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Pastor TB Joshua was called to present evidence that supported his claim that his church was attacked by terrorists flying over the building, however, he didn’t appear at a coroner’s inquest. About 116 people were killed in a September 12 building collapse at T.B. Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) in Lagos. The pastor was also facing allegations that members of his church thwarted emergency rescue operations the day of the tragedy. During the inquest, the head of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, said that the first three days (after the collapse) were marred by the so-called church sympathizers and the crowd. “By the time we attained momentum after 96 hours a lot of things had gone bad,” he said. Oke-Osanyintolu further said: “The crowd impeded our operation. They did not allow our personnel and equipment to come in. They frustrated the emergency workers at the scene. Instead of allowing trained rescue workers with specialist equipment to search for survivors, only church members and volunteers were allowed to pick through the rubble.” Moreover, he claimed that SCOAN staff were not forthcoming with details that would aid an effective investigation. “We were not allowed to do documentation. Photographs of the incident were not allowed. We asked for the manifest to know the number and identities of the people in the building, we were not given. We asked for the building plan, we were not given,” he stated. According to the coroner, Oyetade Komolafe, Joshua may face arrest as he dismissed the inquest. However, TB Joshua’s lawyers are claiming that he, as well as the building’s contractors, never received summons to appear. Olalekan Ojo, Joshua’s lawyer, explained that the Prophet wasn’t avoiding the court, as The Man of God has not been personally served the witness summons. “He was unavoidably absent when the sheriff went for the service,” he said. Despite this, the lawyer did not accept the summons on his client’s behalf. “We want Prophet Joshua to know that the court is not persecuting anybody but (trying) to find the truth. He should come. As a prophet of God that he claims to be, he must not do anything that will make him to be at variance with the law,” the coroner said.
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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The main stream media in the West whose owners and editors are mostly gays are working hard to tarnish the reputation of His Eminence Cardinal Burke. We of Cameroon Concord believe that the Italian cardinals including those of Latin America who gave their votes to Pope Francis are now murmuring privately over the Holy Father's deliberate silence on certain issues. On the recommendation of our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai, we bring to you a testimony of how Cardinal Burke is keeping the faith in the teachings of Christ and his church.
By Eric Hess
As best as I can determine, my same-sex attraction began in reaction to my father, who was a violent alcoholic. He often drank, came home to throw things around the house and abuse my mother in addition to threatening me and my brother. I thought he hated us. Consequently, I didn’t want to be anything like him. In my sorrow, I started looking for the love of my father in the arms of other men. At age 17, a predator took advantage of me under the teacher/pupil dynamic and I became completely mixed up about human sexuality. Over the years, one thing led to another until I moved in with a man more than 20 years my senior. Before we go any further, it is important to realize a major cause of same-sex attraction disorder. As a former insider of the community, I can tell you that the so-called gay rights/abortion rights coalition is a proximate result of the contraceptive mentality which was predicted 40 years ago by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae. People abusing one another as sexual objects brought about a mainstream culture of death that tolerates and advocates all kinds of adultery and child abuse, including abortion. This selfish mentality also led to human embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia. From 1990 to 1994, I went to Mass off and on. In 1995, I told my “partner” that I couldn’t go anymore because I was very angry with the Church. I boxed up all my crucifixes and Bibles and dropped them off at the office of the bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin with a letter renouncing the Catholic faith. To my surprise, Bishop Raymond Burke replied with a kind letter expressing his sadness. He wrote that he would respect my decision and notify the parish where I had been baptized. Ever so gently, Bishop Burke said that he would pray for me and look forward to the time when I would reconcile with the Church. As one of Wisconsin’s most outspoken “gay” activists, I thought, “What arrogance!” Then I replied to Bishop Burke with a letter accusing him of harassment. I told him that his letters were unwelcome and I asked how he could dare to write to me. My efforts failed to put him off. Bishop Burke sent one more letter assuring me that he wouldn’t write again—but if I should want to reconcile with the Church, he would welcome me back with open arms. Indeed, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit never gave up on me. Within a few years, I spoke to a good priest, who intensely added to Bishop Burke’s prayers every day in August 1998. On August 14, the feast of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe and the vigil of our Blessed Mother’s Assumption, divine mercy penetrated my soul at a Chinese restaurant—of all places. Little did I know as I entered that restaurant with my “companion” of over eight years that the Lord would seize me that very afternoon and bring me to another place outside of Sodom, to the very judgment seat of His healing mercy, the holy Sacrament of Penance.
