Cameroon – Page 16 – Cameroon Intelligence Report
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Southern Cameroons Crisis: Abducted Cardinal Tumi released

Cameroonian Media reported that armed men kidnapped Cardinal Christian Wiyghan Tumi in the restive North West region of the country on Thursday. Cardinal Tumi, who is the Archbishop Emeritus of Douala, was in the company of the paramount ruler of Nso. The traditional ruler was heading back to his traditional palace after months of self-imposed exile due to the armed conflicts between government troops and secessionists. Sources say the convoy was stopped by a roadblock mounted by alleged separatist fighters who abducted the Cardinal and took him to an unknown location. In an interview with Vatican News, Archbishop Samuel Kleda of Douala said that he estimates that Cardinal Tumi was abducted around 6:00pm on his way from Bamenda to Kumbo because he had been in touch with him just an hour before. Much later on Thursday evening, Archbishop Kleda received a phone call from the Cardinal who informed him that he had been interrogated by kidnappers. His subsequent attempts to reach the Cardinal by phone on Friday morning were futile. However, the Cardinal was released later in the day on Friday after spending a night in the den of the kidnappers. Cardinal Tumi, 90, has been vocal in calling for dialogue and peace amid the four-year-long conflict in the North West and South West regions of the country.

Pope Francis’ closeness

Pope Francis has expressed his closeness to Cameroon. At the weekly General Audience on 28 October, he prayed that “the tormented regions of the North West and South West of the country may find peace.”The Pope also prayed for the families of the young students killed on 24 October by gunmen at a private school in Kumba. He expressed sorrow at the “cruel and senseless act which tore the young innocents from life while they were attending lessons at school.”

Cameroon’s conflict

Armed separatists, also known as “Amba boys” have been engaged in an ongoing battle with government troops in their bid to create an independent state which they wish to be called “Ambazonia.”The crisis began in 2016 when educational and judicial institutions in the English-speaking North West and South West regions of the bi-lingual country protested the unjustified appointments of French speakers in their territory. By 2017, the situation had spiraled out of control and had become a full-fledged separatist war.The prolonged conflict has created thousands of casualties and widespread displacement. School children in the conflict zone have only returned to school this year after almost four year of closures. Last month, gunmen alleged to be linked to the separatist fighters, opened fire on students at Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba leaving at six of them dead in the deadly attack.

Source: Vatican News

Kumba Massacre: ‘Mass of Angels’ to be held in Germany

‘A mass of the Angels’ will be held on Sunday for the eight school children killed in Kumba by unidentified gunmen.

The Parish Priest of the Cameroon Catholic Community in Mulhein an der Ruhr in Germany Revered Father Constant Leke said the children will be sorrowfully missed by everyone.

A Mass of the Angels will be held in St. Mariae Rosenkranz Mülheim an der Ruhr Church on Sunday afternoon at 3pm.

The Chairman of the Pastoral Council the MbangFon Wara Julius has also invited the entire Cameroon Christian community in the Nordrhein Westphalia province in Germany to be a part of the special Holy Mass.

Cameroon’s unwinnable war

At the heart of the crisis, which started in 2016, was a strike by teachers and lawyers, in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. The professionals, supported by citizens of their areas, protested the unfair use of the French language and unjustified appointments of French speakers in their territories. Cameroon is a bilingual country. By 2017, the situation had spiralled out of control and developed into a fully-fledged separatist war. Both government forces and separatists are now bogged down in a conflict, that observers say, can only be resolved through dialogue.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Mulheim

Pope Francis appeals for peace in Cameroon after deadly school attack

Pope Francis appealed for an end to violence in Cameroon Wednesday after seven students were killed in an attack on a school in the city of Kumba.

“I participate in the suffering of the families of the young students barbarically killed last Saturday in Kumba, in Cameroon. I feel great bewilderment at such a cruel and senseless act, which tore the young innocents from life while they were attending lessons at school,” Pope Francis said at the end of his general audience Oct. 28.

“May God enlighten hearts, so that similar gestures may never be repeated again and so that the tormented regions of the northwest and southwest of the country may finally find peace. I hope that the weapons will remain silent and that the safety of all and the right of every young person to education and the future can be guaranteed.”

Gunmen attacked Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy, a school in Cameroon’s Southwest region, on Oct. 24 and opened fire on students in a classroom. A local education official told Reuters that all seven victims of the attack were between 12 and 14 years old.

Bishop Agapitus Nfon of Kumba will offer a Mass for the repose of the souls of the murdered students and for the consolation of their bereaved families at the diocese’s Sacred Heart Cathedral Oct. 30.

