Shane Su­perville

Arch­bish­op Charles Ja­son Gor­don says while Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties were once a time of com­mon­al­i­ty, cur­rent cel­e­bra­tions, like so­ci­ety, have be­come over­ly seg­re­gat­ed.

Dur­ing Sun­day’s Mass at the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty Chapel, Port of Spain, Gor­don lament­ed that the spec­ta­cle of Car­ni­val lost its way as a cel­e­bra­tion of uni­ty across all bound­aries, not­ing that few as­pects of the sea­son stayed true to the orig­i­nal spir­it of to­geth­er­ness. Re­fer­ring to the Gospel of Mark where Je­sus healed a lep­er, Gor­don said so­ci­ety at the time of­ten ex­clud­ed lep­ers out of fear that they would be in­fect­ed by their dis­ease, lead­ing to di­vi­sions be­tween over clean­li­ness. He added that to­day’s so­ci­ety was strat­i­fied along lines of eth­nic­i­ty and class, not­ing that such di­vi­sions point­ed to a wider prob­lem in the state of TT’s soul.

"At one time Car­ni­val was the heal­er, it was the space where every creed, every race, every class came on the same stage, on the same streets, were next to each oth­er and Car­ni­val was that lev­el of so­ci­ety that al­lowed every­one to be who they want­ed to be. “To­day it hap­pens in some seg­ments of Car­ni­val like the steel pan and the moko jumbies and some of the oth­er parts of Car­ni­val, but un­for­tu­nate­ly we are at a dif­fi­cult time in our his­to­ry. “Now the Car­ni­val is seg­re­gat­ed and that's a symp­tom of the soul sick­ness of our na­tion. "It's not the Car­ni­val that is the prob­lem, all is not well with the soul of our na­tion.”

Gor­don added that the prob­lem of seg­re­ga­tion was ev­i­dent in the way so­ci­ety ap­proached oth­er prob­lems of crime. He said that while the pub­lic should en­joy the fes­tiv­i­ties of Car­ni­val, he urged them to guard against ex­clu­sion and learn from the les­son of Je­sus Christ who ac­cept­ed peo­ple from all back­grounds.

“The ques­tion we have is do we dare like the lep­er to fall to our knees, to look square­ly at Je­sus and say if you want to, you can heal me.

"Let us say over these days of fes­tiv­i­ty, joy and friv­o­li­ty, let us ex­pe­ri­ence the joy of the cel­e­bra­tion, but let's al­so recog­nise that all is not well with our soul."