Rose­marie Sant

Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain Ja­son Gor­don has ad­vised Ro­man Catholics “to fast” from us­ing so­cial me­dia for self-pro­mo­tion dur­ing the 40-day Lenten sea­son which be­gins on Ash Wednes­day.

“If we fast from pro­mot­ing our­selves we might ac­tu­al­ly find more spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fit in the good deed we do­ing,” he said.

He urged re­straint on so­cial me­dia “you may feel you want to put up an in­cred­i­bly cute pic­ture but tell your­self let’s fast to­day from putting that up.”

By the end of Lent, he said, those who fast from post­ing may come to recog­nise how “ad­dict­ed” they had be­come to “self-pro­mo­tion,” and by that “we are not re­al­ly be­ing good hu­man be­ings.”

He urged Catholics to “think out­side the box,” this Lenten sea­son and find ways to deep­en their dis­ci­ple­ship.

Gor­don was speak­ing dur­ing his first in­ter­view on the on­line pro­gramme, Arch­bish­op Speaks, on Wednes­day.

He said for 50 years, since now de­ceased Arch­bish­op An­tho­ny Pan­tin was or­dained as the first lo­cal Arch­bish­op, Bish­ops have been say­ing the same thing and I am say­ing if you have 50 years of the same mes­sage this is now a cus­tom and there­fore this be­comes a par­tic­u­lar law with­in the dio­cese and this be­comes our po­si­tion that, “Car­ni­val is a fes­ti­val that is in­trin­si­cal­ly good with in­cred­i­ble en­er­gy, cre­ativ­i­ty and vi­bran­cy, that is all part of the way the spir­it and God brings re­new­al and fes­tiv­i­ty to peo­ple.”

But he said the chal­lenge of Car­ni­val rests in the “moral be­hav­iour of peo­ple in the way peo­ple re­veal them­selves and al­so the way that peo­ple be­have in terms of win­ing and all the oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.”

As a re­sult, he said, Car­ni­val had be­come “a whip­ping boy, I think, for a deep­er ail­ment in so­ci­ety, be­cause the re­al chal­lenge is not the Car­ni­val, the re­al chal­lenge is that we have a shift­ing moral­i­ty in our so­ci­ety and no­body wants to deal with that one.”

Un­less so­ci­ety deals with the fact that “we have lost our way moral­ly, and that we have lost our way spir­i­tu­al­ly,” he said, “we can’t re­al­ly deal with Car­ni­val.”

He said Ro­man Catholics have a “moral code you are ex­pect­ed to live to”whether it is Car­ni­val” or any of the 365 days in the year.”

If every­one does that, he said: “Car­ni­val would be dif­fer­ent and we would not be hav­ing the same clam­our for the same prob­lem in Car­ni­val be­cause we would have fixed it by fix­ing the prob­lem in so­ci­ety.” It all goes to the “hearts” of the peo­ple, he said.

Asked about Lent, Gor­don re­flect­ed it is a time to “deep­en our com­mit­ment to Christ and dis­ci­ple­ship.”