“We shall also pray for the forgiveness and conversion of the Herod(s), the perpetrators of this heinous and barbarous act, while asking our loving Father in heaven to intervene for a lasting solution to be found so that true justice and peace may reign,” Bishop Nfon said in a statement shared with ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner.

“Let us pray that by the power of the Holy Spirit He may turn the wicked and stone hearts of the Herod(s) (the murderers of our children) into hearts of love and flesh.”

The school attack took place amid conflict between separatists and government forces in the English-speaking territories in the country’s Northwest Region and Southwest Region. Tensions escalated after Francophone teachers and judges were sent to work in the historically marginalized Anglophone regions in 2016, and the dispute has come to be known as the Anglophone Crisis.

Schools in the Anglophone regions of the nation, which is located at the junction of western and central Africa, were previously closed due to the skirmishes. In September, separatist leaders in the country called for the resumption of schooling in the warring regions. The government announced the reopening of learning institutions for Oct. 5.

After the attack, Bishop Nfon questioned this reversal on the region’s schools: “Were they not allowed to go to school by those who previously restricted them for the past four years? How could they then ask children to go to school and turn around to massacre them?”

The bishop also noted that the killings came less than a year after 22 people, including children and pregnant women, were killed in another attack in the Diocese of Kumbo in the Ngarbuh village in February.

“What is holding back those concerned, I mean the international bodies and the government of Cameroon, to look for a lasting solution to this problem that will restore justice and peace?” the bishop asked.

“We are painfully weeping and pondering; what is so important other than peace that will make us sit back in indifference and watch tender and precious lives being wasted away?”

Source: Catholic News Agency

Address to the Catholic Lawyers’ Guild of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston

Conscience in the Discernment of the True and the Good in the Practice of Law

Rev. Maurice Agbaw-Ebai

Ste. Anne’s Parish, Salem MA

Boston College, Brighton MA/St. John’s Seminary, Brighton MA

Dear Members of the Catholic Lawyers’Guild of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, thank you for your kind invitation to share a few thoughts with you this evening. As Americans involved in the practice of law, yours is the noble task of serving justice for all, according to the laws of these United States of America. At the same time, as Catholics, you cannot miss out or set aside the rich patrimony on the reflections of law that has marked the history of Catholicism through the ages. Listening to the higher law of God, as Catholics, is an exercise of discernment, of seeking, like Solomon of old, to be able to distinguish the true from the false, the good from evil (1 Kings 3:9).Central to this act of discernment lies the voice of conscience, a commonly agreed upon concept, that remains complex till date, in terms of not just its meaning, but above all, its nature, its formation and the place that must be ceded to it in the process of decision making. As Catholic lawyers, the discernment of conscience in the practice of law is indispensable because, as Benedict XVI pointed out in his September 22, 2011 Address to the Bundestag entitled “The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law,” “(…) unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed law to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from revelation. Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law – and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason, which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God.”[1]In other words, not only has Christianity never proposed a theocracy, it has, by pointing to nature and the harmony of subjective and objective reason, thrusted an ongoing burden of the interpretation and application of law on the conscience of law practitioners. Hence, if you will permit me, I wish to speak to you today about the role of conscience in discerning the true and the good in the practice of law.

In the “Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World,” the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965), sought to offer a very descriptive description of conscience: “Deep within their conscience individuals discover a law which they do not make for themselves but which they are bound to obey, whose voice, ever summoning them to love and do what is good and to avoid what is evil, rings in their heart when necessary with the command: Do this, keep away from that. For inscribed in their hearts by God, human beings have a law whose observance is their dignity and in accordance with which they are to be judged. Conscience is the most important center and sanctuary of a person, in which he or she is alone with God whose voice echoes within them. In a marvelous manner conscience makes known that law which is fulfilled by love of God and of neighbor.”[2]

By way of unpacking this analysis of conscience by the Second Vatican Council, the first point that stands out in this treatment of conscience is that it is a law discoveredwithin humans. It is not a self-created law. In Kantian terms, one would say that conscience is not an autonomous law. It is heteronomous, coming from outside my subjective preferences and calculations. This is the sense thanks to which we can understand the discoverableness of conscience, in that the requirements of conscience precede me and are not simply intended for me to fit in, that is, for my convenience. An understanding of conscience that is profoundly relativistic or subjectivistic easily misses out on that element of antecedence or precedence that should be the mark of a mature and well-formed conscience. And the drama of conscience unveils itself in the tension body and spirit, the tension between what we are and what we ought to be. Conscience, in its discerning role between the is and the ought, could well be described as the battle between the body and the spirit.

