As my dear readers will guess, the title for today’s piece is borrowed from David Yallop’s bestseller, but nonetheless controversial book with the same title. Whereas the meat of the book is aptly captured in its sub-title – Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, the sub theme is an alleged corruption in the Vatican Bank and by extension the church establishment.
Although not so neatly divided; the book could be broken into two parts: the revelation of the rot in the Vatican Bank – a mess that did more than invite the attention of His Eminence; and, the effort by his papacy to clean up the rot which inevitably set off a chain of violent reactions among the establishment, culminating, finally in the death of the Pope after barely 33 days in office.
The plank of Yallop’s theory was that men, being men, could do the vilest, egregious if not the most criminal of things –supposedly in God’s name – in service of the egos of men.
By the way, the book published in 1984, has been widely condemned by the hierarchs of the Catholic Church as fiction stuff. To yours truly however, what matters is not whether the bits and pieces are accurate; what I find irresistible is the parallel to what is happening in Nigeria at this time – its underlying lessons particularly at a time of unprecedented abuses of the church as a body by those that should ordinarily be in the vanguard of preserving its sanctity.
Nigerians have certainly seen enough of the crass opportunism of so-called spiritual leaders to draw not just lessons and grim conclusions about the future of organised religion but also of the larger society. From the Babel of prophetic voices proclaiming apocalyptic doomsday messages, to the grand high-octane wish-lists drenched in the prophetic flavour as to be mistaken for real prophetic utterance; we have seen a section of the Nigerian church, not only caught up in the general societal malady but descend into the murky arena of politics.
For while these are within the rights of the religious bodies as players in the democratic space, what some of us find worrisome isn’t just the church’s insistence on non-recognition of the boundaries between the sacred and the secular, but the menacing substitution of the received gospel with the feel-good doctrine which a huge chunk of the body is daily propelled to their utter embarrassment. Clearly, if the larger Nigerian church is yet to recognise the strain of the rabid theology that threatens not just to corrupt the minds of our young ones, but somewhat programmed to destroy the very foundations of their faiths in God and country, put it to the initial artful subtlety of its purveyors and proselytes. Now, the gloves, as it were, are finally off!
Permit me, dear reader, to cite two trending examples, both of them scary, to illustrate one strain of this dangerous cancer that may in the end undo, not just the society, but the church itself.
Most Nigerians must have by now, come across the trending videos on Facebook of two impressionable minds corralled into apostasy by the ethno-religious mob for whom nothing is held as sacrosanct let alone inviolate.
The first featured a young boy no more than six years old, making tearful supplication to God on behalf of Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate. It was as moving as could be – that is if the factor of abuse of the innocent lad counted for nothing. Suffice to say that those who corralled him may have long convinced themselves that the prayer of an innocent lad would move God to deliver electoral victory to Peter Obi!
The other, just as dramatic, was that of a young girl, again not more than 10 years old, declaring also tearfully and with grim finality, her parting of ways with God, since in her apparently misguided state, that ‘god’, to whom she had apparently been led in the false believe to deliver her pet Obi presidency, let her down. Her point: that ‘god’ was no longer deserving of reverence let alone worship and so must be called out!
I wager that the parents of the duo were Christians. Since neither of the two was of the voting age, any talk of political preference and with it the usual prejudices, would be limited to what is fed to them by their parents. What is also clear is that the parents or those that freely shared the videos in the cyberspace thought little of the danger of exposing these young children with such toxic theology to the world; they felt no weight of responsibility to preserve their innocence; and certainly no shame or inhibitions about sharing the craven abuse in the jungle of the Cyberia! A Peter Obi presidency will more than vitiate the means no matter how ignoble! In normal season, not only would such apostasy deemed to have crossed the bounds of tolerability but profoundly offensive. However, in a season where religion and rage have found a good blend, even the most abnormal could easily become the new norm. Most of the comments that accompanied the video ranged from the permissive to the tolerable, with one or two, agreeing that the ‘god’ in reference having expired deserved a place in the bin!
Talk of the society turning full circle. From a deeply religious society where boundaries are scrupulously kept, a typically conservative people held together by rich symbols, customs and traditions, we have arrived finally at a junction where our children are led to scorn sacred altars!
And for the sake of what? What next? And this because the so-called silly season happened on us?
I understand the place of religion in our peculiarly prebendal kind of politics. I understand the anger, emotions, if not the frustrations from unmet expectations. But then, as must be obvious to everyone by now, the ways of the Supreme Being are not exactly the ways of man. Try as mortal man may to bend His will to himself, he labours in vain in the absence of Divine discretion. It is something our latter day theologians need to learn.
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