The church contributes to human development than any government of the word Monsignor John Aniagwu, is the Vicar – General of the Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos and the priest in charge of St Leo Catholic Church, Ikeja, Lagos. In this interview with Springboard, he said the Catholic Church has contributed more than any government of the world. He also explained why the Western press is attacking the Catholic Church. Excerpts:
Q —The sexual scandal and the bad press the church is facing now. Recently one or two bishops have been suspended because of the scandal. What is your reaction concerning this? Monsignor: Yes the scandal is a very sad thing. It has happened; some priests over time have been involved in very regrettable incident especially with miners.
It has happened and nobody is happy about it, we recognize it and it just reminds us that the church is not made up of angels; it is made up of human beings. The 2nd Vatican Council said that the church is both human and divine. It is human because it is made up of simple human beings; it is divine because of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Some of those simple human beings happened to be priests, indeed all of us priests are sinners in different ways. Apostle John said,
“If we say we have never sinned, we are liars,”
we have all sinned and our sins are of different kinds, some of us sin in the area of greed, money, power and all that, some of us have sinned in the area of sexual immorality. I sympathise with them, I feel sad about it, I do not condemn them, and I don’t think we should condemn them. They should be sorry that they have inflicted some wounds on themselves especially and on the church. Well, they should have been dealt with appropriately. For instance, one of the issues raised has been that priests who engage in pedophile rather than being removed from active ministry find themselves posted from parish to parish, church to church, where they continue to do the wrong thing.
Since the scandal broke in the early 90’s the church has been dealing with it. Some of these things happened 30 – 40 years ago, there are some recent ones, but most of them happened long ago. The church is sitting up and tries to tighten things. The Holy Father even came out with some regulations dealing with it. So I think the leadership of the church is addressing the issue rigorously.
Beyond that, I think also serious effort is being made to address the issue at the level of formation, admission of candidates and their formation in the seminary. So that they are well formed and when they come out, they will not get themselves involved in this kind of scandal. So the future of the Catholic clergy as far as possible will be insulated from that kind of scandal. Having said that, I also want to say maybe too much has been made of the scandal, to the extent that it has to be with the media.
Unfortunately, the media can be used for good or for bad, the western media, in particular, the liberal media of the west have used this scandal to completely denigrate the Catholic Church, and we know why. It is because the principles that are offensive but condoned by the western liberal culture, things like homosexuality, same sex marriage which is completely against moral ethics. I think because of that some of them are using the media to fight the Catholic Church because we are proud to be the only institution that has remained standing against satanic practices. Most of the other churches have capitulated.
We even hear some of them ordaining homosexuals and approving gay marriage. This is not right, it does not agree with Christian heritage. It goes against what the scripture teaches, it does not agree with tradition and so we are not going to accept it as normal. For that reason, they are fighting us, even though the percentage of the priest involved in this scandal is very small, I think that statistics have shown that about 3% of priests are said to have been involved, 97% are going about their soul-saving mission free of scandal.
The press tends to ignore so much good that the church is doing and have been doing all over the world in different areas say education, health care, caring for the needy and the handicapped. So much that the Catholic Church is doing; much more than any government of the world and I say, without contradiction, that if you put together what the Catholic Church has done for humanity and are still going, I don’t see any country in the world, not even the United States can claim to do as much. I am not the only one saying so other commentators have also submitted that the Catholic Church is in the forefront of humanitarian activities globally, especially in war-torn areas.
I read an article by a Jewish gentleman recently where he condemned the western press for attacking the Catholic Church just because 3% of its clergy have been accused of sexual immorality. Even in science and technology,
