Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As the na­tion con­fronts sev­er­al so­ci­etal chal­lenges, dean and rec­tor of the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, Rev­erend Shel­ley-Ann Tenia, says church­es must re­turn to work­ing to­geth­er. She made the com­ment as she ap­peared on CNC3’s The Big In­ter­view last night.

Amid an on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, Tenia was asked about the church’s role in help­ing to ad­dress crime.

She stat­ed, “The truth is, I don’t know that we will ever do enough be­cause there is so much to be done. And the prob­lem is that we have stopped do­ing work to­geth­er col­lec­tive­ly.

“So, Trinidad and To­ba­go is Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause the church worked to­geth­er dur­ing a time of na­tion-build­ing to bring the na­tion to where it is, and it’s not just the Chris­t­ian church, there were oth­er faith tra­di­tions. We are a faith peo­ple, and so, we had a his­to­ry of work­ing to­geth­er so that na­tion-build­ing could hap­pen, so that jus­tice could be a para­mount val­ue, so that there could be a col­lec­tive re­sponse to the poor and to the mar­gin­alised, and we’ve stopped work­ing to­geth­er.”

There have been at­tempts for more ec­u­menism, she not­ed. The An­gli­can Church and the Catholic Church held a joint Palm Sun­day pro­ces­sion through the streets of the cap­i­tal this year. It has been hap­pen­ing for the last three years. How­ev­er, Tenia wants to see more in­ten­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween church­es.

Pressed on whether church­es had start­ed com­pet­ing with each oth­er as op­posed to work­ing to­geth­er, Tenia re­spond­ed, “We ba­si­cal­ly, un­for­tu­nate­ly, fed in­to the nar­ra­tive that has al­ways been around. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we didn’t take the time to step back and to re­mind our­selves that the rea­son why colo­nial pow­ers had such a hold, not on us, but every­where else where coloni­sa­tion ex­ist­ed, that sus­tained it­self on the prin­ci­ple of ex­trac­tion and on the prin­ci­ple of di­vi­sion, so you keep our peo­ple di­vid­ed, you keep our peo­ple help­less and de­pen­dent, a kind of learned help­less­ness, and you keep our peo­ple think­ing that they’re less than, and you have them.”

When asked what val­ues she would like to see the na­tion’s lead­ers abide by with the com­ing of East­er, Tenia said she doesn’t want any new ones. In­stead, she wants to see a re­turn to the ideals on which the na­tion was found­ed.

She stat­ed, “I think the first is a re-com­mit­ment to the com­mon good, with an un­der­stand­ing that as a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic re­pub­lic, the com­mon good mat­ters, and con­nect­ed to a com­mit­ment to the com­mon good, that as part of that com­mon good, that every sin­gle per­son who is part of the com­mu­nal whole has dig­ni­ty and worth, and so should be treat­ed with re­spect and rev­er­ence, be­cause I think we have lost those two things, ab­solute­ly lost those two things, and then the oth­er val­ue I would add to that is the val­ue of in­tegri­ty. It is the un­der­stand­ing that it is not okay to pri­ori­tise cor­rup­tion. It is not okay to ac­cept what is sub­stan­dard. It is not okay to have dou­ble stan­dards, and that we do need to have some in­tegri­ty about who we are, and I think those things are deeply en­shrined in our na­tion­al an­them.”

Last month, Tenia looked on as Sarah Mul­lal­ly was or­dained as the first fe­male arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury. It took on a spe­cial mean­ing for Tenia, who, in 2018, was the first fe­male to be­come a dean in this coun­try while al­so as­sum­ing the role of rec­tor of the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral.

“I think she can do ac­tu­al­ly what most oth­er arch­bish­ops try to do, which is to make an im­pos­si­ble role pos­si­ble first, and to of­fer a kind of lead­er­ship that will re­mind the peo­ple of God about why we have in­vest­ed so much in­to this thing called the church,” Tenia said.

“I think what Arch­bish­op Sarah brings unique­ly to the role is her hu­mil­i­ty and her com­pas­sion. I think arch­bish­op Sarah un­der­stands the times that we are in. She un­der­stands the com­plex­i­ty of our times, and I think be­cause she served as a nurse for so long in Eng­land, which is a di­verse and huge place, that she is prac­ticed in the art of hu­mil­i­ty. She is prac­tised in the work of com­pas­sion. She’s prac­tised in the dis­ci­pline of ap­ply­ing com­pas­sion and hu­mil­i­ty in a very fo­cused and clear way for the pur­pose of heal­ing, for the pur­pose of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and for the pur­pose of teach­ing peo­ple in prac­ti­cal ways how to fo­cus on those things that mat­ter for the sus­tain­ing of life.”

She al­so pro­vid­ed an up­date on the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, which has been out of op­er­a­tion since an earth­quake in 2018. She said the restora­tion work has be­gun with the emer­gency works, and the hope is that it will be com­plet­ed in a two-year time frame, al­low­ing them to re-en­ter the build­ing in 2028.

“There will be more work to be done, for sure, but once the build­ing is struc­tural­ly sound, then we can re­turn to wor­ship in the build­ing and then con­tin­ue to do the oth­er as­pects of the work that need to be done, and so that’s the hope,” Tenia said.