AMERICA/HAITI - Bishops on new decrees: "they threaten the foundations of our society, coexistence, culture, faith and Christian morality"

Port au Prince (Agenzia Fides) - In a note signed by the members of the Episcopal Conference of Haiti, the Bishops denounce the publication of the latest decrees of President Jovenel Moïse, which clearly attack the culture and values of the Haitian people.
As the coronavirus continues its course in the country, not as lethal as expected, Haiti is still experiencing other tragedies worse than the pandemic, such as insecurity, misery, unemployment, unhealthiness, political instability, corruption, etc. Regarding the latter situation, the national government has published two decrees. One speaks of the unique national identification number and the unique national identification card, the other of the new penal code. The Bishops say they expect "courage, lucidity, wisdom and, above all, respect from the executive, and not to arbitrarily impose on the Haitian people what is simply against true values".
"We, Catholic Bishops of Haiti, simply want to declare energetically that this is ethically and morally unacceptable in several respects, both in terms of procedure and content. In fact, in various points, this draft decree represents a particularly serious attack on the very essence of our humanity. It involves difficult and complex human life problems such as incest, sexual orientation, sex change, etc.", writes the Episcopal Conference of Haiti.
According to the Bishops, these questions require consultation and reflection, which is why this project involves significant upheavals that seriously and dangerously modify the foundations of what our civilization has built regarding respect for man, his dignity, his life, of the family.
According to what Renold Antoine, a Redemptorist missionary in Haiti, reports to Fides, the Bishops have invited the executive to concentrate rather on the real problems of the Haitians and to try to solve them, instead of trying to import foreign values and external to local traditions. "We remind the executive branch that it is its moral and ethical responsibility not to surrender to ideological pressures, wherever they come from, not to involve the Haitian people without consulting them, in this way it can only lead to an even more catastrophic collapse of what we know today. Is it really urgent now to implement and re-propose this draft decree on the new penal code?".
With their note, the Bishops ask that these decisions are stopped for the good of the population, because these decrees threaten "the very foundations of our society, of our coexistence, of our culture, of the faith and of Christian morality", and invoke the patroness of Haiti: "May Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Patroness of Haiti, protect us from all evil and protect us from all dangers". (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 7/7/2020)

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