OUR polemic with the Catholics is not with their religious dogma per se, but rather on how this is used as a means to meddle in domestic politics or to distort our culture.
We find nothing strange in their gospel that there is a super power somewhere to whom we should all be subservient.
All religious creeds, in one way or other, subscribe to that.
But what we find outrageous is for the bearer of that message to make us believe that he has divine authority to prescribe what is ‘good’, be it cultural or political, to any polity.
This is why, recently, we took great exception to the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJPZ)’s skewed report on the July 30 harmonised elections.
Skewed, because, to them, when it looked like MDC Alliance was likely to win, the playing field was considered perfect, but immediately after ZANU PF had won, their post-election report gave a grotesque picture of the electoral environment.
It is this kind of political bias which, even with the Bible in one hand, can never be justified.
What is even more repugnant is the use of religion as a tool to demonise our culture.
One area of great concern is the relentless promotion of sexual deviance by people we would otherwise expect to fight against it.
Regrettably, Catholics are also caught in this web.
We chronicle, in this edition, cases of sexual scandals committed by prominent Catholic men-of-collar, who are supposed to give us spiritual guidance.
And these are people who are supposed to be accepted in our societies as role models, whose behaviour, in many cases, might change our long-held views.
Immoral behaviour unacceptable to our culture may end up justified because of the reverence in which the men-of-cloth are held.
Unfortunately, this is bound to spill into the secular world.
For instance, homosexuality has always been shunned in our culture.
A recent advert doing the rounds on social media, offering scholarships to gay students, shows the extent to which our culture is disrespected.
What is vexatious is that these sexually deviant students’ programmes will be restricted to areas such as ‘democracy, governance and human rights.’
The CCJPZ’s recent biased report on our harmonised elections gives us an idea of what these special graduates are expected to internalise – regime change philosophy.
The Catholics, other missionaries are no saints either, have tried to force down our throats what they think ‘ought’ to be good for us.
But we know what is good for us, be it cultural or political.
Surely, we don’t want a repeat of the behaviour of that gay former deputy headmaster at a Catholic school (St John’s College) who had the audacity to declare his sexual abnormalities at the school’s assembly.
Obviously, he had become so comfortable that he felt there was nothing wrong in trying to publicly recruit pupils to his weird world of gays.
That this anathema to our cultural beliefs is of no consequence because we are blacks is repugnant.
Perhaps, it’s high time religious groups, Catholics included, respected the political will and cultural beliefs of those with whom they differ.