Archbishop Jason Gordon believes that Trinidad and Tobago is in a sexual revolution gone crazy and says the challenge is not just sexual orientation but also predatory behaviour, as he expressed concern that people are not living by the norms God laid out for us.
Speaking on a one-hour programme Shepherd’s Corner, Gordon said the Roman Catholic Church is embarking on an initiative to “protect God’s children” in the face of international concerns about children who have been abused by priests and others in the church.
He noted that in the face of abuse of girls, boys and teens within the church.
“We have to ask ourselves hard questions. Is it homosexual, is it paedophile, whatever the problem is, it is that people are not living by the norms that God has laid out for us.”
He said the initiative being launched by the church will protect all children.
While the issue of Thursday’s ruling of the High Court which made consensual anal sex between consenting adults legal did not come up in the discussion, one caller to the programme expressed concern that the issue of children being interfered with can be linked to the issue of homosexuality.
Gordon said the challenge is not only in “sexual orientation” but also in predatory behaviour.
“You can have predatory behaviour among heterosexuals and that is where the real challenge is,” he said.
He noted, “If it’s heterosexual it is going to be dangerous and if it’s homosexual it will be equally dangerous or more.”
But he said the predator finds organisations where they can have access to their prey, including organisations such as the church, schools, Boys Scouts or anywhere they can have access to children.
His said the country was in a “sexual revolution gone crazy and so we have been sexualised as a culture far more than cultures before us and it’s in your face everywhere you turn. Sex sells and the whole advertising industry trades on the sexual revolution and pushes it forward.”
In the midst of this “crazy world,” he said this country is also the capital for pornography.
“It is this sense of hypersexuality in a negative sense that is really what is at the root of the challenge we are facing,” the Archbishop said.
The Archbishop believes that the “appropriate boundary is what a good father would do when he is in public with a child.” He noted that in the Caribbean there are many children who are fatherless.
“The only father in many of their lives is the priest who has taken on the role of father for many of them,” he said.
He said in a culture where it’s easy to hug and not think anything about it, those in the religious life and even teachers will need to go back to the five-second rule in the hug.
“If it’s more than five seconds it becomes a problem. These are things that we never thought about,” he said.
The change in what is a natural greeting of a hug, may take some getting used to at all levels he said.
“We all have to understand that there is something we are going to lose, but there is something we absolutely have to gain a culture that is so transparent that we feel absolutely safe.”
