GHANA
Ghana Web
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 1, 2016
E-Mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
Archbishop Emeritus Peter Akwasi Sarpong must know by now that the very notion of a celibate Roman-Catholic priesthood is decidedly a jaded phenomenon that is nowadays accepted or believed to be practicable or normal by only the most naïve of parishioners or congregants. Indeed, so ridiculed has this institutional practice been subjected that it has become a veritable joke among even the global Catholic prelate itself. Which may well explain why the retired Oxbridge-educated Bishop of Kumasi would seek to relatively downplay this most immoral of moral misdeeds (See “Sexual Acts Involving Catholic Priests Not Worst of Sins – Archbishop” Ultimatefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/1/16).
At its worst, sexcapades among the celibate priesthood has taken the patently criminal form of pedophilia, the wanton abuse of children, the most vulnerable and defenseless of the human species. And the irony here is that it has taken the sinister guise of priests as mentors and role-models of these largely innocent humans. It well appears that minors have been made the prime targets of pedophile priests because so blindly trusting are their adult parents that in a legion of instances, it has taken decades for the parents of the victims to come to a woefully belated realization of the lethal harm that has been done to their now-adult sons and daughters.
For an institution that is so morbidly homophobic, it is curious to note that most of the instances of clerical pedophilia, especially in the West, have been between Catholic priests and male underage children well below the age of consent or discretion. In the Third World, particularly in Africa, these illicit sexual encounters have largely taken place between philandering priests and young women. And to be certain, there have been quite a remarkable number of cases in which such encounters have ended in the deaths of these women who, faced with unwanted pregnancies by priests who were either not emotionally and psychologically mature enough and/or responsible enough to accept parental responsibilities, sought to abort these pregnancies.
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