A second quality worth highlighting is that conscience is the secret core or the sanctuary of the human person who is alone with God, whose voice echoes within each person. In this sense, conscience cannot be severed from the individual, for it is the individual person that is called to live according to his or her conscience. At the same time – and this already reveals the inner tension that comes with the dialectics of conscience – though the individual is, in a sense, the locus of conscience, it is not the case that one could automatically identify conscience with the individual in a relativistic sense, to the extent that the subjective proclivities of the individual becomes the measuring rod of evaluating actions; that is, like an island severed from the great wealth of moral truth. Two basic errors must therefore be guarded against, errors very much accentuated by the understanding of freedom that came with Enlightenment as a philosophical movement: Firstly, as seen in the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), in which the individual is the final arbiter of moral truth, given that for Nietzsche, conscience is the sovereign person.[3]Nietzsche views the human conscience as a form of self-maltreatment, an escape from what Nietzsche considers to be the natural condition of human animality.[4] Conscience inhibits the freedom of the human spirit, enslaving the human spirit in the postulates of religion. A second position to be avoided is that of the individual as vested with infallibility with respect to the truth, so much so that the conscience of the individual sets the standards for every moral question. These two positions, firstly, of seeing conscience as a torture and suffocating chamber; and secondly, of perceiving the individual as the measuring rode of conscience, capture the general trend of the Enlightenment vis-à-vis the understanding of conscience, positions that are very much still prevalent in the post-modern world.

With Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the moral order is not built on the subjective, infallible conscience of the individual but on the nature of the human person as a creature of God, who lives for God as the final end (purpose) of the person’s existence. Nature has a grammar that communicates to humans, both speculative and practical principles of life.[5]In this Thomistic context, the purpose of conscience is not to create the moral law, but to put the individual in contact with the objective moral order, already given by God in creation. Aquinas follows the reasoning of St. Paul, who, in writing to the Romans, makes the case that common to all creatures is the basic awareness of the moral law placed in the human heart by God, what moral theology calls synderesis. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened”(Romans1:19-21).In the very next chapter, St. Paul further builds on this theme of the pervasive consciousness of the sense of right and wrong that is the framework of law when he writes: “When Gentiles who never heard of the law but are led by reason to do what the Law commands, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Romans 2:14 – 15).

Conscience therefore, depends on synderesis.Synderesisis therefore the elemental moral awareness of each human being, as Aquinas would have it, bestowed on humans by nature.[6] It is the basic consciousness persons have of the first principles of the moral law, inciting to good and murmuring at evil.[7]And synderesis helps in discerning these moral principles: Good must be done, evil avoided (practical reasoning); The principle of non-contradiction (speculative reasoning);The principle of excluded middle (speculative reasoning);and The principle of identity (speculative reasoning). Based on these principles, therefore, one could say that synderesis is our general awareness of the natural law. Synderesis is what initiates our elemental attraction toward the good and repulsion for evil.

Based on this moral awareness as articulated by Aquinas, one can therefore defineconscience as an act of the intellect, a judgment relating to moral good and evil. Ratio velConscientia: In Thomas, there is an intrinsic link between reason and conscience, reason being the larger picture, and conscience, the peculiar act of judgment. It is not possible to sever the link between conscience and reason. An act of conscience therefore, is an act made with knowledge: that is, Con (i.e.) + Scientia: with knowledge.[8]Conscience therefore, offers a practical knowledge to what we do.

What does conscience do with this knowledge? It makes judgments with respect to the moral good or evil; More specifically, there are three functions of conscience: firstly, conscience establishes the context as a peculiarly moral context; i.e., we regard certain things as a matter of conscience, that is, to be judged as morally good or morally bad; secondly, conscience advises before the fact,that is, conscience urges us towards or away from an action; and thirdly, conscience assesses after the fact; the act has already been done and what we are doing now is to place it on a moral evaluation. This is the examination of conscience, in that conscience either excuses or accuses. Conscience does this evaluation based on two factors, namely, the quality of the agent’s knowledge of the act when the act was done: Knowledge; and the extent of the agent’s willing involvement in the act: Freedom.Thus, conscience recognizes – recognoscere; conscience bears witness – testificari; and conscience judges – iudicare.

If conscience is rooted in synderesis, knowledge and freedom, then the relationship between conscience and the true and the good becomes both self-evident and acute, for what is knowledge without truth, and what is freedom without the good? And herein lies a tension that cannot be resolved once and for all, a tension that every lawyer, Catholic or not, and in fact, every human being, must deal with: the relationship between Conscience, Truth, and the Good. As Joseph Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI points out: “(…) It will not do to identify man’s conscience with the self-consciousness of the “I,” with its subjective certainty about itself and its moral behavior. On the one hand, this consciousness may be a mere reflection of the social surroundings and the opinions in circulation. On the other hand, it might also derive from a lack of self-criticism, a deficiency in listening to the depths of one’s own soul.”[9] The question of conscience and the adherence to conscience, necessarily, therefore, includes the questions of the true and the good – two transcendental properties of being that cannot be severed, for ultimately, only the true is good and the good, true. But how does conscience arrive at the certainty of the true and the good?

