Thir­teen years ago, Rev­erend Claude Berkley was con­se­crat­ed Bish­op of the An­gli­can Dio­cese of T&T.

Rev Berkley spoke to Guardian Me­dia’s CLAY­TON CLARKE last week, shar­ing his jour­ney in­to the priest­hood and as the head of the lo­cal An­gli­can church.

Rev Berkley plans to spend the day cel­e­brat­ing Mass at his home church, St Mary’s An­gli­can, Pem­broke, To­ba­go.

Com­ment­ing on the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion and the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of our youth to­day, Rev Berkley said it was alarm­ing and deeply wor­ry­ing, but this did not hap­pen overnight. “We just left the door open” for too long. We have cre­at­ed some groups that may seem un­touch­able and are now feel­ing the brunt of it, he added. He said we do not seem to trust each oth­er in T&T, but must build trust and pray hard­er this Lenten sea­son for the se­ri­ous bat­tles ahead.

Q: On March 17 (to­day) you will cel­e­brate 13 years as the head of the An­gli­can Dio­cese of T&T, when did you get the call to the priest­hood, and how was that jour­ney for you?

A: The call is some­thing of a con­vo­lut­ed one. There is no clear-cut kind of an­swer. It be­gan as a child when my par­ents and my god­moth­er en­cour­aged me all the time to be in­volved in the life of the church. I could hear them say­ing ‘Nev­er say no to God and the church,’ which was some­thing of a mantra over many years as a child in­to my for­ma­tive years. So they did every­thing to keep me in the church. I was an acolyte, al­tar serv­er and that just then tran­si­tioned in­to dif­fer­ent as­pects of min­istry in the church. I must say it has been a long and in­volved jour­ney. The call to be a priest hap­pened as peo­ple en­cour­aged me more and more and, of course, I re­spond­ed. At the pass­ing of my priest, Can­non Cyril Grazette, and that is when it felt that I should do some­thing about this, and so I was sent to be in­ter­viewed in 1989. Con­se­quent­ly, I found my­self be­ing rec­om­mend­ed and en­cour­aged to go to the Sem­i­nary, Co­dring­ton Col­lege in Bar­ba­dos. I be­came a dea­con in 1992 and a priest in 1993.

You were el­e­vat­ed to the role of bish­op, how big a step is that for any priest and you in par­tic­u­lar?

I would like to think that every priest con­sid­ers that him or her (we have ladies now) can be the bish­op. That is a big move. When you get to lead min­istry at a high lev­el and try to make a dif­fer­ence in the life of the faith com­mu­ni­ty and in­deed to pro­mote the gospel in dif­fer­ent ways.

What have been the highs and the lows for you as bish­op?

The high point for me is many young peo­ple who have come for­ward to of­fer them­selves for the min­istry at a time when peo­ple speak dis­parag­ing­ly some­times about young peo­ple. We have had some young men and women who have come for­ward to of­fer them­selves to the priest­hood. I do not doubt oth­ers are wait­ing to do the same. So even as we speak, we have two young peo­ple—one in Bar­ba­dos and one at Berke­ley Di­vin­i­ty School in the Unit­ed States. So that, to me, is the high point that young peo­ple have seen it fit to of­fer them­selves in a time when peo­ple say that it is a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic age. An­oth­er point is the re­pair of Hayes Court and al­so, the promise of some work to be done at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral which is in dire need of re­pairs at this stage. The will­ing­ness of peo­ple to work in the faith com­mu­ni­ty is yet an­oth­er high point.

Low points, I find that some­times we are too eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed by mat­ters which I would con­sid­er fleet­ing. Some­one has spo­ken neg­a­tive­ly about you or some­one has chal­lenged you ... some­times those things put us off. I find that that can be a source of deep dis­ap­point­ment. That lack of work­ing to­geth­er with­out too much ten­sion. But are we talk­ing about hu­man be­ings? They are com­plex crea­tures of God and by the grace of God, we still man­age to get things mov­ing.

What are some of the chal­lenges fac­ing the An­gli­can church at the mo­ment and church­es in gen­er­al?

Our chal­lenges have re­volved around re­group­ing af­ter the COVID ex­pe­ri­ence. Some peo­ple are not yet con­fi­dent enough to re­turn to the full­ness of the fold, and that in it­self evolves around that and how to try to put things in place to en­cour­age them to come back to the as­sem­bly. An­oth­er chal­lenge is mo­bil­is­ing more young peo­ple in a mean­ing­ful and ful­fill­ing way. It is a work in progress. But it re­mains a chal­lenge giv­en the many dif­fer­ent at­trac­tions that are avail­able for our young peo­ple. We would like to have more and more peo­ple come for­ward to lead min­istries in the church. Not just or­dained min­istry, but the oth­er min­istries of the church–mu­sic, so­cial ac­tion/jus­tice, work­ing with the poor and work­ing to build up a cadre of peo­ple ac­tive in min­istry.

What are your views on the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try and the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of our chil­dren?

