Harare — THE recent political outbursts from the Roman Catholic Church show that it has allowed itself to be used as a tool for championing the opposition agenda under the guise of upholding Christian values.

The Church plays a pivotal role in moulding society. In the highly polarised Zimbabwean political context, the Church can help in fostering good relations given the seemingly wide political divisions which have, for some time now, stalled the development of the country.

The Catholic bishops, in their wisdom or lack of it, sadly chose the Lent period, a season of penitence and fasting, to come out of their cocoon to announce their political partiality to the whole world. It is the Church's moral obligation to condemn acts of transgression, but when the Church unashamedly shows gross partiality in its censure, it raises a lot of questions than answers.

The bishops, or rather some coward opposition activists with the bishops' blessings, sought to grandstand for the international audience by overly blaming the Government for the politico-social and economic circumstances Zimbabwe finds itself in.

Rather than it being a rallying call for all Zimbabweans to commiserate and ponder about how best to go over the current bumpy patch, the Catholic bishops' pastoral letter was full of illegal regime change campaign rhetoric.

The clergymen seem to have mastered a thing or two from the Americans and the British about the art of coming up with high-sounding nothings to justify an unpopular agenda. An ordinary person would find it very difficult to separate the bishops' antics from the often-repeated British media campaign project led by Gillian Dare.

Has the Catholic Church become the latest recipient of filthy lucre from the West?

Taking advantage of the general moral high standing associated with the Church in society, the bishops in their letter tried to divert Zimbabweans from the real causes of the economic problems facing the country. The West, in an attempt to torpedo the land reform programme, imposed a cocktail of economic sanctions against Zimbabwe in the vain hope that they would reverse the agrarian revolution.

Far from what the Western media and their pliant opposition media lackeys would like us to believe, the so-called "targeted sanctions" have had strong negative effects on the common man more than anything else.

The sanctions imposed by the United States of America and the European Union have all but dried up all the aid and economic avenues which, Zimbabwe, like any other developing country, relied on. There has been eerie silence from the Catholic Church in particular in condemning the sanctions.

This brings up the question: On whose side are the bishops?

Commitments to an all-encompassing effort to address the current problems facing the country seem to have been lacking from the "revered bishops". Archbishop Pius Ncube, an avowed anti-Government critic, was quick to dismiss the efforts made by Church leaders late last year when they launched "The Zimbabwe We Want" initiative.

"It was a rushed business, haraka haraka," the bespectacled Ncube told the pirate SW Radio station in an interview on October 31 last year.

This was despite the fact that Ncube himself was part of the process of formulating the document. True to his anti-Mugabe (read "tribalistic") stance, any solution which involved the Government had to be sabotaged, he mischievously concluded.

His skewed thinking permeates throughout the pastoral letter, leaving very little imagination as to the authorship of the letter. Admittedly, one of the scourges that have destroyed the economic and social fabric of the country is corruption. As President Mugabe noted in his State of the Nation address on the eve of Unity Day last year, corruption has to be nipped in the bud. All culprits, regardless of political or social standing, have to be brought to book.

Corruption has become rife in the country such that it now transcends political and social divides. Surprisingly, the Holy Fathers -- or are they? -- decided to narrow the vice to a small clique within the ruling circles as if it has become a preserve of the elite. By that warped view, the bishops lent the rest of the corrupt people the moral authority to transgress as if the burden of morality lies solely with the Government.

Having had the privilege of working within the Catholic Church circles, this writer witnessed corruption even within that church first-hand.

The Catholic bishops, through acts of omission and misrepresentation, seem to have become allergic to the truth. They decided to throw away all ecumenism to misinform gullible readers and listeners, at least judging by the amount of half-baked information and falsehoods in their letter.

They tried to dramatise and demonise the land reform programme by alleging that it is the cause of high unemployment. Very little, after all, could be said about the Catholics with regard to land reform. Who can blame the pliant fathers on their stance? True to the initial mission of Christian missionaries, spreading the Word was secondary to resource exploitation. Hypocrisy has always been associated with Biblical villains.

Sadly, the Catholic Church has tried to perfect the modern day art of hypocrisy. Their demonisation of Operation Murambatsvina to the ignorant would attract sympathy of note for the alleged victims. However, what the general public does not know is that during the same period, the Catholics were also carrying out a rather senseless eviction of poor families from their farms.

Allegations abounded of evictions and threats of destruction of homes by the Holy Fathers at Marist Dete and Silveira House near Harare. Some of the families that were reportedly threatened have lived in the areas for over 40 years. The clean-up exercise only became an issue because the Government intervened.

Talk of hypocrisy from the Holy Fathers! United States ambassador Christopher Dell must be pleased by the work of his foot soldiers. The text bore all the hallmarks of the Dell regime change textbook. Now in the twilight of his tenure, Dell would be pleased that, at least, his sterile tactics found some admirers.