The life of the great English lawyer and patron saint of lawyers, St. Thomas More, as dramatized in Robert Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons, offers us a helpful insight into resolving this question about the intrinsicness of the relationship between conscience, the true and the good, and why setting aside the question of the relationship between conscience, the true and the good, spells doom for all engaged in the practice of law. The central issue of the play is, of course, Henry VIII’s desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon and remarry Anne Boleyn, in a bid to get a male heir to the English throne. In cautioning More about the potential dangers involved by More not siding with Henry VIII’s desire to divorce Catherine, Cardinal Wolsey retorts to More’s conscience objection: “Your conscience is your own affair; but you’re a statesman (…) Now explain how you as Councilor of England can obstruct those measures for the sake of your own, private, conscience.” More makes a very telling rejoinder to the Cardinal which I believe is worth remembering, especially by those involved in the practice of the interpretation of law: “I believe,” says More, that “when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties (…) they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”[10] Clearly, Thomas More does not believe that in the exercise of their public duties, be it in the legislature, the executive, or the judiciary branches, those involved should quarantine their consciences, to the extent that one’s conscience is simply one’s own affair. And we see Cardinal Wolsey’s line of reasoning repeated again to More by Henry VIII himself, when, in persuading More to side with him in order to give public legitimacy to his divorce of Catherine, Henry says to More: “Your conscience is your own affair; but you are my Chancellor!”[11]

Discerning and listening to one’s conscience in the exercise of one’s public role is necessary because the voice of conscience can and should act as a safeguard against the tyranny of the majority, which, as tends to be commonplace today given the secular atmosphere especially in Western societies, tends to be more often governed by a subjectivism dressed in democratic robes.The majority principle is helpful in discerning the will of people, in gauging and arriving at some form of a consensus around issues of concern to the state. As Benedict XVI points out, “(…) it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of the human being and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough; everyone in a position of responsibility must personally seek out the criteria to be followed when framing laws.”[12] In other words, the majority principle alone, useful as it is, is insufficient to determine what is right. World history is littered with examples of the majority principle bringing about laws that have trampled upon human dignity and human rights, depriving other humans of essential freedoms, such as the freedom to be considered truly human (slavery and slave trade); the freedom to exercise the right to vote; freedom of association; freedom of movement; freedom of habitation and education (racial segregation), et cetera. There is, therefore, the necessity of being conscious of the limitations that come with the exercise of the majority principle, as useful as it might be.

In the practice of law, therefore, conscientious objections are not only necessary but are even demanded, if the true and the good are to be safeguarded, as demonstrated by Thomas More. It would have been easy for More to simply follow the convenience of the majority principle and do the bidding of Henry VIII. But the voice of conscience, that voice not placed in him by himself, was urging More to a higher loyalty. With the eyes of his conscience, Thomas More was able to see the wider picture of the good of the marriage bond and the relationship between the Church in England and the See of Rome, that was being eroded by the parliamentary Acts of Supremacy and Succession. This discernment was no easy choice for Thomas More: on the one hand, there was the King who considered him a friend and thanks to whose good graces he was Chancellor of England. On the other hand, there was good of the sacrament of marriage, central to which was the gospel of indissolubility. What do you do when two goods collide? For Thomas More, the locus of resolution happened in the domain of his conscience, and this is the great example More has left behind for every lawyer from the sixteenth century onwards: political and even legal expediency should not replace the onerous but precious task of discerning the true and the good in the light of conscience, and the courage to adhere to one’s conscience, especially when doing so places one on the “wrong” side of history. The question More poses to Norfolk who was persuading him to fall in line with Henry VIII’s request, remains a relevant food for thought today. It shows More resisting the subjective error that Norfolk had succumbed to. More remained steadfast in the service of the objective truth that he had discerned in his conscience: “And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?”[13] I believe that’s a question worth the ponder.

