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Ending the ‘throwaway culture’ – Jan 26

Ending the ‘throwaway culture’ – Jan 26 PDF Print E-mail

By Vernon Khelawan

With just a few days to go before the unveiling of the plans and strategies relative to the Third Pastoral Priority –“Regenerating the Moral and Spiritual Values of our Society” – I suspect there are feverish efforts to complete them in many parishes and other Church ministries.

In very recent times Pope Francis has given us much food for thought in the many statements he has made before, during and after the Christmas season. From the time of his appointment his mantra has been to make the Roman Catholic Church “a poorer church”. He exhorts that we show love to the less fortunate in our society as he did sharing his birthday lunch with the homeless.

He has criticised extravagance within the Church and requested that celebratory functions for the newly named Cardinals be kept simple and he denounced the culture of waste, which he described a “throwaway culture” and linked this to the criminal act of abortion.

The throwaway syndrome is not foreign to Trinidad and Tobago. Before the word abortion became fashionable, it was common to hear people say “she throw away the child”. Pope Francis has taken us right back there. Additionally, a cursory look at our environment will testify to the “throwaway culture”.

It would seem therefore, that it should not be too difficult to build on some of the statements of the Holy Father when drafting your plans for the Pastoral Priority. Pope Francis has given us a lot to think about when completing our plans in what must be regarded as a diocesan effort to regenerate the moral and spiritual values in the society of which we are part.

But it goes deeper than that. All the plans we will draft will be useless, if at every level of the parish no serious and sustained effort is made to execute them properly and completely, the main objective being the development of a united, caring and loving society.

Archbishop Harris said recently that the country was full of anger and therein lies more food for thought in formulating your Priority plans. This awesome anger the archbishop speaks about needs to be tamed if we ever hope to become a better parish…a better ministry and ultimately a better nation.

As a theme we might borrow a line from the song written by Syl Miller and Jill Jackson which pleads, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”