It is alarm­ing and deeply wor­ry­ing that we have come to a place where the sanc­ti­ty of hu­man life seems to be so eas­i­ly erod­ed. But the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion did not hap­pen overnight. It is a re­sult of this same ero­sion of many years that we have al­lowed quite a lot to just go by. We have cre­at­ed some groups that may seem to be un­touch­able and dif­fer­ent in­ci­dents over a long time, and we are now feel­ing the brunt of it. One of the things, for ex­am­ple, is that we can hard­ly leave chil­dren’s minds blank. In our time grow­ing up, we were made to go to church and Sun­day School to be taught about the ways of God. We re­spect the rights of peo­ple who think it is not a prop­er way for their chil­dren, but we would in­sist that chil­dren be en­gaged in some­thing pos­i­tive and con­scious and build up their char­ac­ter and their good cit­i­zen­ship for the king­dom and the na­tion. I think that has been weak­ened over the last how many years, and we are get­ting the re­sult of some of that.

Some are at­tribut­ing the im­pact of the mu­sic, Trini­bad, for ex­am­ple, as a fu­el for the crime sit­u­a­tion. Do you agree? What else do you think has been con­tribut­ing?

I don’t ful­ly agree that it is the mu­sic on­ly. Mu­sic plays a part, yes, but our moral train­ing of chil­dren at home, at school, in church and oth­er places of as­sem­bly, is an im­por­tant fac­tor. Where it is lack­ing, young peo­ple and oth­ers do not have the right fil­ters to fil­ter out some of the mat­ters which have been thrown at them the way we have or­gan­ised our­selves and left too many things to the me­dia and so­cial me­dia. We just left the door open. We have to train peo­ple to know how to dis­crim­i­nate pos­i­tive­ly and build their char­ac­ter. As a child, if I lis­tened to Trini­bad mu­sic, or what­ev­er the mu­sic then, and I went home to sing or per­form, I would know what the re­sult of that would be. You would get a lec­ture, you would be spo­ken to and if you in­sist­ed on the be­hav­iours which were non-con­form­ing you would be treat­ed in a par­tic­u­lar way which per­haps is not present now. But there are oth­er ways now. You had to con­sid­er what was de­cent and up­stand­ing be­hav­iour and strive to keep that be­hav­iour. There were sanc­tions in dif­fer­ent places if you did not fol­low them. Now, I think peo­ple as­sume they can do just what they like and there are oth­er im­por­tant fig­ures or pop­u­lar fig­ures who seem to be get­ting away with any­thing and what they like. So peo­ple em­u­late some of these be­hav­iours. They are en­cour­aged in those neg­a­tive be­hav­iours be­cause of no sanc­tions or con­se­quences.

What so­lu­tions can the church of­fer and have been of­fer­ing?

The church as a cen­tre of moral train­ing must be­come a lit­tle more ag­gres­sive in terms of its moral teach­ing in schools, Sun­day Schools, and its work among the youths and chil­dren so that it gives them a cer­tain kind of tem­plate for what rep­re­sents a be­liev­er of Christ, what rep­re­sents a good cit­i­zen of the na­tion, of the world, but al­so a good cit­i­zen of God’s king­dom. We have been do­ing that and try­ing to up the tem­po on that in our schools, our homes and the church. For ex­am­ple, the Moth­ers’ Unions have been do­ing work in par­ent­ing and home­work cen­tres but that re­quires part­ner­ships as we have to work to­geth­er and have a com­mon mind. We need to join hearts and hands to take the nar­ra­tive, ex­changes and be­hav­iour in a par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion.

What is your wish for T&T at this time?

I pray we can work to­geth­er some more. I think with all the dif­fer­ent points of view and per­spec­tives we don’t seem to trust each oth­er so we have to build up trust. With that trust, we have a bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­cause we have got to col­lab­o­rate. We are a di­verse na­tion, and we have got to work to­geth­er to bring those need­ed val­ues to the fore, to try to help train peo­ple in those val­ues, to dis­ap­prove of what is not prop­er and in­deed look out for those who are liv­ing very dif­fi­cult lives in terms of dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic means and man­ag­ing the house­holds.

I would con­tin­ue to ask those with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty–par­ents, teach­ers, cler­gy, and of­fi­cials in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of pub­lic ser­vice and oth­er­wise–to con­tin­ue to take their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty se­ri­ous­ly and to strive for the greater good of Trinidad and To­ba­go as our home.

Chris­tians are in the Lenten sea­son at this time. What is your mes­sage for the coun­try?

We have got to pray hard­er. We must use the Lenten sea­son to strength­en our ar­mour for the bat­tles ahead. We will have some se­ri­ous bat­tles to fight in the com­ing pe­ri­od, and we need strong sol­diers of Christ to join hands and re­spond. So the Lenten pe­ri­od of­fers a time to con­sol­i­date our ef­forts and to build up our spir­i­tu­al re­solve. As we strength­en our ar­mour, and we col­lab­o­rate one with the oth­er we have a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to ride over the dif­fi­cult times ahead of us.