Four centuries later, another English luminary, John Henry Newman, would articulate this primacy of conscience and the necessity of adhering to one’s conscience, with his famous toast, to the pope, but to conscience first, for conscience to Newman is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.[14]Conscience is central for Newman because truth stands in the middle of conscience. In other words, the centrality of the concept of conscience for Newman is linked to the prior centrality of the concept of truth, and can only be understood from this vintage point. It is insufficient to simply follow a clear conscience or at best, not to act against one. In this sense, one could not simply justify one’s decision on the grounds of following one’s conscience, for conscience alone, at least for Newman, cannot account for the whole reality of human moral action, if conscience is severed from objective truth, which finds itself in the searching and listening heart. A person of conscience is one who is never resigned to the prevailing opinion in the process of decision-making. In this sense, the protection that conscience must enjoy is not just a luxury. The freedom of conscience presupposes the formation of conscience in the school of truth, the pursuit of truth, the burden of seeking the truly good at every instant of decision making. As Newman compellingly stated in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, “conscience has rights because it has duties.”[15] If one were to give up on the pursuit of truth, especially when such a pursuit is costly, what will remain will be a convenient utilitarianism in which we will start living a lie, calling what is false, true, and what is evil, good. A civilization built on such premises will possess within itself, the recipe for its own demise. Conscience is therefore, a personal task entrusted to each person by God, to continuously discern the true and the good.

Given this perspective, our obligation to follow our conscience is not suspended if in a particular case, our conscience happens to be erroneous, i.e., providing us with incorrect information: A subject makes a sincere judgment of conscience; the judgment of conscience is objectively an erroneous judgment; the subject who makes the sincere judgment of conscience knows it to be an erroneous judgment; Conclusion: Not possible because premise one cancels out premise three, and vice versa, for if the judgment is sincere, the subject who makes it knows it as a correct judgment; He cannot simultaneously know it to be SINCERE and ERRONEOUS at the same time. Sincerity alone does not make a morally evil act good! The subject cannot reject an erroneous conscience which he does not know to be erroneous. An erroneous conscience is one that supplies us a false information in reference to the good. Cromwell displays a glaring example of an erroneous conscience in his execution of Henry VIII’s plot against Thomas More, when Cromwell explains to Rich: “The King’s a man of conscience and he wants either Sir Thomas More to bless his marriage or Sir Thomas More destroyed (…) if the King destroys a man, that’s proof to the King that it must have been a bad man, the kind of man a man of conscience ought to destroy – and of course a bad man’s blessing’s not worth having. So, either will do.”[16]The certainty of conscience is no guarantee of the veracity of conscience, and both Cromwell and Henry VIII demonstrate that. Once conscience is severed from the “obedience to the truth” (1 Peter 1:22) and from the good that must be done (Matthew 19:16), then conscience, even when alluded to, becomes a utilitarian tool employed by the strong against the weak. It is necessary to always remember what John Paul II taught in 2003 in the great encyclical Veritatis Splendor, namely, that “it is always from the truth that the dignity of conscience derives.”[17] When conscience gives up on objective truth, then conscience becomes a smokescreen that conceals the unchecked impulses of the human ego. The human person easily becomes susceptible to a calculative mode of life enshrined in a self-serving nihilistic Weltanschauung.

Conclusion: Conscience is Someone, not Something

Given all that has been said above regarding the irreplaceability of one’s conscience as the locus of discerning the true and the good, I will conclude with the assertion that after all is said and done, it is important to always bear in mind thatconscience is not something, but someone in the personalistic and not the subjectivistic or relativistic sense, for it is the human being who acts. And we can only know a person from his or her actions. The human being is always an acting person, for, as the French philosopher Maurice Blondel points out in his philosophy of action (L’Action 1893), even dilettantism is a form of action. Conscience is therefore, not a speculative principle, but who we are, in our concrete choices, in the options we make. And if conscience is not something but someone – who we are – it implies that conscience cannot be static, settled once and for all. Just as humans work on themselves in a spirit of continuous development, much the same is required for the formation of our consciences. In other words, because conscience is who we are, the formation of conscience in the light of its triple roles of providing context to our actions, advising before the fact of our actions, and assessing after the fact of our actions, is a process that is with us throughout the gift of life on God’s good planet. The task of forming our consciences therefore, in the light of the exacting demands of the true and the good, is the vocation that practitioners of law, those who must make judgments on the rightness and wrongness of human actions, must embrace with an unrelenting intensity and conviction, for the common good of society. Everyone must engage in the formation of his or her own conscience. Today, may the example of St. Thomas More continue to inspire us to listen to our consciences, where, as Catholic lawyers, we can hear the voice of God speaking to us, as we strive to serve the true and the good in the practice of the law.

Bibliography

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, 50 – 119. Translated by Fr Laurence Shapcote, O.P. Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2021.

Benedict XVI. Address to the Bundestag: The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law. September 22 2011.

Bolt, Robert. A Man for All Seasons. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

John Paul II, Veritas Splendor, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Kerala, India: Carmel International Publishing House, 2005.

[1]Benedict XVI, Address to the Bundestag: The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law, September 22, 2011, para 5, accessed October 25 2020.

[2] Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 16.

[3] Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), Second Essay, 2.

[4]Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, 16.

[5] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 12.

[6] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 12.

[7] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 12.

