CAMEROON’S HYPOCRISY OF EXCLUDING RELIGION WHILE WELCOMING POPE:
There is a kind of pseudo-intellectualism in Cameroon that prides itself on not having done Religious studies. Yet in their hypocrisy, these enlightened devil advocates or so-called intellectuals are the first to comment with a false sense of authority on ecclesiology and the pope’s visit. I challenge any self-styled Cameroonian intellectual of secularism to rethink his thinking on atheism or agnosticism along these lines. Does the so-called Cameroonian scientist who excluded religion from his syllabus of Errors know that Luke the evangelist was a medical doctor and a scientist and that Mendel, the Father of modern genetics, was a Catholic Monk?. Do they know that Copernicus, the Father of Heliocentric cosmology, was a Polish priest? Do they know that Pope Francis is a Mathematician? Do they know the Religious significance of the Pope kissing the ancestral soil? If they do not know why, do they allow their presiding ignorance to Pontificate? Do they know that it was from the church alms and Collection that some African presidents were educated with Catechist allowances? When did the Idea of Cameroon as a secular state creep into our body politics, whereas an African is by nature notoriously religious? Do the so-called Cameroon intellectuals know that it was the Religiosity of Mount Cameroon that made the Carthaginians intuit the presence of God, as they named it “The Chariot of God”?What prevents Cameroonians from rethinking the idea of Cameroon excluding Religious studies in the name of Secularism? When Cameroon is declared secular, prayers become an appendage to the Anthem, Nationalism becomes a Civic Religion. The President de facto becomes the Titular God of the state. And we Cameroonians have for 43 years seen what happens to a nation man becomes God and not when God becomes incarnated in human affairs. Until the rotten tooth of satanic secularism is exorcised, the African in general and the Cameroonuan in particular must chew with caution at the Western diet of ideas. While cautioning against the religious extremism and fanaticism, we must also guard against the other extreme of atheism, agnosticism and nihilism, which secularism tends to introduce into Africa. God have mercy on us
