agents external to Africa.”

Two generations ago, Africa finally escaped the bondage of colonialism, which had kept its peoples enslaved for two centuries or more. Now comes a new and more insidious form of colonialism, one which enslaves not their bodies but their minds. The African bishops are right to speak out against it.

We here in the U.S. must do our part in support of our Catholic brothers and sisters in Africa. We must work to end foreign aid programs that promote the culture of death, whether in Africa or in any part of the wider world. Achieving that goal will require new pro-life leadership in the Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.

More powerful words from the brave bishops of Africa at the Synod in Rome when we come back.

This is PRI review from www.pop.org.

Station Break

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You’ll be glad you did.

Segment Two

According to the Catholic World Report, African bishops have made it clear that they reject what they call the Western push for 'ideological colonization'

Heavy criticism of the West imposing secular values on Africa in exchange for aid emerged as a theme from the continent's bishops, at the Vatican's synod on the family.

From press conferences to individual interviews, multiple prelates voiced concern over what Pope Francis has termed “ideological colonization,” in which Western nations have made the acceptance of legislature favoring gay rights and “marriage” contingent on receiving financial aid.

“It's one thing that the African bishops are very, very conscious of,” Cardinal Wilfred Napier of South Africa told journalists.

“What we are talking about is when countries are told unless you pass certain legislation, you're not going to get aid from the governments or aid agencies,” he said, pointing to the danger of “political colonization” being replaced “by a different kind of colonization.”

Cardinal Napier held up the example of the Obama administration, specifically the President's visit to Kenya in July. During his two-day trip to the country Obama spoke out about the importance of gay rights, despite requests from Kenya’s leaders to not address the issue. Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya, as well as several other African countries. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State “repeated much the same message” to Africa as well, he added.

In an interview with CNA, Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu and president of the Ugandan Episcopal Conference called the act “criminal,” and said ideologies must never be attached to receiving aid, which is meant to save lives.

“The issue of homosexuality should not be linked with saying ‘if you don’t accept this we won’t help you,’ that is criminal, I call it criminal,” he said.

“Aid should not be linked with ideological acceptance or rejection. Aid is to save human life. If you link it to ideology it becomes contradictory…it is self-defeating.”

Human beings must be helped without any conditions attached, Archbishop Odama said, adding that the survival of human life “is paramount,” and that the family exists precisely to promote human life.

“Any other society, any other groups elsewhere should exist to promote life and protect life, so if it intends to limit the life to be protected or to be accepted to a certain way of thinking then we run short,” he said.

“So any issue against human life is an issue against humanity in general.”

Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle of Accra, Ghana lamented how some European countries pressured Africa to accept legislation favoring gay “marriage” after Pope Francis made his 2013 “Who am I to judge?” comment on the way back from Rio de Janiero in reference gay individuals authentically seeking Christ.

The comment, he said, “had huge repercussions in our country (Ghana),” and prompted one European country – which he identified as Britain – “to tell us that if we do not accept this – gay marriages and the rest – they were not going to give us financial help.”

“We found it rather very sad that some government could take the sovereignty of another country and say ‘if you don't do this we won't do that,’” he said, calling the move a “gross violation of what we call the sovereignty of countries.”

Similarly, Cardinal Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, (C.M.), archbishop of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, said that Africa’s traditional values must be respected.

He recalled how when Benedict XVI visited Africa in 2011, the pontiff said that the African continent has “their own values. You are in fact the spiritual lung of the world and you can become the spiritual lungs of the world because you have traditional values.”

Protecting those values, such as life and the love and protection of it, is of utmost importance to the African bishops, the cardinal said, explaining that they have already spoken about these issues and “we will speak about them more, I feel.”

One of the groups that raised the question of international pressure on developing nations to abandon traditional family values was an Italian one led by Cardinal Edoardo Menichelli of Ancona, who was named a cardinal by Pope Francis.

“We hope for a change in the practice of international organizations that link their assistance for the development of the poorest nations to demographic policies,” it said.

++

Why don’t our bishops speak out so forcefully?

Yes, the population controllers are indeed powerful in America’s popular culture and our government. But our bishops are simply wasting their time if they think they can placate these malevolents with platitudes.

Clearly, there are people like Margaret Sangers and Alice DuPont Mills among us today. Moreover, they are still murdering the innocent and bragging about it.

But fortunately, they are few in number, although they possess cultural and political power greater than their numbers would suggest.

Our bishops should recognize who the real racists are – they are the abortion lobby, personified. If they did, they would direct their fire at the real racists who run the abortion lobby.

One wonders why they haven’t done that already – and here arises a contradiction that is hard to fathom for the average layman.

Many Catholics here at home of unlimited illegal immigration into our country. Unfortunately, our bishops condemn these good people as xenophobes, bigots, and nativists, yet they will do nothing to stop the work of their largest financial donor and worldwide partner, the eugenicist, pro-abortion U.S. Government monolith called the Agency for International Development, known as A.I.D.

Many bishops have called on Congress to stop funding Planned Parenthood with taxpayer funding. Why can’t the bishops call on Congress to defund A.I.D., a rich, defiant, and brazen ally of Planned Parenthood?

