by Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ and Director, CREDI
CCSJ urges all parishes and Catholic institutions in the archdiocese to plan/attend some of the events for Justice, Peace and Community Week (JPCW) which will run from Saturday, October 21to 28. The theme for the week is A Catholic perspective on the development of peoples. The theme commemorates the 50th Anniversary of Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples) which was published in 1967.
Inter alia, he said: “Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every person and of all humanity”.
Pope Francis has said that “One major integration that has largely been lost is that of community and the individual”. He said forms of integration we can improve are the solidarity between those who have too much and those who have nothing, and integration of the different systems: the economy, finance, labour, culture, family life, and religion.
In next Sunday’s Catholic News you will find a Prayer Supplement which we encourage you to use during the week and beyond. Advertised last Sunday and today is the Calendar of Events and information about the launch of the week.
Please join us at St Dominic’s Pastoral Centre Auditorium at St Finbar’s RC Church compound on Saturday, October 21 from 1.30 to 4 p.m. to listen to our Chancellor, Fr Roger Paponette and Msgr Julien Kabore, Charge d’Affaires, Apostolic Nunciature, speak on the theme. We will also be screening the documentary: Warehoused, which focuses on the plight of refugees at Dadaab, Kenya.
On CCSJ’s Ask Why programme in September, we focused on ‘The Church’s teaching on Democracy’. I share an excerpt of Michael Logie’s spoken word poem which he called in. Please note that he has sole rights. It’s a very powerful piece from a young person who is making a special plea for our Democracy to work for our Youth also.
Source: caribbean-steel-drums.com
Each child is a steel pan
But before they can become a pan and play the perfect tune,
They are first an oil drum
Empty and hallow at the insides
With no insight on lift, just darkness in sight
Their minds are as rich and ripe and gold mines
If only we can harness it
If only we’d realise that we the parents are the craftsmen
The ones with the hammers and chalk
To sketch neat notes onto our kids and show them the ways that they can walk
Only so that later on in life, when they grow up, their resilience will stalk everyone
And they will be die hard winners and not just die hard
But it’s up to us, the craftsmen, we must, craft them,
Into Bass, Tenors or seconds and not leave them as scrap iron to rust
Because each child is a steel pan
That has to moved, from being an oil drum, to being grooved
So later on in life they won’t be a pan that’s out of tune
Pan is the sweetest thing
So let us not abandon our children and leave them to roam into never land
Because the devil, he sure finds work for idle hands
So the crime rate will go up, up, up and never land
Then the only pan we’d be grooving is Peter Pan
We are Trinidad and Tobago
Land of sea and sand
And the most majestic sounds I’ve ever heard is that of a pan band
Sounds of upliftment
Lets eradicate the meaning that bent criminals put behind our flag
Red does not represent bloodshed
White does not mean our hearts are as white as snow
Black should not mean a funeral for another black brother
Each child is a steel pan
That can be carefully crafted into the perfect tenor
That can be taught how to release their frustration on a bass pan
So they can be the tenants of oil drums pan sticks and greasy palms
Teach them to latch onto success like the rubber at the end of pan sticks
So their cold heart will never become a target for ice picks
And it’s only then, we can say we have created perfect pans
Where boys, no longer walk the streets with their pants beneath their backsides because they have found perfect pants
And we can all hold hands, whether red, white or black…
