The Catholic Church should foot the entire bill for the Pope’s visit

I remember how joyful my Catholic friend was when she mentioned that the pope was coming to Kenya. I also recall her astonishment when I asked which pope in particular.

Currently, there are several popes, some claiming to have received divine authority from St Mark, like the ones of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria in Egypt, and others claiming divine authority from St Peter, like the Roman Catholic one.

However, one pope has a better marketing team and more followers than the others. His title even begins with a capital letter, as though he were the only one.  Just as  Coca Cola  — among the many colas —  has  stuck to the public imagination,  so is there  only one pope  in the minds of many in Christendom.

Pope Francis, unofficially the humble Pope, officially Supreme Pontiff, Vicar of Christ, holder of the keys to the Kingdom and last absolute monarch in Europe, was in town last week and many activities ground to a standstill. No one does pomp, grandeur and perfection like Catholics, and it showed. The event went surprisingly smoothly.

RELIGIOUS, NOT STATE VISIT

The government also proclaimed Thursday, November 26, a public holiday, a decision that was challenged in court by an atheist group.

Obviously, this was the right move. Kenya pretends to be a secular state, so it smacks of favouritism to give a holiday when a particular religious leader visits.  This doesn’t help the state of religious cohesion in the country. It seems as if the state is endorsing a particular Christian denomination. I saw a publication on the streets by Protestants who were incensed by the beatification of a nun last year, saying that it was not biblical. I saw several murmurs of discontent on Twitter about the wall-to-wall coverage in the media that the Catholic Church seems entitled to merely by being the oldest version of Christianity.

I commend the atheists who went to court to challenge the legality of the government’s decision. Public holidays should not be based on the size of religious groupings.

When Prophet David Owuor goes to heal people in Eldoret, the entire town grinds to a halt, thousands attend, and you see longer columns of school buses than at the music festival.  However, Owuor does not get a public holiday to enable his equally fervent supporters to attend. Besides, he  has to pay the media to get coverage.

Meanwhile, the Pope manages to get free media coverage and government support. All his visits are treated like state events rather than religious ones.

Some might claim that the honours Pope Francis received and the public holiday had something to do with his being a head of state.

That claim is ludicrous. Vatican City is smaller than most parcels of land the Kenyatta family owns. No one is ever born there, unless it is accidental. It doesn’t have a distinct people, language or customs and is made up almost entirely of Italian bureaucrats. Vatican City is only a country because Benito Mussolini needed religious support for his fascist government in the 1920s.  Even the nuncio, who is the pope’s ambassador here, is actually a priest.

So the pope came here as a religious figure.

A few of my friends who espouse secular beliefs say that any holiday is  good  since it allows workers to spend time with their families.  This view is very common among the salaried.

However, the cost of not doing business is borne hardest by those whose employment is most precarious. If you are a day labourer or a hawker or anyone whose wage depends on the hours you work, a public holiday is a horrible thing. The majority of the workforce, whose pay is low and the work is hard, cannot afford such unplanned holidays.

WEALTHY LANDOWNER

The reason we should object to such an abrupt holiday is that it interferes most with those who have the least, whose jobs do not allow them as much leisure as they would like.

Even more worrying was the cost; Catholic bishops estimated that the visit would cost Sh200 million.

As a principle, public funds should not be used to further the expression of religious faith. The Catholic Church is a wealthy land owner across the country. It has several landmark properties in Nairobi in the plushest of suburbs. It has universities, schools and hospitals. It also has an estimated 9 million adherents.

I do not see why the police and the country’s intelligence should be made to pay for  hosting the Pope from their budgets. The police are already chronically underfunded. They should send the full bill of working overtime to protect the pontiff to the Catholic Church. The charges work out to slightly more than Sh20 per Catholic in the country, which is more than affordable.

Just as Owuor’s supporters get together to sweep the streets and give their prophet a welcome befitting his stature, so should Catholics, and  Catholics alone, be made to pay  the full cost of this visit.

It does not help us to increase our budget deficit to have the Pope over at our expense. We have trains we do not need and the NYS with no practical use to pay for.

In fact, if it costs Sh200 million to have the pope over, I’d rather he stayed in the Vatican and we spent the money on the poor and the sick.

His boss upstairs might even appreciate that; he was big on the poor during his last outing. Sh200 million is an obscene amount of money, more than a thousandth of all the money in circulation in the country and to spend it hosting one man seems wrong, as though someone skipped a few parables in Sunday school class.

What would Jesus use Sh200 million for? That is a good question.

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UNEQUAL ARRANGEMENT

Marriage is not for everyone, thank you

MEN AND WOMEN who cohabit have a lower risk of death than those who do not, according to a recent South African study that was conducted over 10 years.

It matches several studies conducted in developed countries about the benefits of marriage to society as a whole.

Relationships are a benefit to many across the world and, indeed, might even have health-related benefits. However, I think human marriage has been an ongoing symbol of oppression and brought a lot of misery to many women.

Marriage brings together the tyranny of the state of religion and of patriarchy. For many women, a domestic life is one of drudgery, oppression and even death.

A 2013 World Health Organisation report on violence indicated that close to 40 per cent of women who are murdered are murdered by their partners.

Close to a third of women report sexual violence from their partners.

At one point in this country, those who were married were at greater risk of contracting HIV from their spouses.

In countries like Saudi Arabia, women can’t even go to hospital without their husbands lest shame kills them before whatever disease is plaguing them does.

Marriage between men and women has been an unequal arrangement for too long. We should be wary of those who retroactively find good things about it.

The nuclear family isn’t going to be the main set-up for everyone in the future so we should stop idolising the practice.

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BOOTS ON THE GROUND

Only  ground forces can  beat ISIS 

AS BRITAIN PREPARES to bomb Syria, the question still remains, can a war be won by air strikes? Britain, of all people, should know.  Sir Arthur Harris tested it, to a very destructive and fiery end in World War II.

The British even had a report about the effect of mass bombings on a population. They found out that watching their shelters burn to the ground demoralised people the most, but it did not break their spirit.  The Germans resisted bombing campaigns so vicious that whole cities went up in smoke, but it was only when the Allied soldiers marched into the country that they finally surrendered.

Bombing cannot stop terrorism; it can only add to it. If you drop bombs, they will build bunkers. Bombing, unless followed up by military armour, is useless. Unless there are boots on the ground — an altogether bloodier option — no victory can be had in Syria.

Only boots on the ground can destroy ISIS, but I am sure no European country, not even France, is willing to send soldiers into Syria.

The countries around the Middle East have some of the largest armies on earth. It is time for them to step up to the plate and defeat the evil on their doorstep.