The answer is simple. The bishops receive no funding from Planned Parenthood, but they receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year from A.I.D. for their “charitable work.”

The elitists at A.I.D. are the cultural heirs of Margaret Sanger and Alice DuPont Mills. Our bishops need to direct their stinging rebukes at those enemies of the unborn, not at the faithful who love life, their Church, and their country.

If the hierarchy’s hands are tied – and their lips are sealed – because of the hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding the receive through A.I.D., then perhaps it’s time to renounce the government funding so they can announce the Good News of the Gospel to those in power without fear.

++

Not everyone has been silenced, however. While our American bishops are reluctant to criticize government agencies that give them hundreds of millions of dollars, CNS news reports that at least one Protestant minister is not afraid to speak out with the plain truth.

America’s moral decline is “being led by the Obama administration,” he says, through support for such things as homosexual “marriage,” which is “defiance against God,” and the administration is “celebrating sin and pushing sin.”

Who is this brave truthteller? None other than the Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham.

Rev Graham said that same-sex marriage is so fundamentally “wrong” that “God will judge our country for this.”

“Our country has changed so much, and we’ve seen the moral decline, and that moral decline being led by the Obama administration and championing things like same-sex marriage, which is really defiance against God,” he charged.

“Same-sex marriage is a sin against God,” Graham said. “God made us male and female – and then to say that marriage is between two men or two men?”

“This is sin,” he said. “And the Obama administration is celebrating sin and they are pushing sin.”

Rev. Graham went on to explain that he is not “bashing” homosexuals as persons but said he had a duty to tell them the truth about God’s commandments and that they, like every person who sins, can be forgiven.

“For a gay person, I don’t want to bash them,” said Graham. “I’m not bashing them. I want them to know the truth that the lifestyle they are living, God will one day judge that. And they’ll stand before God and God will condemn that, and they will spend an eternity separated from Him.”

“But can a gay person be forgiven? Yes,” said the reverend.

But, using words that we rarely hear from many Catholic prelates, Reverend Graham continued,

“But they have to turn, like any of us who are sinners. We have to turn from our sin. We can't say, ‘God we love you and we believe in Jesus Christ’ but yet continue on in the sins that we're doing, whether it’s murdering people, whether it be stealing, whether it be committing adultery – cheating on your wife or husband – and say, ‘Oh yes, I love Jesus,’ but you continue in your sin – no, you have to turn from your sins.”

“For a gay person or anyone else, you have to be willing to turn and leave those sins,” said Graham. “Can you be forgiven? Yes. And you can have that assurance knowing that your sins are forgiven and that one day when you do stand before God, He’s going to accept you and welcome you because you believed in His Son Jesus Christ by faith.”

Rev. Graham is not the only outspoken pastor around. Yes, the bishops at the Synod in Rome are reluctant publicly to be candid about sodomy like Graham is, but Pope Francis has been clear about one group of practitioners who advocate sinful behavior – namely, those folks who defend indulging in objective evils because they’re just “following their conscience.”

These sins are so popular, His Holiness explains, because, When the Devil Numbs Your Conscience, He Has Won’

In the spiritual life “temptations always return, the evil spirit never gets tired.” If he has been kicked out once, he is patient, waiting to return, and “If you let him in, you fall into a worse situation,” Pope Francis explained.

“The evil one conceals himself, and comes with his very polite friends, knocking at the door, asking permission, but then moves in and spends time with the man and, little by little, starts giving the orders,” he continued.

With his “good manners,” Francis said, the devil makes the man fall into moral relativism, calming his conscience.

We start saying things like “This happens everywhere” and “We are all sinners,” Francis said. Yet “When we say everybody, we mean nobody,” he said. “And so we live this worldliness that is the child of the evil spirit.”

“Calming the conscience, numbing the conscience, this is a great evil,” he said.

“When the devil manages to numb your conscience he has won a real victory,” Francis said, because “he has become the master of your conscience.”

We need to learn discernment, the pope said – echoing Saint Ignatius, the founder of his Jesuit Order. The devil “always tries to deceive” and to “make us choose the wrong path.”

We must “discern and look well to see where things come from, and what their root is,” he said.

The Church “always encourages us to examine our conscience: What happened in my heart today, why? Did this well-mannered devil visit me today with his friends?”

“Where do these comments, these words, these teachings come from, who says this? Discern and keep watch, so as not to let in the one who deceives, seduces and fascinates,” he said.

“We ask the Lord for this grace,” he said.

 

Station Break

Founded in 1989, the Population Research Institute is a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to objectively presenting the truth about population-related issues, and to reversing the trends brought about by the myth of overpopulation. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries.

Our mission statement describes our goals.

Debunk the myth of overpopulation, which cheapens human life and paves the way for abusive population control programs

Expose the relentless promotion of abortion, abortifacient contraception, and chemical and surgical sterilization in misleadingly labeled “population stabilization,” “family planning,” and “reproductive health” programs.

