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Sunday, March 16, 2025

T&T in sexual revolution gone crazy—Gordon

by

Rosemarie Sant
2367 days ago
20180922
Archbishop Jason Gordon

Archbishop Jason Gordon

RISHI RAGOONATH

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.”


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