The priest I had consulted was there. As I gazed across the room at him, an inner voice spoke to my heart. It was gentle, radiant and clear inside my soul. The voice told me, “This priest is an image of what you can still become, if you will only return to Me.” On the way home, I solemnly told my companion, “I need to return to the Catholic Church.” Although he was tearful, he lovingly responded, “Eric, I’ve known that for a long time. Do what you need to do in order to be happy. I knew all along that this day would come.” Next, I called Bishop Burke’s office. His secretary knew me well by then, so I told her that I wanted Bishop Burke to be the first to know that I was returning to the Church—that I was preparing for the Sacrament of Penance. She asked me to hold. When she returned, she announced that Bishop Burke wanted to schedule a meeting. Afterwards, I confessed my sins to a local, humble, devout Catholic pastor of souls and received absolution. As an essential part of my recovery, a good Catholic family gave me shelter until I could find my own home. A month after my reconciliation to God and the Church, I went to Bishop Burke’s office, where he embraced me. He asked if I remembered the belongings I had turned over to him with my letter of renunciation. Of course I remembered and Bishop Burke had saved them in the diocesan archives because he believed that I would return. For two years, I wondered if the mystical message meant that I was supposed to become a priest. Finally, I realized that I was not called to the priesthood. After all, the Vatican rules that men who have a well-established inclination to homosexuality may not be admitted to Holy Orders or monastic communities. Rather, the priest I saw at the restaurant was an image of what I could become faithful and holy through the sacraments. Like all persons—single, married and religious—I am called to chastity. It is enough for me to try and get to heaven. Therefore, I strive to faithfully live the single vocation. Ever since my mystical experience, I rejoice because of Raymond Burke, now the prelate of Saint Louis, Missouri. While some malign Archbishop Burke for his fidelity to God, Church and all souls, I say that he is a true shepherd of the faithful and a presentday Athanasius. I tell you that he remains a mentor and an inspiration to me. Although my own biological father rejected me, Archbishop Burke became my spiritual father by lovingly representing our Father in heaven. Like the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity, Archbishop Burke was and is absolutely faithful to me.
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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The Holy Father Pope Francis has summon a colloquium on marriage. It is the first time 4 Dicastries (Ministeries) are involve on an issue. The Holy Father has now made it abundantly clear that marriage is between a man and a woman. Below is the communique as released some minutes ago in the Vatican.
On November 17-19, 2014, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will host a colloquium in Vatican City, in cooperation with the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, on the subject of the Complementarity of Man and Woman in Marriage. It is a global, interreligious meeting featuring representatives from 14 religious traditions and 23 countries. The colloquium will be opened by Pope Francis. Sessions will be opened successively by the leadership of each of the cooperating Vatican offices, followed by the presentations and witness testimonies of leading religious figures and scholars. Each session will also premiere one of six short films treating men and women and marriage the world over. Each film features a variety of illuminating interviews with young and old, single and married, women and men, lay and religious, from many cultures, continents and religions. Topics range from the beauty of the union between the man and the woman, to the loss of confidence in marital permanence, to the cultural and economic woes that follow upon the disappearance of marriage.
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- Ngwa Bertrand
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The 2014 Synod of Bishops has come and gone. It provided a major test to the existence of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The Church came out stronger more than ever before and the voices of the African Bishops are now being echoed in bigger cities such as New York. Cameroon Concord's Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai says the 2014 Synod of Bishops was indeed "an anatomy of crisis". Read and succeed with Cameroon Concord.
The October 2014 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops dedicated to the theme of the Pastoral Care of the Family in the context of the New Evangelization was truly extraordinary, and in many ways! For the records, it set out to present the beauty of the Christian family amidst present-day threats to family life across the globe, but more acute in the Western world. It almost ended up saying too little, too late, about what this Christian family means and how we as a Church could support those families that are heroically living out the Christian model of family life. Catholicism suddenly found itself in an unanticipated doctrinal storm: was the Catholic Church, the only surviving institution that had rejected the ethos of the sexual revolution unleashed in Europe in the 1960s, finally conceding that the post-modern Freudians were right, after all, and the Barque of Peter wrong? To think about this whole cloudy October of 2014 is quite frankly, irritating. How did Peter’s barque found itself in a situation in which the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, et cetera, quickly intercepted their programs to read a new headline: Catholic Church Changes Teachings on Gays and Divorce? I disagree with those who want to blame the secular media. We gave them the headlines! I think the media was far serious about what they wanted to report to the world as coming from the Synod. Watching Cardinal Erdo and his team present the mid-term report and listening to the questions posed by the journalists present left any objective onlooker with the feeling that the media men and women sitting in that Vatican Press Office genuinely wanted to know whether Rome meant what the words in the Synod document meant! To compound matters, the Vatican had imposed a blackout on the individual interventions of the bishops at the Synod. That left the media with only the filtering lens of Fr. Lombardi and Cardinal Erdo’s Secretariat. The media was therefore under-starved by the Synodal process. Come to think of the fact that these are men and women paying hotel bills to live in Rome! They wanted information to convince their editors that they deserved their paychecks for being in Rome for two weeks. Consequently, the so-called mid-term report - Relatio post Disceptationem, was the first real, substantial encounter that the media had with the Synod world. Who will blame them for the excitement that finally, Catholicism had caved-in into the dreams of the hostile secularists and often times, atheistic media halls? Who will blame the media for celebrating the triumph of the Eiffel ToweroverNotre Dame? Their moment had come, but only for a while! I pray and hope so!
