Kevon Felmine

Al­though the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day dis­tanced it­self from a doc­u­ment which sur­faced on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, ti­tled Lyrics for Hard Mass, For Lenten Mass 2023, Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don seems amused by it.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion’s Founder’s Day cel­e­bra­tion in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, soon af­ter the Arch­dio­cese said the doc­u­ment was not theirs, Gor­don said he would need to look at the lyrics be­fore de­ter­min­ing whether it was ap­pro­pri­ate.

A doc­u­ment bear­ing the Arch­dio­cese’s lo­go ap­peared on so­cial me­dia on Sat­ur­day with the lyrics to a song, which ap­peared to be a Gospel al­ter­na­tive to Ian “Bun­ji Gar­lin” Al­varez and his wife Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez’s 2023 Road March win­ning so­ca, Hard Fete. In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd ac­knowl­edged the doc­u­ment, bear­ing its of­fi­cial lo­go.

How­ev­er, it said this doc­u­ment did not orig­i­nate from the Arch­dio­cese, as it is­sues its state­ments through its of­fi­cial me­dia chan­nel, CatholicTT.

It said that in the solemn pe­ri­od of Lent, it prays that the Catholic faith­ful will em­brace and be guid­ed by Je­sus Christ’s jour­ney to Cal­vary, lead­ing to his res­ur­rec­tion at East­er and His mes­sage of sal­va­tion for mankind.

Asked if the unau­tho­rised use of the Arch­dio­cese’s lo­go was up­set­ting, Gor­don said some things are harm­ful, and some are fun. He said some­times, peo­ple have to see things in a par­tic­u­lar way.

“I have not looked at the lyrics of the tune deeply, but na­tion­al pomp and cer­e­mo­ny, frank and fun is just part of our na­tion, and you know, I will cer­tain­ly be look­ing at the lyrics more care­ful­ly to see how the in­no­va­tion and in­spi­ra­tion have worked with the song and the mean­ing of Lent, but yes, these things are al­ways a won­der­ful buzz for a na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Gor­don said.

As for singing the gospel ver­sion in a church, Gor­don said some mu­sic was great, some up­lift­ing, and there are those for Chris­tians. He said these were three dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories, and all do not fit to­geth­er.