Fr Musaala speaks to this newspaper in an interview yesterday. Photo by Rebecca Vassie
By JOHN NJOROGE
Posted Thursday, March 21 2013 at 02:00
Posted Thursday, March 21 2013 at 02:00
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Musaala yesterday said he had no regrets over authoring a stinging criticism of the Catholic Church bishops and clerics, and vowed to appeal his suspension before the Apostolic Nuncio, the Pope’s ambassador in the country.Fr. Musaala, who was on Tuesday suspended by the Kampala Archbishop, Dr. Cyprian Kizito Lwanga, said in an exclusive interview that he is happy his missive, which has been widely circulating on the Internet, could help bring to justice all those who have silently suffered abuse at the hands of some catholic clerics.In vowing to challenge Archbishop Lwanga before the Pope’s representative to Uganda, Archbishop Michael Blume, Fr Musaala said: “….I will go and see the Pope’s ambassador. I have written my statement, and I have said; you know…. First of all, you are suspending me for putting something on the [Inter]net, which I didn’t do. They guy who did, said he would be happy to come out and to say that I [Fr. Musaala] never asked him to do that”.
Dr Lwanga on Tuesday suspended Fr Musaala,
reasoning that his missive “damages the good morals of the Catholic
believers and faults the church’s teaching”.“This means, therefore, that Fr. Musaala because
of the publication of his article in the public media which damages good
morals of Catholic believers and further expresses a wrong teaching
against the Catholic Church’s teaching and that this stirs up hatred and
contempt against the Church, he incurs a Ferendae sententiae penalty as
prescribed by Can.1314. Dr Lwanga wrote. “This means that Father
Anthony Musaala is suspended from celebrating sacraments and from the
powers of governance in accordance to the law of the Church Can.1335
and1336 (1, 2and3) as investigations are being carried on.”Asked what he had hoped to achieve by authoring
the missive, Fr Musaala said cases of child abuse in Uganda should not
be left to the church alone to resolve. In his opinion, by authoring the
missive, he had done “a good thing” that could help deal with issues of
the sex crimes and child abuse by catholic clerics.
Asked if he thinks his missive would cause changes
in the Catholic Church, Fr Musaala said; “Well, I think a lot of people
are going to come out and say they need help; that they have been
abused or molested and they are much freer to come out and talk about it
openly.”He insists his missive may just be what the Catholic Church in Uganda needed.“I asked, in my letter, why priests were not given
the option of marriage. This is another reason why I was suspended. The
truth of the matter is there are married priests in England who were
Anglicans before. The church allowed them to keep their wives when they
became priests. Why not give them the option in
Africa?..............[text omitted]……………..I’m not opposed to celibacy,
but when it is a purely administrate thing you know, people have to be
committed to it in a more meaningful way,” he said. See Archbishop
Lwanga’s full letter on www.monitor.co.ug
The Church is pursuing a path to weed out this vice. When he visited Australia during his tenure, the Pope Emeritus Benedict 16 said we should report sexually abusive clerics DIRECTLY to the police as we would with anyone else. He asked why we do not do so. He also mandated each Diocese and each parish should develop and implement policies designed to protect the vulnerable. So, Catholics, lets all ask our Parish Councils and priests what policies they have in place.
ReplyDeleteThat said, we need to examine Fr Musaala's motives - in the interests of accuracy. He said on TV (On the Spot, NTV (U) that 1. He has no interest in marrying and 2. No priests had asked him to represent them and campaign for celibacy to be removed.) What is true he has been under investigation since 2009 and in fact earlier. Since then (Charles Kintu) efforts at rehab have been continuous . (In JULY 2010 the following brief video was posted on YouTube by someone purporting to be his nephew, www.youtube.com/watch?v=reGM8cnn_wc