(LifeSiteNews) — Our African tour continues on today’s episode of The John-Henry Westen Show. Yesterday, we were in Uganda, where I interviewed Archbishop Paul Ssemogerere, and today we’re coming at you from Kenya.
We’ve come to Africa to study how the people are standing up against the pressures to betray life and family — pressures to which the West has almost entirely capitulated. To help figure out just how African people are managing to resist the anti-family, anti-life agenda, I interviewed Bishop Joseph Mwongela of the Diocese of Kitui, a couple hours’ drive east of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Before the interview, we were at a beautiful Mass where Bishop Mwongela gave a homily that was truly amazing. He specifically instructed young people to not go down the road of sexual immortality. I asked His Excellency to elaborate on why he was so specific in his prescriptions (e.g., it’s immoral for girls to kiss other girls, and so on).
Mwongela said it’s because primary and secondary school students are mingling more than ever, having been “uprooted from their locality,” meeting and studying with students from other parts of the country.
“They are meeting, and each one is bringing their values,” he explained. “So in most of the schools [the teachers] are saying we don’t tolerate [homosexuality]. So if you come, you cannot be initiated by others into things that are very foreign to you.”
“The ideas come from their families,” he added. “How do they get introduced into ways which are strange to them? So it is upon the schools, as a moral aspect, to respect the orientation of each child, and respect these children who are coming into their schools, that they don’t learn habits which are very strange to their own way of life.”
Playing devil’s advocate a bit, I asked Bishop Mwongela how he would answer the common objection that “love is love,” even if it’s between two guys, and “who are you to mess with two people who love each other?” Here’s what he said in part.
EXCLUSIVE: African archbishop describes efforts to ‘resist’ spread of LGBT ideology
“Because I love money, do I go and steal?” he said. “[Love] must be true, sincere, based on God and the principles of God.”
“If you’re married, and you’re a wife, and she loves your brother … and he loves her. Is that love?” he added. “The Bible tells us that is adultery … So we must define love as it is, not the way we want it to look, otherwise you can justify anything, even using the Bible.”
In regard to pressure from Western nations to decriminalize sodomy, Bishop Mwongela made a key distinction between learning from the good ideas and practices coming from each country on one hand and allowing “multinationals” or governments to “impose their agenda.”
“We look at it. If there’s something good in it, we absorb [it] and we take it,” His Excellency said. “But as you say, you cannot swallow everything hook, line, and sinker.”
“The voice of God should reverberate through us to be able to speak about the truth, about values, and doing that which is right. And attracting people like the light of the world, salt of the earth,” he continued. “If we are tasteless as a Church, where do we go? We must have the taste, attract people, and even if that means martyrdom, to be ready and firm to stand for [the truth].”
For more from Bishop Joseph Mwongela, listen or watch today’s episode. Stay tuned for more from Africa later this week on The John-Henry Westen Show.
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