The Catholic Church has suspended a priest for rapping to young people. No, that isn’t a typo and yes I’m sure I didn’t type an extra p. And it’s not just because he got a defective hymnal with some Tupac in it. Father Paul Ogalo from Kenya was suspended by the bishops in Africa for mixing rap into mass. Bishop Philip Anyolo, who probably covered up for at least one pedophile priest, told CNN, “Yes, the church has taken disciplinary measure against Father Ogalo. The use of rap music is not allowed in preaching.”
A popular priest, who regularly appeared on local TV and did radio interviews, Ogalo was seen as the new face of the church in the country.
A lecturer at a leading Kenyan Christian university sided with Ogalo, saying the church was afraid of the “revolutionary content” of his messages.
Wandia Njoya said: “We teach hip hop and the Bible at Daystar Language. It’s not the priest’s popularity that the church is afraid of. It’s the revolutionary and African content of hip hop.”
I was curious about what this met, because for some reason CNN didn’t think to ask anyone to elaborate on this. What is the world coming to when a humor column writer on a website with no resources has more intellectual curiosity than CNN? Well, it seems like there’s more to this story than just a priest getting fired for rapping, with two p’s.
What you may not know is there are essentially two factions within the Catholic Church: a conservative faction and a progressive faction. The progressive faction, which includes Pope Francis and the Jesuits (which would be an awesome band name), is comprised mostly of South American Catholics. The conservative faction is strongest in Africa, and North America and Europe have a split; John Kennedy and Rick Santorum are both Catholic, for example.
It turns out that Father Ogalo is a pretty progressive guy for a Catholic priest, especially in the conservative stronghold of Africa. I found an older profile of him that said “after rapping, Ogalo sits with the youths to discuss how they can fight social vices such as drug abuse, crime and HIV and Aids. He is also an advocate for environment conservation,” which all sounds pretty left-wing to me.
Of course, having been raised Catholic myself, if my priest put on a red do-rag and started rapping about Jesus, I would have become an atheist even faster than I actually did. No one really likes the priest with the guitar who talks about “the MySpace.” Apparently rapping is as big a no-no in the Catholic Church as riding a hoverboard.