Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Lev­els of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty are among the things changed by the pan­dem­ic in the last two years. Up­dat­ed da­ta is dif­fi­cult to find, but the 2011 cen­sus showed that T&T is large­ly a re­li­gious so­ci­ety—33.4 per cent Protes­tant, 21.6 per cent Ro­man Catholic, 18.2 per cent Hin­du and 5 per cent Mus­lim. A small­er per­cent­age are Or­isha and Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tists.

How­ev­er, wor­ship has not re­turned to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els al­though most pub­lic health re­stric­tions have been lift­ed. Ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al re­li­gious lead­ers, a lot of peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly at­tend­ed church­es, tem­ples and mosques be­fore COVID-19, have not re­turned. In­stead, on­line wor­ship, in­tro­duced dur­ing the pe­ri­ods of lock­down and lim­its of crowds, has changed the way re­li­gion is prac­tised.

Vic­ar for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the Ro­man Catholic Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain Fa­ther Robert Chris­to said there were many pos­i­tives to the in­tro­duc­tion of on­line wor­ship.

“Many peo­ple who nev­er could have come, like those who are bed-bound, can now ac­cess the vir­tu­al Mass. That whole par­a­digm of those who wor­ship on­line has opened up, so we have a more cap­tive and ex­tend­ed au­di­ence now, es­pe­cial­ly in the di­as­po­ra. They can now lock in away and join in with us through­out the Caribbean,” he said.

“We run mul­ti­ple Mass­es dai­ly and wor­ship litur­gies by the hour, so peo­ple have be­come a lit­tle more at­tuned to the litur­gies of the church be­cause it’s more ac­ces­si­ble now. You don’t have to go to Mount St Bene­dict and phys­i­cal­ly be there. You have au­dio med­i­ta­tions, video med­i­ta­tions and litur­gies at your own pace. You can do your own morn­ing prayer.”

How­ev­er, Fa­ther Chris­to said on­line wor­ship doesn’t ful­ly of­fer what in-per­son Mass of­fers.

“Peo­ple have to know that noth­ing could be more than touch­ing and cel­e­brat­ing in per­son for any­thing. You can’t have a long-dis­tance re­la­tion­ship on­ly on the tele­phone, some­times you would have to come to­geth­er to con­se­crate the mar­riage and live to­geth­er,” he said.

“So that hu­man re­la­tion­ship with in­ter­ac­tion for Catholics is a must. We are a sacra­men­tal church. Je­sus touched the earth at Christ­mas time. He touched death and lep­rosy and made sure that mat­ter mat­ters.”

Fa­ther Chris­to said it just can’t be that Nass­es ex­ist on­ly in a vir­tu­al meta­verse be­cause Catholics must eat the sa­cred host and drink the sa­cred wine. While he un­der­stands that some peo­ple can’t make it to Mass and oth­ers find on­line Mass more con­ve­nient, in-per­son Mass should not be com­pro­mised.

“We are ask­ing peo­ple to come out when­ev­er you can while ex­er­cis­ing the reg­u­la­tions in place by the min­istry. We are see­ing a big blow now. We are crea­tures of habit and peo­ple are say­ing, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s on­line and I don’t have to go.’ So we have to deal with that kind of par­a­digm shift and let peo­ple know that al­though we have dif­fer­ent chan­nels and dif­fer­ent for­mats, the phys­i­cal church is es­sen­tial for wor­ship.”

Spir­i­tu­al Leader of the T&T Unit­ed Pen­te­costal Church Pas­tor Joseph Go­erge saw main­ly ad­van­tages to more fre­quent us­age of on­line ser­vices.

“I think there’s a lit­tle bit of an ad­van­tage in that you don’t have to leave home. You don’t have to go in­to a shared space with oth­er in­di­vid­u­als. So, I think that helps in­di­vid­u­als to stay, to en­joy or to be part of a ser­vice,” he said.

At­ten­dance isn’t what it was be­fore the pan­dem­ic, Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Arch­bish­op Bar­bara Burke ad­mit­ted, adding that she is hop­ing the East­er sea­son brings peo­ple back out in num­bers.

“We are look­ing for­ward to the East­er Ser­vice. We are ex­pect­ing peo­ple to come out. We would be very dis­ap­point­ed if we don’t get that,” Arch­bish­op Burke said.

Pun­dit Hard­eo Per­sad, founder and spir­i­tu­al leader of the SWA­HA Sri Raam Dhaam, in Diego Mar­tin, was con­cerned about the lim­it­ed in-per­son at­ten­dance he has seen at tem­ples since the re­open­ing. He be­lieves peo­ple are very cau­tious about con­gre­gat­ing.

“A lot of ser­vices are be­ing done on­line and that is a new di­men­sion that has caught on. They are get­ting their ser­vices at home, so I think they are quite hap­py with that,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the pun­dit, this new re­li­gious dy­nam­ic feels dif­fer­ent but not nec­es­sar­i­ly in a good way. While on­line ser­vices serve a pur­pose for some, in his opin­ion, it doesn’t cap­ture the essence of in-per­son wor­ship.

“To be hon­est with you, I don’t think that com­ing to the ser­vice in per­son is the same as join­ing the ser­vice on­line. From my per­spec­tive, be­ing in a place of wor­ship, that en­er­gy com­ing from so many peo­ple is some­thing that is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from sit­ting by your­self and lis­ten­ing to a dis­course. There is def­i­nite­ly a lack of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion,” he said.

“Man is so­cial by na­ture, he loves to as­so­ciate and I feel that with the pas­sage of time when peo­ple be­come a lit­tle more com­fort­able, they will come back to the tem­ples and church­es and so on. They are go­ing to come back out.”

Pun­dit Per­sad ac­knowl­edged that the pan­dem­ic of­fered some much need­ed time for re­flec­tion and rein­ven­tion and brought about some changes that would have been dif­fi­cult to in­tro­duce out­side of such a se­ri­ous event.

“In Hin­duism, we have so many rit­u­als. In a lot of our cer­e­monies, there are dif­fer­ent as­pects—so­cial as­pects, cul­tur­al as­pects, rit­u­als, tra­di­tions and spir­i­tu­al as­pects. Now, all those things are so close­ly wo­ven that they ap­pear to be all the same but with the com­ing of the pan­dem­ic al­lowed us to stream­line time. We were forced to for­get the so­cial as­pect. Some tra­di­tions un­der­went some change be­cause of this,” he said.

“Peo­ple are now re­al­is­ing that cer­tain as­pects in these cir­cum­stances are not re­al­ly nec­es­sary. So peo­ple are fo­cus­ing more on spir­i­tu­al as­pects. For ex­am­ple, at wed­dings. In Hin­du wed­dings, there are a lot of so­cial as­pects, fun as­pects, as well as re­li­gious as­pects, but if those are con­densed, a wed­ding should not take more than 45 min­utes to an hour.”

Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) Imam Raf­fa­ic Mo­hamed said many Mus­lims are still fear­ful of the pan­dem­ic and have not been com­ing out to mosques in full num­bers.

“At this point, for ex­am­ple, dur­ing the month of Ra­madan, you have curb­side pick­up. Some of them are do­ing that be­cause they don’t want to be as­sem­bling in big crowds. It’s an in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. You have to know your en­vi­ron­ment. But, we have to live with this pan­dem­ic. Life has to go on,” he said.

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