Health and Human Rights: A Christian Perspective

he lectures in human rights and it University of Eastern Africa I'd say Mr Richard to be more taking more of your time I want to invite thing today and so that you can also invite come Mr Richard thank you sister for the opportunity to moderate this session and thank you to all our participants to today's webinar on global public health and our speaker who I will introduce shortly is going to be talking to us on how health and human rights would relate from a Christian perspective a his starting point is that human rights and health have always been defined within the context of the universal Declaration of Human Rights and within the UN agencies especially the wild Health Organization uh which are actually silent on the question of the almighty God of all creation so he will be leading us into what he thinks is the challenge we we have at hand and being a medical practitioner talking to people interested in theology he would be interested I'm almost sure in receiving as much feedback as as he can get now we will try and use at most 35 minutes from him and then we will have a dialogue as usual an exchange of thoughts where questions and comments will be will be shared now I will introduce our our speaker Dr Homme is insistent that he is a first qualification is being the husband of Dr Massey wahome whom he married in 1993. and he celebrates the fact that he's also a father of three children and the grandfather of one so far he is a medical doctor since 1991. now with proper mathematics you can see several decades of experience there he is specialized In Obstetrics and Gynecology and he's been doing so since the year 2000. he is the founding director of Mercy Health Services Limited and these Health Services Limited Massey Health Services Limited owns Mercy Medical Center those of us who in Nairobi know that this facility is located at Kano Tunga Plaza Annex and he consults in full-time uh Private Practice he has served the church and church groups in various capacity capacities he is currently the chairperson of the Kenya Catholic doctors Association the commissioner of the Catholic Justice and Peace Department in his Parish he's the member of the family board of the Archdiocese of Nairobi he serves on the board of directors for the Kenya Christian professionals Forum where he previously was the convener of the life committee and is a chairman of a newly registered Shrine of Mary of Help of Christians Sacco savings and Credit Cooperative society and is also a member of the board in charge of various companies Mission hospitals and non-government organization our speaker Dr ahome ngare is passionate about the Christian engagement in bringing the kingdom onto planet Earth when we pray May thy kingdom come he is interested in how Christians make the kingdom come and how it requires that we are involved in all spheres of influence especially the family uh the socio-economic Spheres Dr homie you are welcome please go ahead and share with us the question of health and human rights with a Christian perspective uh thank you very much Richard and sister for this opportunity let me share my screen um the screen is visible now yes good um the the introduction has been done um the only one that probably uh has not been mentioned is that I am a Christian of the coil extraction so I come from the concur tribe the Eco tribe in and in um in Central in a Neary area of this beautiful country I like to emphasize that because we all come to Christ from different cultures and that's why I'm very passionate about how we must allow our Christian faith to shape our cultures so that we have the commonness of Christ now um the theme verse I have chosen let me see if I can put this into the thing was I have chosen for us today is Romans um 1 20. for since the creation of the wild God's invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from his workmanship so that men are without excuse we're talking about science we are talking about faith and the study of science has been taken to mean that you would conflict a faith or our religion and that is not correct because everybody has seen the manifestation of God now this dilemma I like us to go to each time we have a discussion about life and health and human rights and the question of where did Life Begin and the scientists gave us a dilemma they call the chicken and egg dilemma so between the egg and the chicken what came first if you say was the chicken then we ask you where did it hatch from if you say it is the egg then who led the egg and if we continue with this discussion we will never agree so long as this is the life cycle that we are discussing and this is the life cycle that is taught to all people who are called scientists and it's always starts with an adult female who lays an egg and then the egg hatches into something then eventually we get a young one and then that grows up into an adult and this is a life cycle we have always been taught and when you ask between the egg and the chicken which came first then we agree that it is not possible to know the beginning of life but there is a a deception in this cycle which is the reason I keep repeating it and that solution is given by creation that for this egg to be fertilized then there must have been a male that mated with the female for the egg to be fertile for it to actually hatch into a chick if you remove the male then you can never have a chick it is impossible and if you put back the mail then we can have the beginning of the life cycle of the chicken and the reason why the meal is removed to give deception is because so long as