Clevon Raphael

Rev Paul, 2008 is al­most at an end, and so far there have been 532 mur­ders (a record). Has God giv­en up on Trinidad and To­ba­go?

CP (Ly­ing on his bed propped up by sev­er­al pil­lows): Def­i­nite­ly not, and look­ing at the fig­ure a lot of peo­ple may want to feel so, but that is the easy way out.

God does not give up on His peo­ple and His coun­try just like that. He gives us all the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do bet­ter and to make good.

That re­sponse is not just to pre­vent us from los­ing faith in Him?

CP (Voice weak): That re­sponse reach­es to the core of my Chris­t­ian be­liefs, and it's not just some­thing that I am say­ing from the top of my head. To be a Chris­t­ian is to be a per­son of faith, an op­ti­mist.

Be­cause of the bru­tal­i­ty and grue­some na­ture of sev­er­al of these killings, some peo­ple even ques­tion the ex­is­tence of God?

Clevon, peo­ple have a right to be an­gry with God and with every­body, with the sys­tem, the lead­er­ship. When your loved one is mur­dered, how can you re­joice in that? When these things hap­pen, there must be a cer­tain amount of holy anger. (Forced smile)

Holy anger...?

Holy anger af­firms our hu­man­i­ty, and even if we are a pray­ing peo­ple and peo­ple of faith, we can get mad about things.

Rev, some peo­ple are as­crib­ing this homi­cide fig­ure as be­ing the work of the dev­il, or some evil spir­it roam­ing the land. Do you buy in­to that?

We haven't done enough re­search on that, and that is al­so an easy way out to say that. How­ev­er, I will not rule out the fact that there is a lot of evil in the world which dom­i­nates the lives and the hearts of peo­ple, where they are moved to do hor­ri­ble things. But that is just part of the an­swer, not the whole an­swer.

I know this is a dif­fi­cult time to ask this, as you are ly­ing on your sick bed, but if you were the Prime Min­is­ter, what would you have done to bring some kind of con­trol over this crime prob­lem?

(Grip­ping one end of a pil­low in ob­vi­ous pain): Sit down and give a long, hard think look in­to the coun­try and try and iden­ti­fy...Search the brains of the peo­ple who have the know-how, and bring them to­geth­er to come up with so­lu­tions; like what our friend, Oba­ma, is do­ing.

Even in our church you pick the peo­ple who could get things done and you give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it.

Rev, there is a school of thought which says that in­dis­ci­pline in this coun­try is re­spon­si­ble, to a large ex­tent, for the crime sit­u­a­tion?

Yes; I am firm be­liev­er in that. There is too much in­dis­ci­pline, and too many peo­ple show a wor­ry­ing dis­re­spect for the law and the rights of oth­er peo­ple.

This lev­el of in­dis­ci­pline, I would say, start­ed about 10 to 15 years ago, be­cause it was not al­ways like that. It is def­i­nite­ly a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to what is go­ing on in the coun­try to­day.

Some years ago, Rev, you said that the true mean­ing of Christ­mas was be­ing lost to the al­tar of com­mer­cial­ism. Are you still of that opin­ion?

(Gri­mac­ing, as he tries to move his left knee): Yes; we have lost the true mean­ing and the sense of Christ­mas. The busi­ness world has tak­en it over, giv­ing their own di­men­sion to it.

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

I don't think it is a good thing. Christ­mas is a re­li­gious oc­ca­sion, and when we lose track of that, then it be­comes just like any oth­er day.

How­ev­er, to be fair to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, I must say thank God they still re­mem­ber Christ­mas, in that we see a manger on their premis­es, and for their per­form­ing var­i­ous good deeds for the needy and un­der­priv­i­leged, which are syn­ony­mous with the Christ­mas sea­son.

Rev Paul, this is the first time in the 37 years of your pas­toral mis­sion that the Yule­tide sea­son has found you laid up in bed. What are some of your thoughts at this time?

(A slight moan as he turns his neck): That is a very good ques­tion, and as a mat­ter of fact, as I get old­er and see­ing in par­tic­u­lar as my body has been rav­aged by gout, I can­not help but start to think of my own mor­tal­i­ty.

(Bit­ing his lip as he tries to shift his body on the bed, with Mrs Paul look­ing on, dis­tressed): When I think of Christ­mas and all the ac­tiv­i­ties; the cards, the nice house and so on...all these mean noth­ing un­less you have good health and strength. so that you can en­joy a qual­i­ty of life, es­pecail­ly this Christ­mas sea­son.

What sort of mes­sage would you send to peo­ple sim­i­lar­ly af­fect­ed like you at this time, and even those who are en­joy­ing bet­ter health?

Al­ways, they must re­mem­ber that hu­man hap­pi­ness is a very pre­car­i­ous thing; that they have to ap­pre­ci­ate life and ap­pre­ci­ate good things. Nev­er take it for grant­ed and to do their best for the com­mu­ni­ty as well.

The Prime Min­is­ter says he is not afraid of death; are you?

(An­oth­er painful smile): I am not re­al­ly afraid of dy­ing, eh? Al­though I will not like to die right away. I would like to have a few more years to do a few things still.

Are you con­fi­dent, Rev, that the good Lord will grant that wish?

(Putting on a brave face and smile): Yes; I think so. I hope I will get a few more years to do some im­por­tant work.

Fi­nal­ly, Rev and my broth­er, for all these years, what would you wish for Trinidad and To­ba­go in the com­ing year?

I would like to see a re­turn of good val­ues, good man­ners, and cour­tesy; "Good morn­ing," "Good evening." For in­stance, we are talk­ing about 20/20, but this is go­ing to be a joke if we don't put in place the sim­ple things in life like good man­ners.

Any ex­am­ple of ill-man­nered peo­ple?

Some­times right here (in San Juan) peo­ple would be pass­ing, and I will say "Good morn­ing," and they pass me straight. We have lost a lot, and I would like to see peo­ple reach out to help each oth­er like we did in the past. That would be my Christ­mas wish for the coun­try.