by Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ and Director, CREDI
On Friday, Sept 21, CCSJ’s Parish Link Coordinator, Christine Walcott, and I attended a seminar entitled: “Strengthening the Inter-American Human Rights System” (IAHRS). It was held at the Institute of International Relations, UWI.
In addressing the relevance and challenges of the IAHRS for the Caribbean, one of the speakers said, inter alia: “We are confronting evolving social norms. We still have Christian social norms in the Caribbean. These are being abandoned in the West…Given the conflicting views, should our laws/legal system be more secular? Should we decriminalise sodomy? Domestic courts have a role in addressing these norms. The issues must be taken to the people. Part of the problem is that we have outgrown our Constitutions which are now too limited. We need Constitutional reform to address human rights so that international norms and values can gain traction…We can continue to search for rights and influence the development of human rights jurisprudence and values…We need an inclusive rights-based system…”
A prominent citizen piped in from the floor later on to agree that we need “international norms” and stressed the need for us to embrace secularism. One only had to look at the panel to realise which “norms” and “values” were seen as the ones we should adopt. Speakers included the Executive Director of the T&T organisation – The Coalition Advocating for the Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO), and an attorney-at-law, Senior Counsel, who was introduced also as an advisor to Planned Parenthood.
We live in a democracy, and individuals/organisations have a democratic right to pursue their goals. Well, so do we Catholics. At a time when our Archdiocese is striving to Revitalise Catholic Culture and Identity, I cannot stress strongly enough how vital it is for Catholics to AWAKE. Awake, all you sleeping giants, and stand up for what you believe. We cannot separate human rights from Gospel values. God has imprinted a moral order in our hearts and minds and it is this order that guides us as we seek to promote the dignity and rights of each person. Love of God and of neighbour calls us to love all God’s children, but moral order and divine law must underpin the way in which we live our lives and must lead us to reject what may be seen as “norms” in our secular world e.g. abortion.
You may have seen the article in the Guardian on Sept 19 (pg A12) by Melissa Doughty, entitled: “Gender policy awaits cabinet approval”. “So said an official of the Ministry of Gender, Child and Youth Development in a telephone interview with the T&T Guardian on Monday. The Official, who requested anonymity, was, however, unable to give a timeframe as to when the policy would be made available for public scrutiny.” And there is an e-mail campaign in train entitled: “Everyone needs a National Gender Policy: Support for Change.”
Of course, the Catholic Church would welcome a National Gender Policy, and in a joint Media Release recently, Msgr Llanos and CCSJ highlighted some of the issues that we would like to see in such a policy. However, unless Catholics are alert/awake, decisions may be made that are diametrically opposed to our values. Unless we live our Faith how will people be able to emulate Gospel values?
Speakers at the seminar spoke about the need for us to build a culture of human rights in theCaribbean. Authentic witnesses to the Gospel will be aware of the differences between the “culture” of an increasingly secular world, and Catholic culture.
As Christopher Dawson says in The Challenge of Secularism: “Christian culture is a very rich and wide culture: richer than modern secular culture, because it has a greater spiritual depth and is not confined to a single level of reality….. For the average modern man, however, it is more or less a lost world and one from which even the modern Catholic has been partially estranged by his secular environment and tradition. Thus we have a double task, first to recover our own cultural inheritance and secondly to communicate it to a sub-religious world…the challenge of secularism must be met on the cultural level, if it is to be met at all…”
Tomorrow we will listen to the Minister of Finance as he delivers his budget for 2012. Let us hope that it addresses from a Catholic perspective some of the issues contained in CCSJ’s media release on the budget.
Please plan activities for Respect For Life Week (Oct 6-13).