Defund these programs by exposing the coercion, deception, and racism inherent in them.

Emphasize that people are the most valuable resource on the planet, the one resource we cannot do without.

Promote pro-natal and pro-family attitudes, laws, and policies worldwide.

Encourage programs to help the poor become agents of their own development.

And silently help those living under oppressive regimes to preserve life, love, faith, and family in spite of official hostility and government persecution.

PRI welcomes your spiritual support, and we need your financial support. Just go to our website, www.pop.org, and click the “Donate” button to contribute easily and securely. And be sure to look at the thoughtful gifts that we offer our donors in gratitude for their much-needed support.

Segment Three

The Real Pope Francis has Stood Up, writes PRI president Steve Mosher – and the gender feminists, the population controllers, and the homosexual activists are not pleased

It’s time to take off the “Who am I to judge?” t-shirts, he continues.

For some time that slogan has been flaunted by homosexual activists who thought that the Pope was giving them a pass. But it turns out that Pope Francis was not about to change Catholic teaching on marriage and sexual morality.

The real Pope Francis first showed up at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, where he defended traditional marriage and childbearing in no uncertain terms.

At the “festival of families” he spoke of how “of this woman, Mary, and of this man, Joseph, a family is created into which comes God.” Again in his closing homily, he emphasized “the word of the Lord [that] … invites all those who want to share the prophecy of the covenant of man and woman, which generates life and reveals God!”

Memo to the U.S. Supreme Court: Marriage is a covenant between man and woman, which generates life and reveals God!

Relationships between two people of the same sex, which do not generate life and thus reveal God–whatever else they may be – are not marriage.

When he addressed the United Nations, the pope was clear:

“Without the recognition of certain incontestable natural ethical limits and without the immediate implementation of those pillars of integral human development, the ideal of “saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war” (Charter of the United Nations, Preamble), and “promoting social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom” (ibid.), risks becoming an unattainable illusion, or, even worse, idle chatter which serves as a cover for all kinds of abuse and corruption, or for carrying out an ideological colonization by the imposition of anomalous models and lifestyles which are alien to people’s identity and, in the end, irresponsible.” [italics added.]

Anomalous, in Spanish, means abnormal. So what abnormal “models and lifestyles” is the Pope criticizing here? He’s referring to the push by the UN to impose gender ideology, abortion, population control, and homosexual marriage on countries and peoples around the globe. His shorthand for this agenda of death and dehumanization is “ideological colonization.”

The Pope’s message on marriage was further reinforced by his not-so-secret meeting with the courageous Kim Davis, the embattled Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

The mainstream media, angered by the Pope’s obvious support for the county clerk, has tried to dismiss this as a “chance meeting.”

But this supposedly “chance meeting” was arranged by Archbishop Vigano, the Pope’s representative in the U.S., and took place at the Vatican’s own embassy in Washington, D.C., to which the Davises were transported by Vatican security. Kim was even asked to put her long hair up in a bun so that she would not be as easily recognizable. Does this sound like an accidental encounter to you?

As far as the meeting itself was concerned, the Pope offered specific words of encouragement to Kim Davis in her fight. According to Liberty Counsel, when the Pope came in the room he stretched out his hands to Kim and encouraged her to "stay strong." He was obviously familiar with her case and wanted her to know of his prayers and support.

On his way back to Rome, Pope Francis–obviously referring to Kim Davis–told reporters “Conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right. Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right, a human right."

Reporters then pressed him on the question of whether that right included government officials like Kim, the Pope replied, "It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right."

Finally we have Pope Francis’ address at the opening mass of the Synod on the Family, which constitutes a kind of coup de grace for those who thought that this Pope would fundamentally change Church teaching on marriage and divorce.

The Church’s role, he said, is “to carry out her mission in truth, which is not changed by passing fads or popular opinions – the truth which protects individuals and humanity as a whole from the temptation of self-centeredness and from turning fruitful love into sterile selfishness, faithful union into temporary bonds.

Covenantal marriages between man and woman are the very definition of fruitful love, since they are not transitory but permanent, and not sterile but open to life.

Sterile selfishness, on the other hand, is defined as contracepted sex, that is to say, by acts that are by definition sterile and thus selfishly turn inward upon themselves. This is true whether the contraception occurs through chemical, surgical, or biological means (as is the case with two women, for example). Such acts, which are not open to life, have no end outside of themselves.

The Pope went on to quote Pope Benedict: “Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love” (BENEDICT XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 3).

The media has deliberately misinterpreted the Pope’s compassion towards individuals struggling with marital or sexual problems as a harbinger of fundamental changes in Church doctrine concerning marriage and sexuality.

At the end of the day, however, this Pope, like the 265 popes before him, will defend the Truth. He will say, as Cardinal Erdo did on the first day of the Synod, that while people in same-sex relationships need to be treated with respect and sensitivity, their relationships have nothing to do with marriage. He will affirm that Catholic marriages are indissoluble, and that those who have remarried outside the Church should ask Our Lord to come to them in spirit, rather than receive the Eucharist.

In the end, this Rock will not roll.

 

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