My faith, though sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of Gor­dons and the then St Stephen’s Scots Church in George­town, is Pres­by­ter­ian. The small, mod­est church was es­tab­lished by Scot­tish mis­sion­ar­ies in 1879. My pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er, Agatha, and fa­ther, Michael, were el­ders. Sun­days were church in the morn­ing and soup at lunchtime. That nev­er var­ied.

Pri­ma­ry school in Guyana was Catholic. In Lon­don, Sun­day ser­vice was at St Mary’s Parish Church in Stoke New­ing­ton – part of the Protes­tant/An­gli­can Church of Eng­land. In Trinidad, I cau­cus with Catholics, rea­son­ing that I’d ac­cu­mu­lat­ed enough God-cred to en­ter any one of his hous­es. I pre­fer the un­der­stat­ed Catholic mass. Ad­vent, lead­ing up to Christ­mas Day, is sim­ply beau­ti­ful.

As we roll in­to Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, ser­mons across vir­tu­al­ly all de­nom­i­na­tions coun­try­wide would touch on car­ni­val, par­tic­u­lar­ly mas – which they view as in­creas­ing­ly loud, lewd and li­cen­tious. Pan gen­er­al­ly gets a pass. As Fa­ther Steve Ran­some joked to us, his con­gre­gants last Sun­day, Ex­o­dus (the band he sup­ports) is the on­ly one men­tioned in the Bible.

I ex­pect Fa­ther Steve to men­tion the car­ni­val in his homi­ly to­day. Whether he’ll touch on the con­dem­na­tion by the Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain, Ja­son Gor­don, of the mas band Tribe is an­oth­er mat­ter. Tribe in­clud­ed in the good­ie bags of women mas­quer­aders a fe­male sex­u­al stim­u­la­tion de­vice named the rose.

The Arch­bish­op was op­er­at­ing with­in his spir­i­tu­al wheel­house in crit­i­cis­ing the de­ci­sion. The peo­ple push­ing back were ex­er­cis­ing their right to do so. It was meant to be en­joyed in pri­vate by women ex­plor­ing the per­son­al mat­ter of their sex­u­al­i­ty, and was no­body else’s busi­ness, said de­fend­ers. We didn’t want it, found it in­va­sive, and it was in poor taste, said some women, who let Tribe know that they thought that made a mis­judge­ment.

Many per­ceive the church to be an­ti-car­ni­val, but the Arch­bish­op has a so­phis­ti­cat­ed feel for it – a good grasp of its his­to­ry and roots. He has writ­ten in de­tail about what he de­scribes as its “many beau­ti­ful pieces” and “many amaz­ing things.” What he got wrong was say­ing that “if Tribe can­not pull back on its own, I think the gov­ern­ment would have to reg­u­late it.”

How, Your Grace? Do what? Did you think that through? The gov­ern­ment has no busi­ness get­ting in­volved in reg­u­lat­ing car­ni­val at a bag-con­tents lev­el. Car­ni­val al­ready has a high de­gree of gov­ern­ment in­put – and fund­ing, to be fair. The grown-ups who run the mas bands should be left to reg­u­late them­selves. Tribe will be held to ac­count by their cus­tomers, stake­hold­ers and the mar­ket. There’s al­ready too much state con­trol in too many ar­eas in T&T.

The irony of this is that Tribe, more than most oth­er bands, brings cre­ativ­i­ty be­yond the much-crit­i­cised feath­ers and beads. In Lost Tribe, a band with­in Tribe, you’re like­ly to see a sec­tion filled with mas­quer­aders in long African de­sign­er gowns. De­sign­ers such as Solange Govia raise the bar high.

The is­sue of the present of the rose gives Arch­bish­op Gor­don an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­claim car­ni­val, op­er­at­ing as it does around the Lenten cal­en­dar. Ash Wednes­day church­go­ers will in­clude the women who wel­comed the gift. Gor­don un­der­stands the his­to­ry and the soul of car­ni­val. He should craft a mes­sage to reach the Wednes­day con­gre­ga­tion.

The Wednes­day be­fore, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Bar­ry Padarath, made a fool­ish spec­ta­cle of him­self at Hy­att’s Lime fete by clam­ber­ing on­to the stage, grab­bing the mic and pro­ceed­ing to “give dem (a) per­for­mance” that no one asked for. In a cou­ple of min­utes of hoarse, ram­bling in­co­her­ence that he claimed im­plau­si­bly was not the re­sult of drunk­en­ness, he sang, asked where singer Patrice Roberts was, di­rect­ed DJ Ana to play, ref­er­enced the Gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter, and shout­ed out his col­league, Jear­lean John, in­cor­rect­ly cred­it­ing her for be­ing the founder of the fete.

The in­tox­i­cant that was in­dis­putably present was hubris. Nev­er­the­less, we should give the acid-tongued min­is­ter the grace that he seem­ing­ly nev­er ex­tends to oth­ers. Pi­cong him, and let him be. His on­ly penal­ty should be our mirth. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar played it deft­ly. “I thought that his singing was hor­ri­ble”, she said, “I would have booed him al­so.”

Shot. Tick­led down to fine leg for four.