Frankly speaking, I was raised in a Catholic family. I was indeed a devout member of the Catholic to the extent that I became the Choirmaster when I was in a national secondary school in the beautiful city of Zomba.
However, I started questioning Catholicism at a tender age. I can recall at the age of 13 that I shouted at the top of my voice in church, “ why kissing it?”. I was only greeted by another voice, “shiiii” signaling that I had to keep quiet. In fact, that evening the Catholics were celebrating the death of Jesus Christ. They all queued up to kiss a molten sculpture that, in their minds, represented Jesus Christ, the promised messiah.
I am therefore not surprised when the Pope recently announced that Catholic priests should be permitted to bless same sex marriages.
By the way, I have read the communiques from Kenya, Zambia and Malawi Catholic community trying to explain the same-sex-marriage pope’s pronouncement.
My analysis is that their explanation was simply a forest of words clarifying utterly nothing . It reminded me of a certain professor in my old university pinning down a prospective master’s degree student insinuating that, “If you can’t convince just confuse”. I simply offered a warm handshake to the failed student after the presentation.
The truth is the fact remains the fact. This is why I still feel that our local priests have tried to put enough effort to defend the indefensible but to no avail.
Nay, only the gullible my old friend, Oldman Malinga, can be convinced. Unfortunately, this time around, I am still skeptical if he can buy the idea of same sex marriages for he is a staunch Muslim by birth and circumstances.
The truth of the matter is that the Roman Catholic Church has the blessings of the same sex marriages.
For starters, I am not homophobic. I literally condemn those who criminalise homosexuals.
However, I am a total custodian of division of labour and specialisation. I believe that both the state and the church have their pivotal role to play in the society.
The church must enforce human morality while the State needs to prioritise on adherence to basic human rights regardless of immortality.
For example, it is legal for teenagers of similar generation to get involved in fornication. However, it is the responsibility of the church to ensure that the youth are groomed for morality values.
It is therefore against this background that I vehemently fault the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church at large for endorsing their blessings for same sex marriages.
To what extent do same sex marriages promote sexual morality?
It is one thing to accept homosexuals in the church but another thing for church to promote homosexuality and same sex marriages in the guise of quashing exclusivity.
Perhaps the pope is right in permitting the priests to endorse same sex marriages because it is Roman Catholic. For sure that, Roman Catholic must have a roman flavour of same sex marriages. One would wonder why a Malawian should be conformed to Roman values.
My personal take is that it is disappointing that the Roman Catholic that is meant to promote sexual morality is at the forefront of promoting sexual immorality.
I think that Pope and the Roman Catholic church could have left the task of regulating sexual immorality to the sovereign states.
