By Sunday July 9th, Catholic faithfuls in Ahiara diocese and of course the
whole world will know who remains among the rebelling priests in the
Church and who leaves. By that date, the one month ultimatum the Holy
Father, Pope Francis gave these rebelling priests to write personal
letters of apology, pledging loyalty to the Pope and accepting Bishop
Peter Ebele Okpalaeke as their bishop, will lapse. There are, as at date,
206 incardinated priests in the diocese (don’t mind the egregious claim of
750 or 1,000 priests from the dissidents). It is for this number that the
apology is prescribed, both those in Nigeria and abroad.
For some exasperated Catholics, especially my fellow Catholics of Ahiara
diocese especially those who remain loyal and faithful to the Church, the
Church needs to bring to a closure an embarrassing, revolt hatched by
dissident priests, in cahoots with diverse lay interests that share deep
passion for the destruction of the Church in the diocese on the vacuous,
very leaky and tendentious reason that she did not appoint a son of the
soil as bishop. The Pope alluded to this devilish design in his stern
address to a delegation from Ahiara loyal priests and laity, top officials
of the Roman Curia and the leaders of the Nigerian Church in his June 8th
audience to address the lingering crisis. Indeed, the Pope aptly likened
the revolt and the rejection of a duly appointed Bishop by a section of
the church in Ahiara to the wicked tenants in the Bible who seized and
killed the heirs and servants of the landlord so as to take possession of
his estate. He minced no words in describing the unseemly actions of the
dissidents in Ahiara as a mortal sin and as a way of scandalizing the
Church.
For many observes of what has become a disgraceful rebellion, the Pope’s
verdict is long in coming but that is the Catholic Church for you. She is
a patient, methodical mother who acts when she had exhausted all avenues
for amendment. Yes, it took a whole five years for the Pope, the final
authority in the Catholic Church to act but before then, the Pope had used
all known conflict resolution means known to the Church to bring this
man-made problem to an end. Since the three politician-priests that
provoked and launched this rebellion and sowed this seed of rebellion,
went to work, the Church has used various means to deal with the issue. As
it is in every other diocese or part of the church where similar issues
had arisen, the matter would have long been put to rest if indeed the
intent of the rebellion was not to exert maximum disgrace on the Church
and finally pull it down. Since the crisis was launched, the Church in
Nigeria and its various hierarchies have weighed in and pleaded and
cautioned but the kingpins of this rebellion have a clear mission that
neither tolerates common sense nor was interested in any other result than
the destruction of the Church, if she doesn’t meet their nepotic demand.
The crisis in Ahiara diocese is a vicious provocative assault on the
belief, teaching and practice of the Catholic Church. It is a virulent
attack on the age old practice of the Catholic Church. It is a vicious
tackle against the universally accepted norm of Catholicism. Equally it is
a sly attack on the bond of brotherhood that binds not only Catholics
together but also Igbo as a race. It not only is a bad advertisement to
Catholics, it is a serious dent on Igbo and a shameful rebuke to the race.
Most importantly it is colossal damage to the image of Mbaise as a people
and it was obvious that the provocateurs and fanners of this senseless war
never cared as they thrust bloody knives into the hearts of the Church and
the Igbo race. What more, the rebellious actions provoked deep anger,
pain, shame and embarrassment on the Pope and the universal Church.
Ahiara diocesan crisis is all about nepotism. It is all about bigotry
which found expression in a flagrant display of outright disobedience to
the Church for not pandering to the clannish and restricted tribal
interests of a local cabal that wants to seize the Church in Ahiara and
impose its self-serving idiosyncrasies on it. It is an overplay of
primitive ego and unexplainable clannish hubris even in matters of
spiritualism. This carnal quest to take over a Church founded historically
on universalism has bred a rash of demonic manifestations and it finds
expression in baleful fabrication of horrific lies, serialization of
heretic forgeries and outright enslavement of impressionable minds by a
demonic cartel that seeks inordinate lordship over the local Church as
ways of deepening hitherto unknown carnal desires. What more, there is
nothing spiritual or godly in the demands and acerbic actions of the
shibboleths that provoked and fed the tongs of this crisis.