the male is there then you must agree that both the male and the female must have existed as adults that were with the potential to mate to create the first chick in the life cycle of the chicken and this would be true of all the animals that reproduce sexually so once you put in the male and female and they must have existed as adults then you also must admit that there is a creator who then is the author of the beginning and that is what the scientists were removing in my field of of of um obstetrics and gynecology when you remove the mail then you discuss reproductive Health instead of procreation and you end up with that termed female health or Woman's Health instead of family health and I'll show you why that is a dilemma that we must address but what is common between the those who believe in creation and evolution now if science studies creation creation cannot then science cannot be used to disprove the Creator on the contrary creation itself manifests a Creator like we have just learned now the propagators of The Big Bang Theory and evolution believe that matter came from nothing and that life arose spontaneously from non-living elements respectively and that being so therefore those who believe in the almighty God of all creation and those who believe in the Big Bang and evolution theories accept by faith the supernatural beginning of the universe and faith and that is important for us to keep in mind so that as someone is using the Big Bang as his theory of the beginning or that life started from non-living matter you must quickly tell them that they have accepted by faith that the origin of the universe and life is Supernatural because we know a scientist that matter cannot come from nothing and that life will never come from non-living matter that having been understood then we can look at the life cycle of the human person and the human sexuality from a Christian perspective and it begins with God the Creator and God creates the whole of the universe before he creates man now remember it is us who need the universe to survive it's not the other way around and then God created man in his fullness in his likeness and he want him to be lonely and he removed something from man and created the woman and from that point onwards the human being has two persons the male and the female and the male represents half of human nature but has everything that he requires to be a man the woman represents the other half of human nature and has everything she needs to be a woman but until you bring these two together you cannot understand the fullness of the human muscle because the man and the woman think very differently they respond very differently to stimuli and therefore are designed for complementing one another not for competition these two people then broke their relationship with God because of Disobedience by not obeying the the rules of the Creator and um God had to send his son to save us and redeem us and from that moment the life of a Christian begins with Christ as the center of our life and the man and the woman are to be in Christ and be guided by Christ and then the man and the woman are brought together through the sacrament of matrimony a spiritual union that brings the man and the woman together to become one so that they can experience the fullness of the human person and together be able to procreate and together they're able to bring new life into being and this new life is then born it doesn't belong to the woman it is not a part of her body it is an independent being that is created by God in her own womb and which she graciously carries and in nine months they are separated and the young one is brought up as a child we look after the child because they represent the future and the child thrives when they are brought up in the union of a man and a woman that we call the Family children learn different things from the father and different things from the mother they learn to share with their brothers and their siblings and they learn to respect their parents it is from this unit called the family that we get the community so the community is not made up of individuals it is made up of many families with people derived from different families it is from those families that we shall then get the next male and female couple that will then continue the life cycle of the human persons and because we Are Spiritual Beings from that Community there will be people who will pass on and some of the souls will find their way back to God and unfortunately some of the souls will be sent away from the father it is our business as Christians then to influence this community as a light and the salt so that we are able to win as many souls for Christ as possible so that there is no Black Arrow and all the souls will find their way back to the father that is our Great Commission and if you pay attention to this life cycle you'll discover that until we reach the community everything else is the family now if you destroy any part of this cycle you destroy the whole of humanity if you allow our children to grow up not understanding or believing there is a God or disregarding the fact that there is one or we allow the man to believe that he can come into relationship with one of his same sex or the same with a woman or we disregard matrimony and decide that we can live together without actually having a spiritual State of Union then we start getting our fruitfulness outside of the bound of marriage with the temptation of committing adultery by a committing abortion and then we end up with children abundant in the streets or children who are abused we end up with divorce and