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Saint Lucia

	May 2004 47th Year No.5 Internet Edition Page 3 Click below for Page 1 Page 2 Page 4 Page 5 Home

Theo's Corner
by Msgr. Theophilus

Rastafarianism and the Roman Catholic Church

Over a period of time, I won their trust and became their friend. Though they knew I represented the Catholic Church, they saw me as a person in my own right who did not come to condemn them but to enter into conversation with them from our common Catholic Christian perspective. Whenever they were in trouble, they sought my help and advice. That relationship allowed them to have their children baptized Catholic and they too attended the celebration, for they understood themselves as part of a community much wider than the Rastafarian Community. This they encouraged me to make real by including Rastafarians on the Church mural, which I did to the consternation and absolute horror of some of the parishioners who did not see their own sons and daughters as part of the large Parish and Church family. This made the Rastafarians proud and affirmed and to this day some still visit with me, taking with them offerings of fruit and vegetables which they grew themselves. In turn I always try to help them financially since many now have their own families.

From the perspective of my own experience with Rastafarianism, they are in the process of developing a theology based on their own social, religious, historical and political situations. Thus there are many differences in their belief structures. Yet fundamentally it is a movement of liberation, of affirmation, and a movement which seeks to be understood. Perhaps the incident of the Cathedral may not only be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy the Roman Catholic Church in St. Lucia and to murder Roman Catholics, but also as a loud cry for help ‘understand me' they were perhaps saying. “Love me as I am” perhaps they were saying, “believe in me as I am” perhaps they were saying. Perhaps they were acting like autistic children who act out their feelings rather than being able to express those feelings in words. In that regard perhaps they need more compassion than vengeance.

The prayer of St. Francis is perhaps the Spiritual foundation for the Catholic Church at this time and in this situation, as it must continue its conversation with Rastafarianism.

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master grant that I may not so-
Much seek to be consoled as to console.
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
In giving to all that we receive
For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And in dying we are born to eternal life.”
Conclusion
Still I Rise
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust. I'll rise ¼
Out of the hub of history's pain I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I Rise
I Rise
I Rise
- Maya Angelou,”

Every struggle for liberation can be likened to a beautiful piece of orchestral music. It has its movements and its moments. It has its quiet moments and its loud moments. The enslavement movement of Africans began when the European “sweet tooth” began to grow. They needed sugar. The “kingship” of sugar meant that large plantations in the warm climate of the Caribbean had to be developed, but the development of those estates needed a source of cheap expendable labor. The indigenous population of the islands were not very resilient and quickly became prey of many European diseases. The thirst for material wealth was what motivated the Europeans to turn to Africa.

John Hope Franklin, in his book “From slavery to Freedom” writes:

“In West Africa where the Negro population was especially dense and from which the great bulk of slaves were secured, Christianity was practically unknown until the Portuguese and Spaniards began to plant missions in the area in the sixteenth century. It was a strange religion, this Christianity which taught equality and brotherhood and at the same time introduced on a large scale the practice of tearing the natives from their homes and transporting them to a distant land to become slaves. If the natives were slow to accept Christianity, it was not only because they were attached to their particular forms of tribal worship but also because they did not have the superhuman capacity to reconcile in their own minds the contradictory character of the new religion ¼ ”

The African society, so well formed and developed, with its own way of relating to God, with its own family structure, with its own political structure, undergoes its first movement, the imposition of a culture and of a God of great contradiction who speaks love but acts contrary to what it teaches. The second movement was the transplantation to the Caribbean. Like sacks of coal they were forced into ships in the name of the European God to provide cheap expendable labor to satisfy the European tastes. It cannot be over emphasized that the African in the Caribbean was seen more as a commodity than as a human person and they sold as such.

The third movement was on the plantations and the brutal and very cruel process of depersonalization, starting first with what the African held dearest to their heart and in what they were socialized from youth mainly their family, which was by no means a nuclear family, but an extended family, which included their ancestors, their tribe, their God, their name and the practice of their ancestral religions. Fundamental to that process was also the fact that their drum which echoed in the rights of Africa and which heralded village celebrations was taken from them and replaced by a
high pitched bell to which they had to adapt. The fourth movement was the introduction of a new brand of person, who was neither African nor European, but was the result of of the European either raping or being sexually involved with the African women. This new element called the "Mulatto" created an unknown social problem since that group of persons, depending on their shade of skin, rejected their African ancestry and were socialized in many cases in a European mould and given special privileges over the African including Baptism, a name and a new God to worship are evidence of this. (To be continued)

Saint of the Month

Saint Dymphna lived in the middle of the seventh century and died in the year 650 A.D. She lived in a castle in Armaugh, in the north-eastern section of Ireland, the daughter of Damon, a pagan king, and a Christian mother, who died when Dymphna was fifteen years old.