Rather there is everything about clannishness, primitive arrogance and
unrefined pride in all the arguments and actions advanced by those that
play deaf to the history, procedures and precedents of the Church in
deciding who leads a diocese. This devilish desire, while reduced to a
one-line war cry; ‘demand for Mbaise bishop’ is none other than a
frantically procured tribal mandate that finds no place in the Catholic
Church. Since that divisive war was declared, with the appointment of
Bishop Peter Okpalaeke, every vile means has been thrown into the fray by
those who have not only arrogated to themselves the duty of appointing a
bishop for the Catholic Church but sound emptily arrogant on issues that
are settled and well known to the entire world. The whole crisis is am
instigated effort to destroy the Church using the appointment of a Bishop
as a cover and the Holy Father has clearly identified this.
As the politician priests, having fully inhaled the smoke of Satan, went
on their nocturnal rounds among the Ahiara priests like the snake to Eve
in the garden of Eden, meeting and seducing priests to sign on to their
ethnic war against the appointment of a bishop of Anambra origin, there
was no doubt that they were bent on inflicting maximum damage on the
Church for not doing their self serving desires. They quickly formed a
deadly alliance with the willing basket of deplorable, the isi anyi
kuwasawas, made up of nominal Catholics, those with questionable Catholic
callings, those that have left the Catholic Church, those that have one
grudge or the other against the Catholic Church, the political way farers
who lost their deposit in the political space and who saw a renewed
prospect in tapping into the cheap ethnic promises of fighting for an
Mbaise bishop, non Catholics, animists, pagans, etc who now formed the
alluring bandwagon. They armed this deadly mob with one clear mission
statement; ‘Mbaise Bishop or we pull down the Church’. Possessed by a
queer idol of tribe, they levied a son of Igboland a ‘foreigner who
neither hears our language nor understand our culture’-can you imagine
that? Quickly erasing their religious callings and clearly denying the
universality of the Church, the priests shed their priestly calling and
played along and mischief assumed a full life of its own. They tried to
couch their quaint mission under the dubious demand for ‘justice’ which is
none other than an effort to sew a fraudulent cloth for their nefarious
interest.
Having formed the irrational mob, the next step was to search and find for
themselves some supposedly knowledgeable impostors, some Goebbels of
sorts, brimming full with residual bitterness and thinly disguised
mischief against the church and frustration with the society. These are
glorified buffoons that arrogate themselves reverse knowledge of the issue
in question and who are so attracted to the nectars of clannish support
for their challenged personas. These became the Okoko Ndems and
propagandists who self-conferred themselves with dubious expertise in
Canon Law, which they quote copiously but obtusely from their bedrooms to
satisfy their predetermined goals. These were charged with forging and
producing tons of baloneys, filled with lies, forgeries, hate, heresies
and blasphemies against the Church and her leaders both within and without
Nigeria. Being pathological anti socials, these characters became sources
of prurient bitter hogwash, often laced with a generous but dubious
allusion to the Canon Law with which they not only duped and misled the
simple minded, the unsuspecting and the uneducated but set them on an
irreversible path of murderous vengeance against the Church. From their
small dingy corners, they smiled as Mark Anthony did after turning the
Roman mob against the conspirators who killed Julius Caesar and exclaimed;
‘mischief, thou art afoot’. Yes their mischief is afoot in Ahiara diocese
and they are drawing raucous applause from the plebian for their
destructive values to the Church.
These contrived messengers of Lucifer were let loose like unbridled
loose cannons on every Church leader in Nigeria and they smeared,
blackmailed, abused, denigrated, scandalized and besmirched everybody
and everything revered and held sacred in the Nigerian Catholic Church
and infact, the universal Catholic Church. In this mad sequel, Cardinal
Arinze, globally-respected leader of the Church has been practically
lynched with all manners of allegations, insults, tirades and curses.
