Frederick Nzwili in The Tablet on the response of the Catholic leaders of Uganda to the legislation just signed into law in that country, which criminalizes homosexuality and provides a sentence of 14 years in jail for "first offenders" and a life sentence for repeat offenders:
Ugandan Catholic Church leaders are backing the controversial anti-homosexuality legislation that President Yoweri Museveni signed into law on Monday.
Catholic bishops have united with the Protestant, Orthodox and Pentecostal Churches’ leaders, as well as the Muslims, to say the law will promote morality in the country. Days before Mr Museveni signed the bill, Archbishop Cyprian Kitizo of Kampala Archdiocese, together with other Christian leaders under the Interreligious Council of Uganda, said the law will help end recruitment, funding and promotion of homosexuality in the country.
There is, of course, no "recruitment" of people to homosexuality going on in Uganda or any other African country. And then the church leaders of Uganda go on to say (in the statement being cited by Nzwili)
If you wish to join various groups (including New Ways Ministry, Call to Action, and the Fellowship of Affirming Families) calling on Pope Francis to speak out against the violation of the human rights of LGBTI people in Uganda, a nation 40% of whose citizens are Catholic, Nigeria, Russia, India, and Jamaica, information about how to do so is here.
It is deeply scandalous to me that the pope has yet to speak out in any way at all about what is now taking place in these nations--but perhaps no more scandalous than the absolute silence of the many Catholics comfortably ensconced in the Catholic academy and the media who never say a word about what's happening in Uganda et al. right now, or, for that matter, in Arizona, Kansas, and a multitude of other states, where cookie-cutter legislation whose roots lie in the phony "religious freedom" war declared by the U.S. Catholic bishops against the Obama administration is under consideration in legislature after legislature.
