Adhere to the Catholic faith - Bishop

The Most Reverend Alfred Agyenta, Catholic Bishop of Navrongo/Bolgatanga, has advised the leadership of the Church to adhere to the Catholic faith to ensure that members do not depart from Catholic doctrines.

He observed that some Reverend Fathers in the church were emulating other churches in terms of preaching and singing, saying, “Some of us and our members even pray in tongues, which are not part of our tradition, and copy other churches that are not Orthodox, to us are bad”.

Most Rev Agyenta gave the advice in Tamale during the first Tamale Ecclesiastical Province Bible Congress in the Catholic Archdiocese of Tamale, as a way of intensifying the New Evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith through Biblical Apostolate.

Most Rev Agyenta who spoke on the theme: “The Role of Biblical Apostolate in the Transmission of the Christian faith in Ghana, in the Light of Africae Munus,” said it was important as Apostolate to know the tradition of the Catholic Church and do things in conformity and that any attempt to impose any alien tradition would be disastrous.

He said some members of the Catholic Church sometimes attend other churches where they learn the preaching, dancing and traditions of those churches, which according to him, would lead them to derail totally or depart from the Catholic doctrine.

“If you allow other influences to come from other churches then we are not going to pass on the Christian faith, because if you look at the way we pray, the way we worship now, and the way we dance is a complete departure from the Catholic Church,” he explained.

He said authentic Christian spirituality must be Biblically rooted, and that any attempt to build spirituality devoid of biblical context was false, and would not stand the test of time because it was not built on good soil.

According to him, some Catholics were also using Bibles other than the Catholic one, which had more books or scriptures than the other Bibles, and stressed the need to adhere to Catholicism

He said to be an Apostolate it demanded a lot of sacrifices, and warned them to be wary of the costly challenges which included material resources, time, and demanded a generous heart that members should endeavour and willing to serve God.

Most Rev Agyenta also called on religious leaders to use the pulpit to continuously pray for the country for peace, economic emancipation and unity among Ghanaians, to ensure that conflicts among tribes were stopped.