Cardinal Onaiyekan, who was appointed to administer the diocese and
solve the crisis, has equally been lynched with every manner of lies,
allegations and abuses. Archbishop Anthony Obinna, indeed, the Catholic
Bishops Conference of Nigeria, the Nuncio (Pope’s Ambassador) were all
tied on the stake and murdered by the bizarre lies and murderous venom
of the lynch mob. Even the Late Bishop Mark Unegbu, the first indigenous
Bishop of Owerri was literally exhumed and killed again in a horrific
effort to completely rubbish the Church and ensure it never survives the
bile of those that purport to want a Bishop from their tribe at all
costs. It was certain that if God comes down to earth to speak against
their wanton conduct, they would have subjected him to scurrilous
insults for not acceding to their desires. No sacred teaching of the
church, no sacred institution in the Catholic Church has been spared
from mutilation, trampling and violation from those crusading for a
bishop for me.
While this murderous character assassination was going on, the procured
intelligentsia of the lynch mob was busy, twisting every message from the
Church and Nigerian church authority, obfuscating such messages and
directives and forging them out of context to deceive and keep their
unthinking mob on the streets and under their guile wraps. Every directive
from the Church was bastardized and twisted to suit the fixated primitive
desires of the lynch mob who were induced to stage regular protests, lock
down Churches and indulge in arrays of unseemly, uncatholic and detestable
acts to drive home their demand. Ensuring that every directive of the
Church was mutilated and colored as ‘forgeries’ from Arinze, Onaiyekan,
Obinna or the CBCN, the leaders of this mad rebellion ensured their
victims, firmly trapped in their mischievous cages, never escaped to
source out reason or the real facts of the teachings of the Catholic
Church on the contentious issue.
They would rather their victims were quartered in a closet where they
would be fed regular diets of lies, slanderous fabrications and raw
forgeries so as to fully harvest their nuisance values. What better way to
work the rabble to full destructive value than couching raw fabrications
and lies in ethnic and clannish foils, play up the victimhood card and
appeal to cheap sentiments? These kingpins have so brainwashed their
victims with enough lies to last them several generations by those who
swear they will rather pull down the Church than have an Anambra bishop.
Curiously some of the leaders of these mob, who generously feed them with
a cocktail of lies double in same capacity as loud proponents of the
Biafran actualization and you imagine what it will be in their Biafra
where an Anambra man would be seen by an Mbaise man as a foreigner who
neither hears our language or understands our culture.
What baffled was that the provocateurs and participant in this feast of
cannibalism were not moved that no respectable sane Leader of the Church
both in Nigeria and the world shared their weird demand that clearly
violates the belief and practice of the Catholic Church. It never mattered
to these people that no known law; Canon or otherwise, supports their
weird desire to have a son of the soil as bishop at all costs. It never
mattered to them that the strange, devilish teachings and philosophies,
wild and baseless lies and allegations they ventilated against respected
leaders of the Church and the Church herself, was shared by no one but
them. Of course, they created a convenient caveat for this huge deficit by
appealing to vague victimhood. On yea, every person hates and is working
against the Mbaise interest! What a tragedy!
Meanwhile, the arrowheads of this devilish rebellion have been promising
their victims, the unthinking mob every six months since 2012 that Rome
will appoint one of them as Bishop and ditch Okpalaeke. They have been
telling their brainwashed victims that Bishop Okpalaeke was not appointed
by the Pope but by Cardinal Arinze. They have virtually handed the
Catholic Church to Cardinal Arinze in a bizarre and confounding
desperation to work the mob to a deadly frenzy. Yes, Arinze practically
controls the Vatican, and even the Pope! They have told their unthinking
victims whom they want to use to destroy the Church that they know so well
of the Vatican and Canon Law to conclude that Bishop Okpalaeke was not
properly appointed. Yet, when the Pope invited them to come to Rome and
advance all the hogwash they have been feeding themselves and their
victims for five years, all of them developed running stomach knowing the
worthless value of the nonsensical arguments and spurious lies they have
been hawking all these years, they wholly declined to honour the Pope’s
summon and rather engaged in another round of tirade to denigrate the
summon. Even their hidden lay backers and sustainers declined. They all
knew they have been marketing spurious lies that will not survive any
scrutiny at the Vatican.
They tell their bemused and impressionable victims that the Canon Law
states that they will be parts of the appointment process of a bishop, who
must wily nily come from their land or else heavens will be made to fall.