Damon was a strange man, mentally ill, and given to dark moods and unpredictable temper. His wife had always been able to pull him out of his dark thoughts but now that she was dead, he became more insane and Dymphna became more afraid of him.

When Ireland was wholly pagan, the marriage of a father with his daughter was quite a common practice but with the advent of Christianity , this custom had begun to cease.

Damon, however, in his madness and without the help of his now dead wife to curb his dark moods, turned lustful eyes on his fifteen year old daughter. Like her mother, Dymphna was a Christian and feared her father even more when she realized what his feelings towards her really meant. She turned for help to her friend, Siobhan, the cook who, with her husband, was a Christian, and to Father Gerebran, a kindly priest. The small band of exiles, Dymphna, Siobhan and her husband and Fr. Gerebran sailed from Ireland for Antwerp in modem day Belgium where they settled in the little village of Gheel near to Antwerp, free from the evil desires of Damon.

Dymphna spent her time visiting the sick and the poor in the area, free and happy. But after a few months this freedom and happiness came to an abrupt end. Through a spy Damon discovered where Dymphna and her little band of loyal friends were, and came with a band of hired swordsmen to apprehend them. They met Fr. Gerebran and Dymphna as they were hastening to warn Siobhan and her husband of the new twist of fate. Damon pleaded with his daughter to return to Ireland with him and when Fr. Gerebran boldly told him that what he was asking of his daughter was sinful, Damon in a fury ordered the swordsmen to kill Fr. Gerebran, which they did. Again Damon pleaded with his daughter but emboldened and unafraid, she refused, declaring that she would never offend God by such a sin. Beside himself with rage, Damon ordered the swordsmen to kill her, but they, knowing her to be good and holy, would not touch her.

Damon in his rage drew his sword and plunged it into his daughter, crying, "Then die!" And so she gave back her beautiful, untarnished soul to God, her Heavenly Father, struck by the fatal blow of her earthly father. Siobhan and her husband reverently buried the bodies of their two friends, the old priest Gerebran and the brave young princess Dymphna, a martyr for chastity.

A shrine, and later a church, was built over Dymphna's remains and those of Fr. Gerebran. Both were later canonized. To this day, the mentally and emotionally ill come to the town of Gheel in Belgium, where the towns people care for them and St. Dymphna continues to intercede for them to God.

Cathedral Murder Trial


Fr. Charles Gaillard (deceased)	Sr. Theresa Egan, S.J.C. (deceased)

On Wednesday 28th April, Kim John and Francis Phillip, who were condemned to death on the 30th April 2003, for the murder of Sr. Theresa Egan SJC and Fr. Charles Gaillard, appeared before the Court of Appeal pleading against their conviction and sentence by Justice Indra Hariprashad-Charles. Three appeal court judges of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Justices Adrian Saunders, Brian Alleyne and Michael Gordon, heard submissions from the defence team of Kenneth Foster, Jeannot Walters and Sean Innocent. The prosecution was led by senior counsel Anthony Astaphan.
Whilst the two convicted murderers sat laughing and joking as they had done during their appearance before the High Court, the defence repeated their argument that they were suffering from a delusional disorder which seriously impaired their reasoning when they were committing the act. They claimed that the sitting judge had misdirected the jury on intention and insanity and set too high a test for insanity when she left the case to them without exploring sufficiently the evidence of defence’s witness, Professor Glen Griffin, a dreadlocked American psychologist. The defence further claimed that the judge had minimized the effects of Prof. Griffin’s evidence while over-emphasizing the evidence of distinguished Caribbean psychiatrist, Dr. George Mahy, who testified for the State.
In his rebuttal to the defence, prosecuting attorney Astaphan argued that “This was a well planned, thought out, executed criminal act and the cold bloodedness and brutality of the matter echoes the executor’s stance…If there is any case worthy of the death penalty it is this one. Because it was well planned, well executed, timed, they selected weapons that were going to inflict the greatest possible harm ( fire, gasoline, and tremendously strong and heavy pieces of sticks that were carved with edges.” After hearing the evidence from both sides the three judges reserved their judgment . In time, they will decide whether the penalty imposed by Justice Hariprashad-Charles last year should be reversed.

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