family breaking down because of adultery and many other challenges and the community will eventually fall apart it will be driven away from God and there will be more people not finding their way back to the father so this is the human life cycle from a Christian perspective and it forms the basis of what we are going to discuss today so when it comes to human rights from a Christian perspective then the thought is that these must be gifts that have been given to humanity gifts given by God himself that cannot be taken away by other human beings and we know that we are created body and soul and when we think about the body then what kind of right would we think about we would think about the right to life and when we come to the soul what kind of right would we think about and we'll come to the right um to think about Free Will for the right of choice and when it comes to the community because after the human person the next thing God created for us is the union between a man and the woman the society is made from the family unit then we have the right to establish a family and God gave us the the physical environment and what right would that give us it would give us the right to live of the land so from a Christian perspective and from Understanding God's gifts to humanity then we come up with those All rights the right to life the right of choice or free will the right to establish a family and the right to live off the land now human being we have the human rights have for a long time been based on the universal Declaration of Human Rights which was developed in 1948. now we must remember that humanity is older than 1948 and that before this Declaration of Human Rights human rights existed human rights existed even before written law because they are god-given their their Universal and their in um in in a lineup or you cannot take them away so uh this is a summary of the the universal Declaration of Human Rights and it has 30 articles and I wanted to show you this because it's going to play up in our discussion but I'd like you to point out to you that this declaration does not make any reference to God in fact if you look at Article 1 it says all human beings are born free and equal but as to what gives you the Authority or the value that gives you dignity is not mentioned and for us as Christians we know is because we are created in the image and likeness of God so what I did for you is that I wrote down these articles all of them and then I matched them with the four human rights that we have just developed and you find that if you go down the Articles you find the majority of these human dignity except Liberty here which is free will from article eight to to 15 uh the new one that is consistent with what we have is living off the land that you shall not be a vitrality exiled you have a right to be in this world then article 12 we have a right to establish the family here and so on and so forth from 16 to 23 you'll find again for each of these articles we can match them with one of the four um one of the four uh rights that we have just established so up to article 30 we find that it is possible to merge each one of these items with the with the right now the other area of human rights that is important to look at is a reproductive Health which was developed in icpt in Cairo in 1994 that's when it was introduced into our language and the icpd defined reproductive Health as a state of complete physical mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity in all matters relating to the reproductive system and its functions and processes now um the Holy See had a problem with this definition even in 1994 and they stated so and that is captured in the original document since then they have tried to change this definition but I use the original definition because I wanted you to see that Humanity has been reduced to their reproductive system and the the question then would beg why don't we have the reproductive why why don't we have uh Health heart health of the circulatory system why don't we have urinary health for the urinary system how can we reduce the nature of the human muscle to a reproductive system and its functions and processes in any case what then would be the mental health of the reproductive system and what would be the social well-being of the reproductive system and I point this out to show you that this is is is um is a very lame definition that does not cover the human person the other definition that is very important for us to focus on especially in my area of interest is sexual reproductive health and rights this is something that has been brought into Medical Practice it is a social ideology that it is inconsistent with the practice of medicine but it's more and more commonly used now in 2015 who published the document together with undp and unfpa and the World Bank this document is called Sexual Health Human Rights and the law and it was developed amongst other things to Define what sexual health is because this term had been used in various U.N documents most of them non-binding but it had been used so much and everybody wanted to know what it means and they told us that Sexual Health encompasses issues relating to sexuality sexual practice contraceptive and sexually transmitted diseases this is a document that is available online and for us to then understand the meaning of sexual and reproductive Health then we needed to understand the meaning of sexual health and these Sexual Health includes access to abortion which is the deliberate killing of The Unborn Child it includes pleasurable and safe sexual experiences when they talk about sexual