Accra, July 30, GNA - The Most Reverend Robert Aboagye-Mensah, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana, on Saturday urged authorities of educational institutions and the Church to ensure that students combined higher academic achievements with moral integrity.

"In its educational set up, the Church must ensure that the poor are well educated; the rich must support the poor by voluntarily raising funds to pay for their fees; the church must also cloth the poor among them.

"The Church must look out for teachers who teach because they love the work and are committed to the welfare of the children under their care and nurturing," Rev Dr Aboagye-Mensah stated at a lecture as part of the 170th anniversary of the Wesley Girls High School on the theme, "Raising Informed and Disciplined Women of Integrity: The Role of the Church, the State, the Home and the School."

The Most Rev Aboagye-Mensah noted that educational institutions were not the place people should learn all kinds of vices, which would influence their lives in society.

Our educational institutions must be places where we raise informed and disciplined women and men of integrity so that the knowledge they acquire and practise would be beneficial to the entire community and not just the individual, he said.

"Thus, the Church has an obligation to use its educational institutions as places where we prepare both men and women to realise that moral integrity is the foundation and the channel through, which we serve the Church, the state and home with the knowledge we learn in schools" Rev Dr Aboagye-Mensah stated.

Raising informed and disciplined women and men of integrity is very much needed in our democratic dispensation.

"Whether a democratic system will work and the expectations of the people regarding order, freedom, justice, peace and security will be realised, depend to a great extent on the moral character and discipline of both the rulers and the ruled.

"Honesty, justice, transparency, courage, temperance, respect for the constitution of the nation and some other virtues are required of the citizenry if they expect a democratic system in Africa to be successful.

"To put it simply, for a democratic institution like ours to survive it will need women and men with strong moral foundations in the homes, at the market place and in the church. "The truth is that democratic system does not by itself create moral beings or moral virtues, but it needs morality to survive. "Thus democracy has to look beyond itself for the supply of the necessary virtues that are essentially needed to make the system work. "It is in this respect that the Church has an obligation to use its educational institutions to develop women and men with high sense of moral integrity and discipline. True religion and moral formation must be taught in our schools, not as a secondary matter but essential to the promotion of quality education.

"We are accustomed to thinking of holiness in purely spiritual terms, some kind of smooth warming of the heart that lifts us beyond these earthly realities. Or, sometimes we understand holiness in terms of ritual observances or cultic practices. "To be sure, holiness may mean these private and cultic experiences. But to limit holiness to these realms alone is to miss the point of what God intended for mankind". He said, "Holiness that reflects God's own holiness is thoroughly practical. It includes generosity to the poor at harvest time, justice for workers in terms of receiving fare wages for hard and descent work done, integrity in judicial process, considerate behaviour to other people, equality before the law for all persons including immigrants, honest and just trading and other very earthly social matters" Rev Dr Aboagye-Mensah stated. Rev Aboagye-Mensah emphasised that the major role the Church had to play in raising informed and disciplined women and men of integrity was to ensure that our educational system, especially in institutions of religious communities, academic achievements go hand in hand in with moral formation. Quality education is not just about pursuit of academic honours it should go along with high moral standards that the Church should do through its faith and practices. Teaching religion and moral education should not be an after thought, but an integral part of offering quality education, the Presiding Bishop stated. 30 July 06