They have hewed for themselves their own sets of laws and beliefs such
that they are ever ready to put a spin to everything from the Vatican,
which they easily dismiss as a forgery from either Cardinal Arinze or
Cardinal Onaiyekan or the Nuncio. It was this horrible and the
unquestioning mob, stripped of their reasoning, submitted themselves to be
duped by these slave traders. As they churned their detestable jeremiad,
the rainbow coalition of ndi nkuwasa was worked to a murderous rage.
Periodic lockdown of the Cathedral in the name of protests became the norm
and the hauling of curses and abuses against the Church and its hierarchy
became a regular norm in the pulpits. Generous ventilation of insults and
unruly conducts were promoted in strange efforts to bring the Catholic
Church to its knees except she gives in to their demand. They worked
themselves and their victims to the apogee of vain pride from where they
found so hard to descend when it was obvious that they cannot con the
Church with their poorly assembled baloney. At a time, the most difficult
task for them was how to do the tower of Babel they have constructed and
that is where they are stranded today as the deadline for the apology
closes in.
But it bears mention that these murderous mob were not real Catholics. As
I have said earlier it was a rainbow coalition of those with one axe or
the other to grind with the Church; the nominal Catholics who just affix
Catholicism to their creed, those who have left the Church, non Catholics,
pagans, etc. No real catholic who faithfully belongs to the Church will
speak condescendingly on the leaders of the Church talk not of abusing and
lying against them. No convinced Catholic will insist on the Church to
either do his selfish will or get destroyed. No real Catholic will
willingly scandalize, lie and smear the Church to achieve ill-defined
interests, especially when such interest has no grounds on the practice
and rules of Catholicism. No real Catholic will spit such fire and
brimstone that we have seen spewed in Ahiara in the past five years just
because the Church refuses to appoint a son of the soil as bishop. No real
Catholic will subject revered Church leaders to scurrilous and vicious
attack, insult and abuse based solely on contrived lies, specious and
outlandish allegations. No real Catholic should openly and callously
disobey the Church in such manner that those that provoked and fed the
Ahiara diocesan crisis have done in the past five years. No real Catholic
will indulge in the devilish art of mutilating, obfuscating and
manipulating the teachings of Christ and the Church so as to achieve
inordinate interests. No real will form an unholy alliance with non
Catholics to fight the Church. The real Catholics in Ahiara refused to
fight but prayed that God will handle the matter in His own ways. He has
no reason to indulge in several desperate means to force the hands of God
because his belief in God and His capacities to deal with any issue, is
total, unlike the mercenaries, not sure of his ways and means, indulge in
every desperate means to force God to do their will.
However the visage of Catholic priests running, tail behind their backs,
to Governor Okorocha, whom they had treated to their well known insult at
the earlier stages of this rebellion for telling them to obey the Church
and the Pope and now begging him to intervene in the suspension threat
from the Pope is humiliating enough to whoever calls himself a priest.
More humiliating was the same Governor Okorocha lecturing priests on
obedience to the Church and the Pope, like a school teacher does to his
pupils. As laudable as the Governor’s efforts are, it is a humiliation too
many that men that went through the thorough process of priestly formation
should voluntarily drag themselves so low because they vitiated their
priestly calling through incredible show of shameful obduracy and
demeaning clannishness.
That priests should even tarry to obey the Pope or pretend not to discern
the ways of the Church, is a generational embarrassment that will
certainly outlast their generations. That priests should indulge in
denigrating the hierarchy of the Church, trade lies, blackmail, and
insults on venerable leaders of the Church both within and without Nigeria
is a huge dent on their callings and marks a remarkable process in
self-demarketing which has dragged them down their high horses. Ahiara
priests have caused huge embarrassment to themselves, the Church and the
Mbaise nation by their unbelievable acts of disobedience and even writing
the apology, voluntarily or grudgingly will not wipe away the massive
embarrassment splurged on the faces of Mbaise, Imo State and the Catholic
Church worldwide by the disappointing acts of the priests. I hope the
Church seriously reviews the process of priestly formation in Ahiara
diocese after this madness has ebbed to avoid such embarrassing and
shameful occurrence in the future. But it must be stated that it will take
ages for the negative fruits of the seed of rebellion sowed in Ahiara to
peter out, even after the resolution of this crisis and every Mbaise
Catholic, and even non Catholics will partake in the unsavory effects of
this wild seed.
Peter Claver Oparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com