Ghanaian Priest Says Hostilities among Christians Pushing “others” away from Church

“Sometimes, in failure to exhibit the fruit of the spirit, we push the sheep even further for them to be stolen,” he said, cautioning against ministries outside the Catholic Church that are ever ready to receive the ousted flock.

Challenging the CCR members at the conference to monitor their attitudes towards their colleagues in the Church, Fr. Farouk said that the bad rapport between the elder brother and the younger brother in the parable of the prodigal son contributed to the latter leaving the house.

“If the elder brother had a good relationship with his younger brother, he would have counseled him not to leave,” he said, and posed, “Have you contributed to people leaving the Church?”

The Priest said “choking” fellow Church members to the point of leaving is an indicator that “their salvation means nothing to us and that we rejoice in seeing them leave.”

This kind of attitude, he said, is a manifestation of the lack of the fruits of the Holy Spirit including love, patience, and humility among others.

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In his presentation, the Priest urged the CCR members to embrace excellence by shelving their attitudes so that they can give room for the fruits of the Holy Spirit to manifest.

“Let us pursue excellence at all costs just the same way the shepherd left the 99 sheep to find the one that was lost. Don’t be satisfied with anything less than excellent,” he said.

He encouraged the CCR members to engage in local prayer groups, saying, “The desire of God through the magisterium is that the whole Church truly becomes what it is meant to be or reflects what it is supposed to be. The Church is charismatic and that is our nature.”

Fr. Farouk appealed to those leaving the Church for various reasons to not to be swayed by what is going on around them, including discouragements from some members of the Clergy.

“Don’t let anyone deceive you to leave the church,” he said, and added, “Know your purpose and stay in the Church. We must get to a point that no matter what happens to you in the Church, you would not leave.”

Fr. Farouk urged the members of the Clergy to create room for people who are gifted differently to manifest and exhibit their gifts as given by the Holy Spirit. He said this requires a lot of humility from the Clergy.

In their 2022 Christmas message, members of the Ghana Conference of Catholic Bishops (GCBC) expressed their concern about the “dwindling population of Catholics” in the West African nation.

Over the past decades, the Bishops said that the population of Catholics in Ghana has been on a downward trajectory, from 15.1% percent in the 2000 census to 13.1 percent in the 2010 census, and a further decline to 10 percent in the 2021 census.

“This indeed is a disturbing trend for our Church. The statistics reveal that if the trend of decline continues at the present rate of 3.1 percent per decade, we may end up losing ground totally by the year 2060,” they said.

The Bishops called for the “renewal or intensification of well-strategized primary evangelization, including revival and crusade programs,” among other strategies.

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Silas Mwale Isenjia is a Kenyan journalist with a great zeal and interest for Catholic Church related communication. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communication from Moi University in Kenya. Silas has vast experience in the Media production industry. He currently works as a Journalist for ACI Africa.