Coronavirus the leveler and a moral choice

Notice of Thursday, February 11, 2021

Journalist: Amb. Alhaji Abdul-Rahman Harruna Attah

2021-02-11

Arguably the most publicized victim of Covid-19 in Ghana at the moment is His Grace Archbishop Palmer-Buckle, a man with many admirers and lately not so many. He was bold and courageous enough to go public with his Covid-19 infection in a social media ad. Prayers poured in from everywhere after this, as did some scathing reviews.

The Man of God, with this confession, opened himself to the examination of his “Ghanaian compatriots” and will have to live with the consequences. To be fair to his grace, I think he deserves praise for sharing with us his very private medical status, his suffering and his empathy for other victims. It is a show of leadership, it cannot be said of someone whose exclusive “victory” party has led to many infections and has not yet come directly with Ghanaians.

The Archbishop comes across as your favorite adorable priest – the kind you see on English sitcoms like “Bless Me Father”, “Father Ted”, “Father Brown” and those others coming in and out of the “Mrs Brown’s Boys” scene. “. Oh no, not so eccentric, but just as soft and cuddly! One of those pillars of Ghanaian society whose stature crosses all religions, ethnicities and political entities. A good pulpit preacher and spellbinding private storyteller, I first heard of him through his sister long before I personally met him. She was my college friend and occasionally mentioned in passing, if with some perplexity, her brother who had decided to become a priest. His escape from the jaws of death when he was at the Catholic Standard in the early 1980s created a mystique around him. According to the tradition of the time, he had been condemned to liquidation by agents of the “system”, but an unfortunate double, also a priest, took his place.

My first direct encounter with him was years ago at a very narrow meeting regarding the baptism of a relationship’s child – in our host’s home, not at church. The coronavirus was far away, but I remember the guests were very carefully selected and there were so few of us that social distancing was triggered automatically! He was laid back and relaxed and I believe he was not even in his office clothes. After the ceremony, which was very brief, we settled in for socialization. His warmth was such that I felt like we were old friends – old pals! We talked about a lot of things and by the time we said goodbye we had checked ourselves into our consciousness as friends – at least I did.

As a very charismatic priest of the Catholic Church, he has been in great demand in many public functions to lend a spiritual hand to debates and has never failed to hammer out questions. His condemnation of the costly and ostentatious funeral in Ghana has won him fans across the Ghanaian universe. But who was listening / listening? I just hope that by the time this coronavirus is over with us, one of the paradigm shifts would include funerals – unnecessary things. Already, virtual funerals are spreading and can they survive for a long time and overcome the old unnecessary methods!

Come after the 2016 election and I had a quarrel with my hero. I was deeply disappointed when he walked with his eyes wide open into a political trap set by Nana Addo with her so-called “national” cathedral. I complained to close friends and family, questioning the Archbishop’s judgment in agreeing to lend his stature, image and faith to the front for what was clearly Nana Addo’s political gadget. Balancing Christocentric rhetoric and iconography, Nana Addo had one thing in mind: to collect the considerable number of Christians for electoral gain. I was so disappointed that I called a source at the Catholic Secretariat to register my protest. It is this source which consoled me a little by explaining that the involvement of the Archbishop was purely personal and did not have the blessing of the Catholic Church. He went on to explain that the Church had asked for answers to some questions and no answers were given. For example, how would the bishop of such a cathedral be chosen, for, with the Catholic Church, these questions follow canonical precepts established for centuries and not the whims of a politician. I approached the matter with a very high-ranking cleric, very close to the top of the Church hierarchy, who very gently put my mind at ease on the position of the Church, but diplomatically, not on the personal involvement of the Archbishop. I have also sent emails to a number of Evangelical and Protestant churches. I don’t know if they received them or not, only the Duncan-William church called back. The Christian Council email address never worked, but at least I tried.

It is possible that all the other clerics who rallied behind this cathedral thing must have overlooked the role played by some Christian clerics in supporting the dictatorship of Nazi Germany by rallying to the “Gleichschaltung” and “Deutsche Christens” . They even had a Reich bishop !!! It is a deeply troubling story. In recent times we have witnessed the rather fatal pull between Trump and the Christian right in the United States and the disturbing trend that partly ended with the near-successful insurgency of January 6, 2021. In Ghana, our Christian prelates could not see the dangers inherent in a religious gift from a fiercely partisan politician and fell for the gift of the cathedral! In fact, even the predominantly Muslim Zongo communities also fell in love when offered the gift of ministry to go about their business. Where is the ministry now? Discarded! Political objective achieved. Be careful, we are told that the Greeks give gifts; for me. I say, beware of a partisan politician wearing religious gifts!

This so-called “national” cathedral is so outdated in design that they had to travel to Israel to procure a planting stone as the cornerstone of the building. What does Judaism have to do with a Christian place of worship? All of this and more, have occupied my thoughts day and night, and when they do, I always imagine Palmer-Buckle.

I found the text of the screenshot above on social media after announcing his heartbreaking coronavirus battle. It was not sympathetic but accusatory.

“When you were supposed to advise the president on building enough health facilities, you were helping him raise money to build an unnecessary cathedral. Think of the many people in rural areas who will not be lucky enough to have a facility like Ga East Hospital. Either way, the man you and your cassock hypocrites berated for not having common sense, built the Ga East District Hospital, John Mahama. Bishop, how far from the National Cathedral?

A one-line posted on a platform to which I belong, simply said: “Thank you Mahama for your life sir.”

These are extreme things to write about a fellow citizen – especially with this kind of social status – who is just recovering from a life and death situation, but many believe that Mahama suffered unfairly at the hands of those who have left him. no longer cast against him and are now silent. in the current state of impunity, corruption, abuse of power and incompetence.

With this terrible and terrifying disease raging uncontrollably, we need voices that we can all rally behind – voices like that of the Archbishop, but if such voices are now seen as “hypocrites”, towards whom? / who should we turn to? The coronavirus, the leveler, has made even Parliament a dangerous place! Hopefully our honest men and women of God will speak the truth now and speak it as it is. All believers in God should join them in prayer to protect our frontline health workers from infection and contamination, and give them the strength, wisdom, and creativity to use science to protect us, as humanity has done against other plagues like yellow fever, chicken pox, Ebola virus, Buruli ulcer, etc.

Moral Choice: With COVID-19 in mind, as a ‘top priority’, which makes more sense: a medical / research facility and hospital for the benefit of the whole of society or a sectarian cathedral – a blatant case of religious discrimination – to support the faith of a group?