experiences it means protecting oneself from sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy which is the use of condoms and other things in preventing HIV transmission and pregnancy so safe sex it implies that getting pregnant is unsafe and that all secure experiences would lead to STIs recognition and diversity of sexual behavior and expression so this is where you bring in HIV you bring in uh the lgbtq ideology where you bring lesbianism and transgenderism then the right of adolescence to sexual reproductive health services without a rental consent so that our children below the age of 18 can be provided access to abortion as stated up there they can be given condoms and contraceptives without parental consent is part of the definition of sexual health and then legalizing what they call sex work which is really prostitution legalizing same-sex marriages that put those in italics because this cannot be marriage because marriage by definition is male female then the governments are produced to provide cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgeries that is for transgenderizing and then sexual reproductive Health needs for adolescents including safe abortion services and then comprehensive sexuality education which is the the sexualizing harm this is where you teach children that sex is for fun and that it is their right to have sex and they don't need parental Authority and you start them very early from as early as you can so that they can become consumers of Commodities of this this industry so if you understand our faith you will understand that if this then would be would be termed rights killing of The Unborn Child homosexuality and lesbianism if this were to be called rights then you will understand that the sexual reproductive health and rights ideology is a director from to the family and is inconsistent with human dignity and our faith so um I wanted us to look at the burden and and honor of pregnancy is from uh um a commentary it was done by a gentleman called Tom gently and he was commenting on an article written by Agnes Howard um titled in moral labor that was printed in a journal called fast things and I found it very very nice because it explains to us uh the fullness of our sexuality and the fullness of the sexual act that God creates a New Soul a child in the body of a woman and that this implies a direct contact between God and the mother to be that is independent of the father and this is a quote from Alice won Hildebrandt and then our uh Pope John Paul II emphasized in his letter to families that man coming into being does not conform to the laws of biology alone but also and directly God's creative will which is the con which is concerned with the genealogy of the Sons and Daughters of the human families therefore an expectant mother welcomes and serves a child as a stranger in keeping with Matthew 25 35 the dark baby within the mother is not known but the woman is uniquely qualified to help that stranger to come into this world and when you look at this now in terms of comparison between reproduction and procreation then you see that reproduction depends on industry and mechanical metaphors about making copies of human species so this would be more consistent to reference to IVF and and those other services but procreation Roots sexuality and child uh child bearing deeply within the relationship between the man and the woman so that the sexual embrace of the husband and wife opens them to receive a child it is open to life and also in the relationship between the couple and God because then the couple becomes oh or co-creators of a new human soul together with God this is how we should approach our sexuality and procreation we do not reproduce we are not machines and we are not farm animals uh we procreate because in it there is working together with God and it is an action of will so if we come back to a human rights now with that understanding then we understand that for us as Christians the rights we describe to other the the gifts we have been given with God by God come with responsibilities so free will does not mean that we will always make the right choice and then rights therefore cannot be a license to do whatever we want that rights must be limited by the rights of others and the example here is that the freedom of expression can be limited by laws that prohibit hate speech or incitement to violence so human rights may not be obsolete absolute because they depend on the rights of others because we are communal we live in a community we would have to give up some of what we would want to do so as not to offend others so human rights come with responsibilities and unfortunately these responsibilities are not captured or stated in the U.N Declaration of Human Rights they will come back to our church and we introduce the responsibility when it comes to the right to life it is protecting human dignity that is our responsibility not just human rights and life alone because human beings need to live in dignity and we can we can disrespect dignity so we must protect life we must protect the Dignity of the human person and that's why when I was comparing the articles of the Declaration of Human Rights I use the term human dignity when it comes to free choice then we have a responsibility to seek to be guided and to impart the truth this is very important because the conscience of the human being must be formed for them to um fully enjoy their relationship with God so seeking the truth is very important being Guided by the truth is very important and speaking and imparting the truth is also important if we don't do those things