[8] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 79, a. 13.

[9] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 20.

[10] Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 22.

[11] Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, 56.

[12]Benedict XVI, Address to the Bundestag: The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law, September 22, 2011, para. 3, accessed October 25 2020.

[13] Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, 132.

[14] John Henry Newman,A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk: Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London:Longman, Greens, 1885), 248.

[15] Newman, Letter Duke of Norfolk, vol. 2, 250.

[16]Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, 119.

[17] John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor (Kerala, India: Carmel International Publishing House, 2005), 63.

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Jesuit Priest on pilgrimage, prays for reconciliation

Carrying only a rucksack, sleeping mat, dressed in black Cassock with his head shaved, Fr. Lado embarked Monday on a 250 km pilgrimage that should take him from Douala to Yaoundé. He wants to draw attention to the suffering brought about by the war in Cameroon, now in its fourth year.

Fr. Lado told Fidespost that his walk was a pilgrimage to pray for dialogue, justice, peace and reconciliation in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon.

“To pray, on the one hand, for dialogue, justice, peace and reconciliation in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon and, on the other hand, to do penance for the reparation of crimes against human dignity committed in these regions. I draw on these Christian values, which are simply human. These are: Fraternity, dialogue, justice, reconciliation and peace,” wrote Fr. Lado recently in an open letter.

Detained in Edéa

On Tuesday, Fr. Lado’s journey was abruptly interrupted when police detained him in Edéa, a city located along the Sanaga River in the Littoral Region. He was later released and is continuing with his walk. After his release, Fr. Lado said he was in good spirits. “I explained to them (police) that I was on a pilgrimage which has a long religious tradition … but they violated my civil rights,” he said.

Support for the education of children of IDPs

Fr. Lado has placed his pilgrimage under the theme, “Where is your brother?” (Gen 4: 9).

“If the Church, the (Cameroonian) authorities and the Ambazonians do not sit around the table to find a solution to this crisis, I will do my part,” said Fr. Lado when he first announced his decision to walk.

Fr. Lado also says he wants to do penance for the reparation of the crimes against human dignity that have been committed during the conflict. “This march,” adds Fr. Lado, “is a call for solidarity to support the education of children of Internally Displaced Persons or refugees, who are living precarious lives.”

Why else I am walking?

“I am walking so that human blood stops flowing in our country. I walk so that the constitutional right to demonstrate peacefully in Cameroon is respected. I walk in solidarity with internally displaced people and refugees from the Anglophone crisis. I walk to exorcise in me and in us the demon of indifference. Walking is not just a human right, but a divine right. I walk to make it work,” explained Fr. Lado.

Fr. Lado said his march is also in solidarity with hundreds detained, in Cameroon, on 22 September, after demonstrations called by the opposition party, the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC). The demonstrators want national dialogue, electoral reforms and the return of peace to the Anglophone regions of the country. The Cameroonian government deems demonstrations in some regions as illegal.

UN Rights Experts condemn government heavy-handedness

The government has been accused of using excessive force and deploying heavily armed security forces to prevent peaceful demonstrations. UN human rights experts, this week, demanded that authorities release the prominent opposition leader and others arrested during the country-wide peaceful protests. They urge the government to stop intimidating political activists.

The experts further want an impartial investigation into all human rights violations, including allegations of enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and ill-treatment of protesters, and that perpetrators be brought to justice.

“We are extremely worried about mass arrests of peaceful protesters and political activists who express dissent,” the experts said. More than 500 people were reportedly arrested after opposition-led protests on 22 September. About 200 of these are still being held in detention. They could face terrorism or national security charges and a trial in a military court simply for exercising their fundamental freedoms, said the UN rights experts.

A four-year war that no one is winning

The four-year separatist conflict has created widespread displacement of half a million people. More than 3 000 persons have been killed. Children in the conflict zones have not been able to attend school for close to four years. Earlier this month, some parents and teachers in the conflict zones braved threats from armed groups and reopened some schools.

At the heart of the crisis, in 2016, was a strike by teachers and lawyers, in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. The professionals, supported by citizens of their areas, protested the unfair use of the French language and unjustified appointments of French speakers in their territories. Cameroon is a bilingual country. By 2017, the situation had spiralled out of control and developed into a fully-fledged separatist war. Both government forces and separatists are now bogged down in a conflict, that observers say, can only be resolved through dialogue.

Fr. Lado: The outspoken academic

The outspoken and controversial Fr. Lado is not a stranger to the Cameroonian government. He has been raising his voice from about the year 2007 when he was the vice-dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Management at the Catholic University of Central Africa, in Yaoundé. He has also been a critic of Paul Biya who has been President of Cameroon for 38 years.