Is it by coincidence, shallow verbatim or both that the bishops chose to use the expression "situation has reached a flashing point" or it was a meek attempt to raise political temperatures? One would be forgiven to think that the US State Department wrote the letter. It brings to question as from which planet the author wrote from when he referred to "widespread boycotts and uprisings"?

The statement was followed by the usual vitriolic attacks, which have become common spew from the avowed anti-Mugabe bashers. True to their growing allergy to the truth, the statement also sought to authenticate Morgan Tsvangirai's blatant economy with the truth that law enforcement agents had abducted over 600 people.

The Holy Fathers embellished their letter with false statistics.

Anyway, what would you expect from the likes of Archbishop Ncube who recently told the foreign media that he had a collection of human heads found along the Bulawayo-Beitbridge Road? The statement was meant to exaggerate the number of casualties from border jumpers tracking to South Africa.

The attempts to fan hatred, though unexpected of clergymen, could not have come as a surprise given the history of the likes of Ncube. In a bid to upstage both Arthur Mutambara and Tsvangirai, Ncube is on record as offering to lead the opposition to depose the Government by force. Suffice to say Ncube would have hastened the opposition's trek to the dustbins of history, at least judging by the fissures appearing in the opposition movement.

There is some disturbing analogy between the Roman Catholic stance and the same church's activities in Rwanda. The fathers probably want to upstage their Rwandan counterparts in shedding blood by calling for an armed insurrection. Who cannot remember the genocide that shook the entire world as thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus died at the hands of marauding gun-toting and panga-wielding Hutus who had the blessing of the church?

The Roman Catholic Church had from the 1880s embarked on a mission, rewriting Rwandan history using a tribal profiling system which depicted Tutsis as superior to the majority Hutus. They then turned the tables a century later actively aiding the Hutus to massacre the Tutsis.

A number of Roman Catholic priests actively participated in the genocide, including one Augustin Misago who was charged with dispatching innocent children to serve in the Hutu militia. In one incident, dozens of Tutsis were slaughtered in a Roman Catholic Church.

According to Misago's own account, "they brought it on themselves by hiding guns". As we speak, many of the priests are doing time for crimes against humanity.

If the Catholic bishops in Zimbabwe think they can do a Rwanda in Zimbabwe, they are badly mistaken. They need to be warned that others who have trodden that path suffered, showing it is not the way to sainthood.

Despite their much-vaunted calls for the Government to end "repression", the bishops did not, at any point in their letter, condemn the violent acts being perpetrated by the opposition. In the process, they are elevating some disparate gangs and giving them political credibility as part of some notional global movement.

There has been no condemnation in their letter of the MDC criminal elements that unleashed a reign of terror in Harare, Gweru and Mutare. The gangs literally institutionalised violence with petrol bomb attacks. Do the Catholic bishops want the nation to believe they were blind to these incidents, as widespread as they were?

Treating criminals, terrorists and mobsters as warriors only flatters their egos. Pouring blame on the Government only inflates the problem and inflating the problem excuses the failure to solve it. Perhaps on the question of petrol bombs, the Holy Fathers may have a word or two to share with the nation concerning recent Press reports about the burning of a dormitory by "trainees" at one of the church's farms in Selous near Chegutu?

Like the Biblical Solomon who, fortunately, God gave all the wisdom, the bishops tried to portray themselves as all-rounders, even having the courage to comment on issues which, judging by the import of their statement, they seemed to have very little knowledge about. They ignorantly called for the repeal of the Public Order and Security Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

In their narrow appreciation of the laws, they gave the impression that the laws are unique to Zimbabwe. The only unique aspect is that it is in Zimbabwe that the laws are repeatedly broken. Needless to say it the work of people bent on undermining the Government.

The US, the whole of Europe and, indeed, the rest of the civilised world have such laws in one form or another. They may ask Dell for a copy of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA Patriot Act) of 2001 to get an insight of what it is all about.

This particular Act takes away any form of freedom from the Americans, especially those of Arab descent. Democratic tenets dictate that leadership is chosen by people and it's the electorate which has the mandate to remove or retain the leaders at prescribed times.

The Church can help the situation by guiding the people to obey the laws of the land rather than trying to stir dissent. Trying to sell the Blair and/or Bush agenda will not help Zimbabweans. It's high time the real church stood up.

There are some aspiring politicians in the mould of Archbishop Ncube, who want to use the pulpit to launch their careers. The Church would be better off without their antics.

The Roman Catholic Church risks losing relevance due to the propensity by some of its clerics to gain political mileage. People look forward to finding hope and solutions from the Church rather than acrimony.