the human person would never be able to make the right choices and can actually be deceived or misguided to making the wrong choices when it comes to establishing the family as Christians then there is a Gap a love the love of God which is then the love that guides our relationship within the family and with the people who are around us and we have the responsibility to procreate for if we don't then the human race will become extinct and when it comes to the physical environment the right to live off the land then we are called to stewardship that we were not given the land we were not given the animals we were not given the plants we were only given dominion over these things they Remain the creators and therefore we must use them as good stewards knowing that they are good for us and they also necessary for the generation that will come ahead of us so that we do not destroy the planet then there is the issue about social justice that nobody should lack but if I have and my neighbor doesn't have then I must be able to support that neighbor because we all have a right to be here nobody should lack now when it then comes to the question of Health can we introduce Health then the World Health Organization defines Health as a complete state of physical mental and social well-being are not merely the absence of disease or infirmity again a definition that is several decades old now that is what we have been using and this is what is quoted in most health discussions especially in in in the medical world now if we then apply Health these four rights that we have then we find that the right to life is really about physical wellness and in medicine mental health is considered as part of physical well-being and when it comes to Free Will or the right of choice then that is where spiritual Wellness is the wellness of your conscience Your Capacity to make good choices how well formed is your conscience how are you connected to the truth so that you may be able to make choices that will give you peace and when it comes to the family then we have Family Wellness and then when it comes to the environment we would have environmental Wellness now if you look at our rights and their responsibility that come with it and then their relationship to well-being you will notice that the World Health Organization is also a Godless definition because it it preclude excludes spiritual Wellness it talks about physical mental and social well-being so it excludes spiritual wellness and we know that the human being is both body and spirit so it is a Godless definition the other thing is that it lumps All Families into a society yet we all know that the family is the primary unit of the society so it is a society it's a family we need to be concerned about because once a family is well the greater Society will be well so that's Family Wellness then the definition of who completely disregards the environment and yet we know that we cannot sustain good health without a healthy environment so then if you we take all this and we apply our knowledge from what we have just gone through then we can improve the definition of Health uh by by saying that it is a complete state of physical mental spiritual family and environmental well-being are not merely the absence of disease and infirmity now technically once we mention family we don't need to mention mental but because when we are improving on a definition we want to reduce the risk of controversy then we leave physical and mental in the definition but we introduce spiritual and instead of social we use the primary unit of the society which is a family and we introduce environmental well-being and this is then how human rights and health would relate complete with rights and responsibilities that would then allow us to have a better world and this is what I wanted to share with you and maybe just compare quickly with the family health versus sexual reproductive health so if we are going to Define uh sexual health or reproductive Health what is the alternative we can give that an opportunity is Family Health so the sexual reproductive Health ideology is consistent with family health for creation among human beings needs to be a man the woman needs a man and a woman it needs sexual intercourse which means you use the correct organs and we also know that children Thrive when brought up in the unit of family that we call marriage a lifelong relationship between their parents uh procreation is therefore about the family unit not the reproductive system you cannot talk about the reproductive system it is human beings the reproductive system is in a man and in a woman so and these two come together in the family unit you procreate and have children So Family Health would then be defined as a state of complete physical mental spiritual and environmental well-being of the family and its individuals and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity so um ladies and gentlemen what I would like to propose is that from the understanding of a Christian faith then we would adopt a new definition of family of Health and the new definition of family health that would then Family Health would replace for us in our language what would otherwise be reproductive health or sexual reproductive health and rights and that is the end of my presentation I will have enough time for questions and answers and I'd like to stop there thank you very much thank you very much for that great tree science Treatise on the human life cycle and also reminding us of the pre-universal Declaration challenge the fact that we always had human law as a subservient to Divine Eternal and natural