Fr. Lado holds a doctorate in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Oxford. He has written and spoken on issues of Anthropology, Catholic Pentecostalism, trends in African Catholicism, and on social change in sub-Saharan Africa.

Source: Vatican News

Two Ambazonian team members from Bible Society killed by Boko Haram

Two facilitators from the Bible Society of Cameroon’s literacy program in the Far North region have been killed by Boko Haram over the past few weeks.

After a two-year lull, attacks by Islamic militant group Boko Haram in that region are on the rise again, and are claiming many victims. Among the lives recently lost were two literacy facilitators from the Bible Society of Cameroon’s Alpha Program in the Parkwa language. One of them died in early August, and the second in mid-September.

“We’ve lost the engine of the church.” – Patrice

Jonas, 42, an elder in the Union of Evangelical Churches in Cameroon, was killed on the night of August 8 while standing guard outside the church with three other people. Patrice*, who lives opposite the church, describes what happened.

“Boko Haram usually turn up in the villages at around 10pm so when it got to 11pm those on guard thought they weren’t coming – so they fell asleep. They didn’t fire their weapons in the air or light torches, which they usually do, so Jonas was taken by surprise in his sleep. The other two managed to escape but Jonas was shot in the head twice.”

The church ‘s pastor confirms Patrice’s words but is still in shock, too overwhelmed to be able to talk about what happened. Marcel*, one of the translators working on the Parkwa Bible, was almost killed by Boko Haram last October. He was a friend of Jonas and describes him as hardworking, someone who was calm and serious in everything he did.

Many people have fled their villages since the attacks resumed in the region. Boko Haram members have warned those who have chosen to stay that they will continue to bury their dead because “living on the mountainsides doesn’t mean you’re in heaven”. In other words, they are not beyond Boko Haram’s reach.

After Jonas’s death, the church built his family a hut at the top of the mountain, which is more difficult for Boko Haram to get to. Olivier*, the Bible Society’s delegate for the Far North, North and Adamaoua regions, went to visit his widow.

“We found her absolutely devastated by the terrible loss she has suffered, but also ill because the humidity on the mountain attracts insects and reptiles,” says Olivier. “They are living in a terribly precarious state. One of the children has festering wounds on his legs and two of them had left for a town 27 kilometres away to find plastic – so that the family can lay it beneath their bed mats, to insulate them from the ground.”

“It is this Bible that will bring hope and heal the wounds of the Parkwa-speaking people”. – Luc Gnowa.

On September 18, barely 40 days after Jonas’s death, Boko Haram killed yet another literacy facilitator, Joseph.

A catechist in the Catholic Church, Joseph was 43 and had eight children. He was a friend of Jonas. Marcel was among the group who went to collect Joseph’s body.

“The villagers were hiding in caves,” he says. “One of Joseph’s children was sick and crying. Fearing that they would be discovered, some of the villagers asked Joseph to take his wife and child and return to his hut. That’s where Boko Haram found them. His wife was able to escape with the child, but not Joseph. We have lost one of our best Parkwa literacy teachers.”

In the village, people live in fear. They can flee … but where to? What would they live on? There is flooding in the area, and living conditions are extremely difficult. Diseases are decimating the population and famine is rising due to a ban on cultivation in the area surrounding the village – this is to ensure that anyone approaching can be seen. But people have nowhere to go.

“After the murder of our two team members, who were responsible for preparing the community for the arrival of the Bible in Parkwa, our task becomes even more urgent,” says General Secretary of the Bible Society of Cameroon, Luc Gnowa.

“It is this Bible that will bring hope and heal the wounds of the Parkwa-speaking people. The translation of the Bible into the Parkwa language is truly taking place under the most painful conditions. Even at the official ceremony to launch the translation project, we had to leave the village in a hurry because we were warned of a possible attack by Boko Haram.”

“You know, when God sends you on a mission, he doesn’t say what conditions you will face when you go. He says, ‘Go, I’m sending you.’ He sent us to this people and we must accomplish our mission. We are convinced that, with him, we will complete our mission, despite the actions of the enemy.”

Please pray for our Parkwa-speaking brothers and sisters, that God will intervene for these people who have seen their men die and for all those in the Far North who have been bereaved due to the actions of Boko Haram.

Please lift up these families who have lost everything and for the Bible translators who are so distressed by what has happened that they are finding it difficult to concentrate. May the Lord’s name be glorified and give us victory, so that his children can finally live in peace and safety.

Source: Eternitynews

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Church of England Bishops issue Ecumenical statement calling on the international community to respond

An ecumenical statement has been released by UK Church leaders on the situation in Southern Cameroons. The Bishops of Southwark and Chichester have joined with other church leaders in a joint statement on the genocide going on in Southern Cameroons.

