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The Billings Ovulation Method Association of Trinidad and Tobago (BOMA-TT), a Ministry of the Archdiocesan Family Life Commission is hosting the ‘Love or Lust? Creative Competition and Seminar’ as part of the Year of St Joseph and Amoris Laetitia (AL) Family (2021–2022).
The Creative Competition invites participants ages 16 and 24 to “express the virtue of Chastity and its benefits through: Song/Spoken-Word/Poetry, and Art and Dance. The first prize in each category is TT $1000. The Peoples’ Choice Awards will be based on likes on social media. Persons are advised to register by July 1; submission of entries is up to August 1.
The live virtual seminar, September 11 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. is open to persons 13 years and older. The featured speaker is best-selling author Jason Evert and there will be a Question & Answer segment. Archbishop Jason Gordon will deliver an address.
Evert and his wife Crystalina run the Chastity Project, a ministry to promote the virtue of chastity through seminars, resources, clubs, and social media. The winners of the competition will be displayed at the seminar.
Registration for the seminar and competition is at isloveforever.com. Look for ‘Love or Lust?’. Click on ‘Free Registration’. For more information call 384-1659
The ‘Is Love Forever?’ (ILF) Programme, was developed to share God’s plan for love in the context of the Catholic Church’s teachings on human sexuality, and is offered to youths and young adults.
Coordinator of ‘Is Love Forever?’ Pauline Phelps said based on a survey disseminated on social media to schools, youth groups and others, young people are interested in finding out about chastity. She said, “there are young people who are struggling with temptations based on what they are exposed to online, and television.”
Information about chastity is beneficial to the young people who do not know what it is, for others with awareness but need to be reminded, and to correct misconceptions.
One view is that chastity is “completely restrictive and not open and free for people to enjoy”. She added that it is “a beautiful virtue that people don’t understand. They think it is a heavy belt when it is supposed to give us greater freedom.”
Participants for the competition are advised to register early because mentors will be enlisted to work with them. “To help them to meet the criteria of the judges for the various categories of the competition. They are to help them professionalise, for want of a better word, their piece.”
BOMA-TT will follow-up with the participants who registered for the competition and seminar. This is intended to achieve Path 9 of ‘Walking with families’ – “Involve youth ministry with initiatives to reflect and discuss issues such as the family, marriage, chastity, openness to life, the use of social media, poverty, respect for creation” (AL 40).
They will be invited to journey toward a deeper understanding of what chastity is. “We are planning on weekly meetings to understand what chastity is all about, giving it a local context.”
Phelps said booklets will be disseminated to seminar attendees and they will be invited to be formed in the Chastity Project’s Missionaries of Chastity “to become a missionary of chastity”. —LPG
