By Wilson Ngema, SD*
I wonder how anyone would have the audacity to speak about the Catholic Church in such glorious terms amidst its evident failures throughout history. Just think of the paedophilia scandal in the USA! And how do you account for the fact that ever since independence the cream of our leadership has been Catholics and/or products of Catholic schools and yet everyday Cameroon is sinking deeper and deeper into bribery and corruption, tribalism, Satanism and all the other evils that are now leading us into anarchy?
Triumphalism is bad. If I have somehow come across as triumphalistic, I humbly apologise. Our focus is the truth and not some kind of show off. So now let us put things in perspective.
The other day I chanced upon an essay of 3,350 words published in the May-June issue of the Buckeye Bulletin in the USA by a Jew called Sam Miller.
In that provocative article this non-Catholic masterly tackled what he described as a vindictive, scurrilous, biased campaign to totally denigrate the Catholic Church in the USA by those he called kangaroo journalists. Miller opines that the concentrated effort by the media to blame the disease of pedophilia on the Catholic Church is as irresponsible as blaming adultery on the institution of marriage.
He points to research by Richard Blackman at Fuller Theological Seminary which shows that 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact. Furthermore, he indicates that in a 1990 study by the United Methodist Church, 41.8% of clergywomen reported unwanted sexual behavior by a colleague; 17% of laywomen said that their own pastors had sexually harassed them. He highlights Phillip Jenkins’ conclusion in his book “Pedophiles and Priests” to the effect that while just 1.7% of the Catholic clergy have been found guilty of pedophilia, up to 10% of Protestant ministers have been found guilty of it. His conclusion then is that pedophilia is not a Catholic problem. The child sex abuse scandal tagged on the Catholic Church is rather a problem of prejudice.
Miller is seriously bothered, moreover, by the fact that the same media that bombastically trumpets any little shadows in the Church is enigmatically silent about the much good done by the same Church. He points out that the Catholic Church in the USA has 230 colleges and universities with an enrollment of 700,000 students. This Church educates 2.6 million students every day, at a cost to the Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. The Catholic Church, which has a nonprofit hospital system of 637 hospitals, accounts for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people, be they Catholic or not.
Given that the Catholic Church helps millions of people every day of the week, every week of the month, and every month of the year, Miller wonders aloud why the enemies of the Church would want to destroy such an institution. His conclusion is that though priests, like all other human beings, may have their human problems and failures in discipleship, they do not deserve to be calumniated as they have been; the Church cannot be written off on this count.
So, the point is that it is unfair to judge the Catholic Church by Catholics who fail to practice the faith. After all, the fact that some products of the Catholic Church do not reflect their Catholic upbringing proves that the Catholic Church brainwashes no one. The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ is that net which takes in all kinds of fish (cf. Mt 13:47-50); it is that beautiful field of wheat wherein the enemy has planted weeds (Mt 13:24-30).