How did we get to this position? It all started February 20th2014, when, at the behest of Pope Francis, Cardinal Kasper delivered a lengthy two-hour lecture to the Consistory of the College of Cardinals on the question of the pastoral care of the family. The most outstanding novelty of the lecture was Kasper’s proposal that couples that are divorced and civilly remarried could, after a period of penitence, be allowed to receive the Eucharist without an ecclesiastical annulment. From the post-consistory news bits, it would seem Kasper’s proposal was not warmly received by many of the Cardinals present. It is on record that Kasper got angry by the many Cardinals who spoke after his presentation, raising objections to such a proposal that clearly had no foundation in Tradition and Scripture. However, Pope Francis publicly praised Kasper, calling the lecture a “profound” theology, a theology done on one’s knees, a theology done with the feeling of the Church – sentire cum ecclesia! Thereafter, Kasper seemed to have been let loose! It would seem his moment had arrived! He had not only delivered a lifetime lecture to the most elitist club of Roman Catholicism, but had won the public approval and endorsement of the Pope! What more could be desired? The press crowned him “the Pope’s Theologian.” Not even the profound theological objections raised by his brother Cardinals amounted to anything to Kasper. Kasper went on to produce his address to the Cardinals in a book entitled The Gospel of the Family.In fact, when he came to Boston College for one of his post-consistory numerous global lectures and interviews, he made a side-comment to a professor of Boston College that those Cardinals who objected to his proposal did not understood him, implying their arguments were of a straw-man nature! His brother Cardinals showed Kasper that they understood his arguments, and that he was wrong! Shortly before the Synod, three publications emerged, all championed by members of the College of Cardinals: The Hope of the Family by Gerhard Cardinal MULLER, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; The Gospel of the Family- as if to challenge Kasper’s book with the same title,led by George Cardinal Pell, Secretary of the Secretariat of the Economy of the Vatican; and the most expansive, Remaining in the Truth of Christ, by Walter Cardinal BRANDMULLER, Raymond Cardinal BURKE, Carlo Cardinal CAFFARRA, Velasio Cardinal DE PAOLIS, and others. (I will encourage the bishops of the Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province to subsidize these three books for all major seminarians and priests of our province). In a word, these books bring alive the rich patrimony on marriage that Catholicism could offer the world. One gets the feeling that the Catholic teaching on marriage is our “best-kept secret”!