law and that over a period of time we found ourselves uh redefining these principles and excluding God from the whole equation we had encouraged people to post questions in the chat room uh we encourage you to post questions and comments in the chat room so that we can have a dialogue we have a few minutes left on us so we could make use of them we have Gloria OKO who is thanking Dr homie for this teaching many people are quite enlightened so if you have a question or a comment a posted in the chat room and we will have you identified I see some hands already raised and we will start with Reverend father Pascal makio I hope you're still in Mombasa how is Mombasa go ahead foreign thank you very much Dr paquetto and also thank you very much [Music] I am sure we have uh I encountered each other especially in the Kenya Christian professional programs and I'm very happy to to be part of this uh so first of all [Music] for this presentation which is a very important especially in our ministry of healing health and healing unit of the packed pan I'll start by saying that the World Health Organization especially in his Constitution which defined Health back in 1946 just slightly two years before the universal Declaration of the human rights in its preamble it says that the states parties to this constitution declare in the Conformity with the chart of the United Nations that the following principles are basic to happiness harmonious relations and security of peoples so all the principles and the whatever have been mentioned in this uh this Charter and the of the who are getting the help is in terms of Happiness harmonious relations and security of all peoples and you can agree with me that many people can claim anything for them to be happy and for them to be secure [Music] so my first question is this one on the definition of Health in the who can human beings really attain complete health can we not surrender life when we have done everything possible especially as regards to the Christian teaching surrendering our life to the Creator then either doing everything which you cannot attain as it is claiming the right sometimes even extending in the light I arrive the life in futility whether by just life support machines which are not adding anything any value to life or even sometimes we give up we give up in the suffering and employ otanasia or mercy killing when suffering is unbearable does suffering still have meaning to us Christians and then the second question will be when does the right to health of the Mother start or end in reference to the right to life of The Unborn especially when their emergency treatments of Life part of Health when they are in danger particularly in reference to the Kenyan Constitution Article 26 and 34 43 regarding health thank you you're muted your muted sorry thank you Father Pascal I would like that we take all the questions and then you respond at the end so we now listen to Father naimeka Ali oblets of Mary Immaculate thank you very much it was a very nice presentation and admire the the beginning of the presentation that uh where you you try to start with your origin your background as a canyon and of a particular tribe and the Nuance we made on how our faith dialogue with our our culture one of the questions that come to my mind as I was listening to you too was the idea like the question of marriage at the point you put it in parentheses that marriage is about man and woman traditionally but when we look back for example because I'm saying this because the idea of starting from our own culture it becomes a question and I do understand that you talk about how the our our faith dialogue with our culture but when I look back at my own culture where um in certain circumstances for example when a man dies and leave no child or leave no no male child and one of the one of the children can decide we still don't see today to get married and keep having a child for the father and even though the woman is not a lesbian right traditionally to get married from Christian Perspective yes we won't talk about marriage but can we say that that's not a marriage since it's a woman getting married to another woman thank you very much wow okay then the final question at least I'm not seeing another hand in the comment section how can these kinds of teachings and awareness be provided to our schools at all levels and in our churches so Dr Homme there you go you got around five minutes to deal with very heavy bioethical and anthropological questions particularly thank you um now from father Pascal thank you very much for for your question and the main thing um I would like to respond here is that um in my understanding happiness is a spiritual State and the the the world has been confusing happiness and pleasure if you are in in the state of um uh what what how would I put it if you are if your conscience is clear if your conscience is clear then you attain the state of happiness so spiritual peace is what I understand happiness to be if your choices are consistent with a well-formed conscience if your choices are consistent with the teaching of scripture then you will always be at least regardless of how difficult the choices are and that is what happiness is unfortunately the world looks for pleasure and that's why the universal Declaration of Human Rights and all these are the rights that are being developed are all towards seeking pleasure especially sexual pleasure and that is what is is being misunderstood to mean happiness so and if you understand that then it is also possible to understand why spiritual illness is the beginning of mental illness if you make