Ernest Sumelong
27 August 2007
In the wake of deteriorating morality and fallen/falling educational standards in the country, the Catholic Church, through the Bishop of Buea Diocese, His Lordship, Immanuel Bushu, has called on parents to send their children to Catholic schools.
This is part of the content of a Pastoral Letter the Bishop recently addressed to Catholic faithful and other people of goodwill in the Buea Diocese. It is captioned, "Facing The Challenges Of Catholic Education Today."
Writing on the eve of an impending academic year, the Bishop of Buea highlights the difficulties Catholic education faces and accuses the government of propagating what he terms the secularist agenda.
The Bishop indicates that the last academic year saw an increase in enrolment into Catholic nursery, primary and secondary schools, but hastens to dispel the myth that government schools are free and cheaper than Catholic schools.
While commending parents, teachers, and all those involved and have continued to support Catholic education, Bishop Bushu notes, "Catholic education in our diocese continues to face difficulties."
"I address this pastoral letter to look at some of those major difficulties of Catholic education and how we can face them as Christians, bearing in mind the law of the Church, which explicitly states that 'Parents are to send their children to those schools, which will provide for their Catholic education. If they cannot do this, they are bound to ensure the proper education of their children outside the school (Canon 798).
The Bishop traced with satisfaction the positive course of Catholic education over the past decades in the country."In spite of numerous obstacles, our Catholic schools continued to provide spiritual, academic and material development of so many Cameroonians. The fact is that most top members of government, lecturers in the universities, businessmen and women, architects, accountants, civil administrators, just to mention but a few, went through our Catholic schools," the missive notes.
The Bishop further prides Catholic schools with the formation of the former and present Prime Ministers of Cameroon, the Rt. Hon. Peter Mafany Musonge and Chief Ephraim Inoni, who both attended St. Joseph's College Sasse and St. Paul's Higher Technical and Commercial College Bonjongo, respectively.
Also, Bishop Bushu expresses the Church's indebtedness to Priests and religious, the men and women, who, down the years, saw their work of teaching as a vocation and not solely as a means of earning a living.
"The recent Celebration of Excellence, organised by the Education family of the Diocese in January 2007, to appreciate the dedication and Apostolic zeal of these committed teachers is a great step forward in acknowledging that for us Catholics, teaching is a vocation," writes the Bishop.
Secularism And Gov't Policies
Monsignor Immanuel Bushu, who took over as Bishop of Buea Diocese early this year, seeks to re-stamp the fame and credibility Catholic schools have gained over the decades. The Bishop's concern about the future of Catholic schools comes at a time when anything Christian or spiritual is being relegated to the background in favour of non-Christian ideologies. Bishop Bushu regrets that this attempt to destroy Christian values and anything connected with the Christian faith gets stronger each day.
The Church, through the Bishop, argues that since 1990, the government has systematically adopted policies, which are meant to see a final closure of their institutions of learning, particularly primary schools.
The Church further argues that there is non-recognition of the services that Catholic schools render to the public by their failure to grant them any juridical or economic status. This leads the Church to surmise that there is a well calculated agenda known as the secularist agenda.
In the Bishop's words, exponents of this agenda want a total elimination of Christianity and Christian values for non-Christian ideologies."Their agenda is simple: a complete destruction and elimination of the Christian religion and faith; the rejection of religious symbols in public places; the propagation of non-Christian schools,
the non-support of Christian schools through policies that will bring to a halt these schools; the propagation of ideologies contrary to the Gospel and practices which by themselves are anti-Christian." According to the Bishop, parents cannot exculpate themselves from the blame of propagating the secularist agenda when they do not make an effort to give their children a good Christian education.
Quoting an article, which dispelled the myth that the government provides free education, the Bishop compared government schools with Catholic schools and inferred that the latter was cheaper. "There is an erroneous impression that government provides free primary education and merely charges registration fees for Secondary education, consequently Government schools are cheaper for educating children...But are Government schools cheaper?"
Bushu faults parents' ignorance to give their children Catholic education and maintains, "The problem is not lack of money, but lack of planning and what our priorities are."
Bishop's Appeal
Meanwhile, the Man of God admonished parents to remain the primary educators of their children; create a special fund for their children's education, send them to Catholic schools, pay their fees regularly and support the school administration in any way they can.
He called for ex-students of Catholic primary and secondary schools to form associations. He also reminded teachers that the work of handing on knowledge to others is priceless but that they are fulfilling a specific Christian vocation.
According to the Bishop, Catholic schools are institutions organised by the Church to support and promote human dignity by offering an integral education, fostering the development of the human community, working for liberation from all forms of oppression and promoting the progress of culture.
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