Bishops Christopher Chessun and Martin Warner, together with senior Methodist and Roman Catholic leaders, have called on the international community to respond.

We hear the cry of our sisters and brothers in Cameroon’s Anglophone region, who are facing daily violations of their human dignity. Recent reports of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention and attacks on civilians demand a response from the international community. We call on the UK government to work with other European countries on robust diplomatic action to halt the violence and help bring about a negotiated settlement that protects the rights all Cameroon’s people. We also express our closeness to the churches that are working with local communities to reject violence and pursue the path of dialogue, and we assure them that they have not been forgotten.

Revd Richard Teal, President of the Methodist Conference

Rt Rev Christopher Chessun, Lord Bishop of Southwark, Church of England Lead Bishop for International Affairs

Rt Rev Declan Lang, Catholic Bishop of Clifton, Chair of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs

Carolyn Lawrence, Vice-President of the Methodist Conference

Rt Rev Martin Warner, Lord Bishop of Chichester (companion link to the Anglican Diocese of Cameroon)

Rt Rev Philip Egan, Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth (twinned with the Catholic Diocese of Bamenda)

Cameroonian Christians Leave COVID-19-Doubting Churches

Christians have left Cameroonian churches that claim COVID-19 does not exist. The defecting Christians say they saw some who obeyed church instructions to ignore barrier measures infected or dying from the virus. Christians are being accepted into other congregations.

This song “When God Speaks” blasts through loudspeakers at Winners Chapel, a popular church in the Fouda neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. The song, by the Nigerian gospel singer Frank Ugochukwu Edwards, is played to welcome 23 new members.

Among them is 37-year-old Annabella Tabot. Tabot says she left the Tabernacles of Freedoms Ministries because her pastor deceived them, saying that COVID-19 did not exist. Tabot says the pastor asked her 60-year-old husband not to go to the hospital and was instead praying for healing from evil spirits.

“His health condition kept on deteriorating and he finally died. Luckily the government came in and isolated him and the other family members were not contaminated,” she said.

In August, Cameroon’s government closed Tabernacles of Freedoms Ministries for preaching that COVID-19 is a hoax. Many of its 300 members defied government orders and kept worshiping in front of the closed church.

Tabot said more than 100 members left the church when her sick husband died, shortly after he was suspected of having COVID-19 and forced to go to the hospital by the government.

The Association of Pentecostal Churches in Yaoundé reported that at least 270 Christians left from six churches that preached against the existence of COVID-19. Protus Ngala, pastor of Redemption Ministries says 11 of his followers left.

“I have gone to some of the people,” he said. “I made some questionnaires and passed them over to the church [remaining members] to try to know what needs to be adjusted. I try to do all of those things to make sure that I am a better leader. I understand that I also could be defective.”

Ngala said he has always believed that COVID-19 exists but thought it could be treated through prayer and fasting.

Governor Naserie Paul Bea of Cameroon’s Center region says the Christians are changing churches after a rigorous campaign he led to educate the public on the dangers of COVID-19. He says churches that do not respect barrier measures to protect against the virus will be punished.

“We need to limit the activities of some of these groups,” he said. “We cannot be in a state that is saying one thing and another person is preaching another thing. The [churches] are there to be a relay, not only of the government but equally to teach the people what the Bible says.”

Sociologist Paul Emmanuel Somb of the University of Yaoundé says the high wave of defections show people are not happy with most churches’ teachings.

He says many new churches should face reality and acknowledge that their teachings truly do not respond to their member’s growing spiritual and health needs. He says pastors, priests and Imams should be true guarantors of the uprightness and morality of people who are counting on them. He says religious leaders who deceived their followers, saying that COVID-19 does not exist and collected money from them, claiming to instead deliver patients from evil spirits should be held responsible for their actions.

Since March 5 Cameroon has reported more than 19,000 COVID-19 cases, with 415 deaths according to Johns Hopkins University data.

A health worker wearing protective equipment, disinfects a member of medical staff amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at an hospital in Douala, Cameroon, April 27, 2020.

The central African state blames negligence, lack of knowledge and the failure of some churches to educate their members on the dangers of COVID-19 as among the factors in the increasing number of cases.

Culled from VOA

Douala: Reverend father collapses and dies while preaching during Sunday mass

A catholic reverend father identified as Jude has slumped and died while preaching the Homily during mass on Sunday, 30th August 2020.

It is understood from the caption of the video that Rev.Fr Jude was the spiritual director of CMA Diedo in Duoala, Cameroon’s commercial capital city.

It was observed from the video that the clergy while speaking, first paused for a few seconds and then slumped while still at the pulpit, sending commotion and noise into the congregation.

The cause of his death could not be established at press time.

Source: Naija news