bad choices and consistently make bad choices or those around you make bad choices that scandalize you that is the beginning of mental illness it always starts with spiritual illness where one is not able to make good choices either for themselves or for those around them and then we create mental illness so happiness is a spiritual state of Peace for one who is being able to live consistent with the teaching of faith meaning they have a clear conscience suffering the the in medical practice at least the idea is not to perpetuate life where there is no possibility of survival and but also to reduce suffering so pain relief and things like that but they are there are conditions for instance where somebody has terminal cancer it is it is inhumane in fact it is medically unethical to put such a person on a life support machine because if we have reached the end of the knowledge that we know of physical treatment then it is important that we do not perpetuate the suffering of that person increase the costs to the family where we know that at the level of our understanding there is not much more we can do so so um taking care of a person who is uh is having an end of life event and reducing their pain is what we do not putting them on life support machines now when it comes to the right life of the mother and the right to life of The Unborn Child the principle the ethical principle is that we are looking after two lives we are looking after the life of the mother and the life of the child so we have two lives to worry about but in the absence of the mother it is almost impossible then to take care of the child especially depending on the stage we call the gestation how old is the pregnancy and those are the things that we weigh now there is no principle in medicine where the deliberate killing of The Unborn Child is prescribed as a solution to saving the mother's life so that is something we must get very clear and that is why the use of that term abortion is a problem it is best that we describe what it is we intend to do because if it is terminating a pregnancy pregnancy can be brought to an end in very many different ways you can bring a pregnancy to an end by inducing labor in a mother who has high blood pressure and you save both the baby and the mother you can do a cesarean section for that mother who has had very high blood pressure because the baby is premature and you deliver the baby alive but there is no diagnosis in medicine where you would write down a prescription and say I am going to deliberately kill this unborn child in order to save the mother that is is a matter of fact so when it comes to article 26 uh four of our constitution then the question is what does the term abortion mean in the constitution of Kenya does the term abortion mean deliberate killing of the unborn child or does the term abortion mean termination of pregnancy and our our understanding is that abortion is an English word that means bring to an end or terminate bring to an end or terminate because the Constitution is not a medical document so you don't use medical definitions to to understand the Constitution about or abortion is an English term you can abort a process you can abort a journey so aborting a pregnancy would then mean bringing that pregnancy to an end or terminating the pregnancy if you understand that then the reading of that article would be bringing over pregnancy to an end is not permitted unless in the opinion of a trained health professional there is Need for emergency treatment for the life or health of the mother is in danger so the second qualification is that there is a right to life and the right to life can be limited only if the life of the mother is in danger and the third thing is that it is the opinion of the trained health professional that is allowed to make that choice so the doctor has not been given a license to Kill at will he has been given a right to make a decision based on his medical understanding of why that Mother's pregnancy needs to be brought to an end and bringing a pregnancy to an end it does is not equal to killing The Unborn Child so that is how we understand article 24 and if you understand it that way it is not conflicted because when you come to health of the mother assuming you have a patient who is threatening to commit suicide because the boyfriend has left her the father has refused to take care of her and she has nowhere to go she has no money to bring up that child and is threatening to commit suicide then you take a good history like a good doctor you do a good physical examination and you find that the pregnancy is completely normal but the woman is stressed mentally distressed and he would come up with a diagnosis that would read um there is depression with Suicidal Tendencies in a woman with a normal pregnancy and the treatment would be you treat the depression the pregnancy is not part of the depression you leave the baby alone so once we understand that abortion in the constitution is an English word and it means bring to an end then article 26 is consistent and medical ethics will apply thereafter now Ali the issue about our culture and marriage that's a very good question it's something that has bothered me over many years and it took a while before this was put in perspective for me and the gentleman who brought this home made a very simple uh suggestion once you come to Christ then Christianity becomes your moral value it is no longer your culture but there are things within your culture that are good that you do not need to throw away and there are things within your culture that may not be consistent so he advised to