Kumasi (Ashanti Region) 8 Jan. '99
Kumasi (Ashanti Region) 8 Jan. '99 The Rev. Father Stephen Osei-Duah, Vicar General of the Diocese of Kumasi, has expressed concern about the "absence of Christ" in Ghana's Vision 2020. He said the third millennium has been associated with slogans on food, health, water and indeed all aspects of human life for the year 2000. ''Nowhere have I heard the slogan Christ for all by the year 2000,'' Fr Osei-Duah, told a forum of Grand Knights, Noble Ladies, Regional Grand Knights and the Noble Ladies of the Knights and Ladies of Marshall, a Catholic fraternal society, in Kumasi on Saturday. The forum, on the theme ''Our Father in heaven, the year of Charity,'' was aimed at preparing officers of the fraternity for their role in the celebration of the third millennium and enhancing their efficiency as representatives of the Supreme Knight and the Grand Court. He said people forget that it is God that makes ''all these aspects of life possible and holds them together. This is indeed a sad picture of the third millennium and poses great challenges to us as Christians." He pointed out that recent technological changes, particularly the breakthrough in genetic engineering which holds great promises for humanity in the third millennium, is making human life less burdensome and more comfortable. He said in the United States, Germany and Japan, for instance, where high technology has resulted in the increased material wealth of the average citizen,''people tend to forget God, or at best, they keep him at a distance and even question His relevance in their lives. ''The glorification of increased high technological achievements without recourse to God, the primary creator and origin of all wisdom should remind us of the Tower of Babel and its consequences''. He pointed out that drug abuse, alcoholism, pornography and sexual promiscuity are all hedonistic vehicles for heinous crimes that tend to destroy life and human existence at large.