The current debates on marriage seem to fall within the milieu of moral theology. A closer examination from these books reveals a broad Catholic base:dogmatic theology considers marriage from the point of view of sacramentality and attendant qualities: indissolubility, monogamy, fruitfulness and education of children in the faith; moral theology is about the anthropology of human sexuality and parenthood; canon law views marriage from legitimacy and its pathologies; the role of pastoral theology is to promote the plan of marriage and how to live out this vision in a pluralistic and complex world; finally, spiritual theology is about the Christian life of witnessing, marriage as the domestic church, lived out in prayer, worship, sin and grace, falling and rising in our marital commitment, et cetera. With such a rich patrimony, the mid-term report could not have been more shocking, even to the secular media world. As the head of the Polish Bishop’s Conference, ArchbishopStanislaw Gądecki told Vatican Radio on October 13th 2014, the Relatio Post Disceptationem was a marked departure from our patrimony, especially the magisterium of St. John Paul II! To Cardinal Burke, the Relatio had little or no foundation in Scripture and Tradition. I have already written about how this infamous Relatio came to be and its eventual demolition in the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Needless repeating myself here. The Final Report– RelatioSynodi, was a marked improvement of the mid-term report, in the minds of many, thanks to bishops standing up for orthodoxy. Where do we go from here? How do we prepare for the 2015 Ordinary Synod? What lessons have we learnt as Church worth keeping in mind as we prepare for 2015? Two suggestions from a simple and young mind: Firstly, bishops, priests and the laity should foster a rediscovery of the Catholic teaching of the grammar of sexuality that is built into our experience and understanding of creation. The problematic paragraphs of the mid-term report showed that Catholicism was throwing away its understanding of the sexual language of Creation Theology, an understanding that is accessible to both faith and reason: What does creation, male and female, teach Catholicism and the world about the sexual act? What does the female and male anatomy teach Catholicism and the world about the sexual act? Does reason have a place in the sexual act, or is the sexual act an exclusive domain of feelings and emotions? If we follow emotions alone, where do we draw the line? What happens when a mother says, as we heard recently in the news in the US, that she and her daughter have sexual feelings for each other and have decided to “marry”? More pointedly, and this is what Catholic bishops must ask themselves in all honesty: does God have a place in the sexual act? Can God still speak to humans, created male and female, about sex? Should revelation as contained in Scripture be allowed into the sexual act? In the final analysis, the crisis about sexuality is a crisis about God. Is sex an area that is exclusively human, or can God say a word? Should God be allowed to?
Put differently, the greatest omission of the 2014 Extraordinary Synod was the total snubbing of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body! Bishops should encourage formative seminars on the Theology of the Body. May be the bishops themselves need lessons on the Theology of the Body, urgent ones, to spare Catholicism the kind of embarrassment we faced from the mid-term report, which was a work that came from a meeting of bishops! Sexuality and Creation are the big themes for 2015. A friend of mine chided me for still believing in bishops to hand on the orthodox faith! Do we have any other option? I am sure, hope and pray, that Athanasius, Cyprian, Augustine, Ignatius, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Borromeo, will still inspire their successors in 2015! Secondly, why should Catholicism care about marriage and the family? How can we rediscover and represent our Catholic goods of marriage in 2015: the good of exclusive, reciprocal fidelity (bonumfidei); the good of fruitfulness and education of children (bonumprolis); and the good of the indissolubility symbolized in the indissoluble bond between Christ and his Church (bonumsacramenti), are Catholic goods worth rediscovering and presenting to the world, come October 2015. What does allowing Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried without an annulment say about the Catholic teaching of the reception of Eucharist by those in objective state of grave sin, which adultery clearly is? What is the difference between simultaneous polygamy, a man having many wives at once, and subsequent polygamy, a man or woman divorcing and remarrying, first marriage, second marriage, and even third, without an annulment? If the latter could be allowed to receive the Eucharist, why not the former?
The drama continues!
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Nigerian authorities threaten preacher TB Joshua with arrest if he failed to testify at an inquest into the deaths of 116 people at his church. Prosecutors rejected arguments from Joshua’s lawyers that the televangelist should not be summoned because he did not directly witness the September 12 tragedy. A total of 84 South Africans were among the dead when a guesthouse for foreign followers at Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) collapsed in Lagos. Joshua, known to members of his church as “The Prophet” or “The Man of God”, has indicated that sabotage was to blame and linked the collapse to a low-flying aircraft seen in the area at the time. “The court has the power to summon whoever it deems necessary to assist it,” Komlafe told the hearing in the city. “The counsel should advise The Prophet to come. The church is not on trial. It’s not a matter of ego. Nobody is above the law. The court will be fair to all. “If he is an institution with immunity, the court will not even go there. If the man refuses to come, he can be arrested… He has to appear. We summoned The Prophet. We summoned the contractors.”
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Pope Francis has named the Bishop of Ebolowa Jean Mbarga as Archbishop of Yaoundé in Cameroon. Until his appointment on Friday, the Archbishop-elec served as Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé since July last year following the resignation Archbishop Victor Tonyé Bakot in accordance with Canon 401 paragraph 2. Archbishop-elect Jean Mbarga was born on the 18th May 1956 in the town of Ebolmedzo. He was ordained a priest in Yaoundé on 5th Dec 1981. On 15th October 2004, St. Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of the then Diocese of Ebolowa-Kribi. Pope Francis appointed him Apostolic Administrator of Yaoundé on the 29th July 2013. The territory covered by the Archdiocese of Yaoundé has a population of approximately 1,881,000 with Catholic numbering 903, 000. The Yaoundé Archdiocese has a total number of 414 priests serving 132 parishes.
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