anybody who is coming to Christ even the Jew must break their culture into three practices there are those practices that are not offensive to our faith so if you find an African culture that is not offensive to you to our faith like the way we name our children in in my culture we name our children after our parents that is not offensive to Faith and the child can have a Godfather a God we can have um we can have a seat for the child but there are names that are cultural and the child would keep those names because it is not offensive to Faith then there are cultural practices that were very well intentioned but their practice is not consistent with our faith and an example here would be what we used to call wife inheritance so if uh if a brother passes away and the Elders of the community come together and the he had young children and they say so and so you're the one who is going to be the husband of this woman so that the children have a father figure the woman has somebody to consult when their masculine issues to be dealt with in the family and that the inheritance of those children and the family are protected those who are very good reasons for having the culture of Life inheritance but it also allowed that you could have children with that woman for your your brother who had passed on now that would be adultery in in our culture especially if the person inheriting the woman is also married or if he is not married then he doesn't marry this woman then of course it will be adultery so in that category of cultural practices then the thing to do is to modify the cultural practice you keep that which is consistent to Faith so the wife is inherited the children are given a father figure the woman is given a man to discuss those issues that would be necessary but there is no sexual relation between the man and the woman and that would allow that practice to remain consistent with our faith so you modify you keep what is good but you reject what is what is inconsistent with faith now the last category would be things that are completely inconsistent with faith so for me it would be polygamy in our culture we were allowed to have more than one life but in my faith it is considered um inconsistent with faith so I I have only one wife and I cannot marry more and I accept that as as uh as as a practice that I cannot keep and therefore I reject polygamy another good example in that one is blood sacrifice we used to sacrifice animals very much like the Jews the blood would go to the ancestors who have gone before us then the uh the meat of the animal would be shared amongst the people like we would share communion uh Holy Communion and then the internal um the the remains of the undigested products will be spread around uh that the home state as a blessing for the children who are to come now when we get married or when we are going through cultural practices that require some Dowry and other things when it comes to sacrificing an animal to give to the ancestors and the others then we say that this animal is not sacrificial we do not need animal sacrifices anymore after the coming of Christ so we will Slaughter this animal as food and share it as food and then go to church and through Mass complete the spiritual part of that ceremony so that is what I would advise and that is why I keep insisting that I am a Christian of gecoyo extraction I am no longer a kikuyu I am a Christian first but I recognize that I come from Vegas people because through that fruit I can find my way to my grandfather my great grandfather all the way to my first parents another way to Adam and Eve and back to God my Creator thank you very much thank you very much Dr homie for responding to those questions uh it's around this time we are a little bit late but I will invite a sister teresia our convener for the health and healing unit to give her closing remarks so stay event you can hear me yes about that thank you very much and in fact I think Advocate even for helping me to our homie and I also want me who has been our guest speaker for the day ton is that it was a very angry and it would have even wanted it times and every time I recently also Dr wahome this is just the beginning for more discussion on different uh and also want to thank all of you for those who are listening to so who are going to follow us through the YouTube they thank all of you for your time today and also I want us soon I'll afford the webinar for eign and matters of it sometimes in August so and be able to join us so Precision I want now to invite give us a Crossing prayer and then preparing the Innovative for the services thank you thank you sister good people thank you too for the opportunity you've given me to moderate this session I would like now to pray uh first for all those present with us on the webinar and those who've been following online that the discussion we have held today may continue to provoke thought and action uh in what they do we also pray for our facilitator may he be blessed and affirmed in his ministry as he continues to witness to the truth and for packed upon especially the health and healing unit may we uphold by your grace or Lord the hitherto Orthodox interpretations of the teachings of the church that in health and healing we may have found the gift of human life the gift of human family greater glory of God and may the Lord bless us keep us from evil and bring us to everlasting life thank you very much bye-bye foreign

Channel: Pan-African Catholic Theology and Pastoral Network

Views: 459

Keywords:

Id: xALNowkYY_w

Length: 63min 40sec (3820 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2023