An international pro-life organization is helping African fathers to assert their traditional role as protectors and providers while rejecting the idea that population control and abortion strengthen families.
As Americans celebrate Father’s Day, Emil Hagamu, Human Life International (HLI) Regional Director of English-Speaking Africa, explained in a statement sent to CatholicVote that, in Africa, fathers are traditionally viewed and respected as the head of the family.
In his native country of Tanzania, for example, Hagamu said fathers “seek health, prosperity, and peaceful marriages for their families.” One Tanzanian village father and his neighbors, however, ended up adopting the Western ideas of abortion rights and population control organizations.
Paschal and his fellow villagers accepted the notion “that contraception and abortion made families stronger,” explained HLI. “Anti-life groups taught them that ‘family planning’ would bring health, prosperity, and peaceful marriages. As they came to understand, Hagamu shared, the truth is exactly the opposite.”
The global organization was there to help Paschal when he learned that the real motive behind those promoting “family planning” was to reduce the number of Africans. With the training he received from HLI, Paschal was able to assert his role as protector of his family and to keep his family’s focus on truth and life.
The pro-life organization fulfills its Catholic and pro-life mission by conducting programs in leadership training, pregnancy care centers, chastity education, and legal activism.
HLI’s Fr. Jonathan Opio, for example, shared that bringing men together at conferences in Uganda to focus on faith and family has “been a way of leading men to lovingly reflect the image and authority of God within their families.”
Human Life International
HLI Director of Education and Research Dr. Brian Clowes told CatholicVote of his experience working with men in 14 different African countries.
“Much of what the developed nations offer Africa is specifically designed to cripple or weaken the family, and African fathers instinctively recognize this,” Clowes said, adding:
What they don’t know is why. This is why: Since the 1960s, leading population controllers have worked towards reducing the number of Africans by whatever means are necessary – and this includes such evils as easy divorce, permanent cohabitation, birth control, abortion and infanticide, pornography and even homosexuality.
In Tsumeb, Namibia, HLI assisted Roseline Uiras, who works with families and recently reported to the pro-life organization the devaluation of the role of fathers in the sub-Saharan nation of about 2.5 million.
“People have lost their identity,” Uiras said:
It’s very unfortunate that we grow up witnessing tragic scenarios in our communities: gender-based violence, same-sex marriages, and the LGBTQ lifestyle. We have lost men – lost fathers – as a result of this. Many have run away from their fatherly responsibilities. Some have turned to substance abuse.
“Who will lead the children?” she asked. “These confused, so-called ‘fathers’? Who is supposed to teach, protect, and provide for their children?”
With HLI’s help, Uiras continued her efforts to restore the traditional African role of fathers, helping couples to reject the so-called “progressive” practices of abortion and population control through contraception.
Uiras assisted Mark, for example, the sole caregiver of his four children, who is now divorced and struggling to raise his children alone after his wife abruptly abandoned the family.
“Despite the overwhelming challenges, Mark has remained determined to provide a loving and supportive environment for his children,” HLI reported. “His participation in Uiras’ Tsumeb life advocacy group has helped affirm his role as provider and protector of his children.”
Human Life International
With HLI’s support for African fathers to step up to be their families’ protectors and providers, Uiras prays for the upcoming generation of men, that they “stand firm and do what is right for the sake of their children.”
“All signs point towards the fact that we are living through a crisis in fatherhood, affecting millions of children around the world,” Fr. Shenan Boquet, president of Human Life International, said in comments to CatholicVote. “And research shows that children from broken homes are statistically more likely themselves to struggle with commitment and fidelity in marriage, leading to more broken homes and thus perpetuating a cycle of fatherlessness.”
He explained:
These destructive effects of widespread fatherlessness, which is socially, spiritually, and economically damaging, spread out horizontally in every culture like ripples, but spread vertically across generations like tidal waves, with fatherlessness leading to further fatherlessness, in a vicious cycle.
A “massive body of irrefutable scientific evidence shows that the mere presence of a father in the home can make all the difference for his children,” he added.
Boquet said healing the crisis of fatherless homes starts with “reclaiming and re-establishing the definitive role of the family – one man and one woman in an exclusive, indissoluble, and fruitful union – and particularly the irreplaceable role of the father.”
Children are successful in school and social relationships when marriage is “lived in the spirit of a vocation, reflecting and fostering responsibility, devotion, and hard work,” he explained.
Ultimately, Boquet said “modernism has done its best to dissolve the family structure” and must be “rejected.”
Methods of “deliberately blurring the distinctions between mothers and fathers, and dismissing the sacred responsibilities that each have to one another and their children” has undermined the strong bonds of traditional, nurturing families,” Boquet explained. “As Pope St. John Paul II said, ‘As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.’”
The post Pro-Life group helps African fathers ‘reflect the image and authority of God’ in families appeared first on CatholicVote org.