Anita has left the Church. She hasn’t quite made up her mind but she thinks perhaps she will join Orisha. She doesn’t believe in this Youraba business, Orishas, ancestral spirits or the rest but she thinks whatever of those she’ll join Orisha.
Her story is of going to a convent school where, according to her, she was tolerated. No it wasn’t as in her mother’s days but it wasn’t equality either. Anyway being a Catholic she wanted her child to go to a Catholic school. As Common Entrance approached she enquired of the school if, in the event that her child failed to get first choice, would he or she be accepted on the 20 percent. The reply was that this was unlikely. The child did not fall into the priority list.
When results came out Anita set about finding out who had been taken in on the 20 percent. One she discovered was not even Catholic — but that one was wealthy and it was rumoured that the family had donated or offered to donate a sum of money to the school. Looking around again Anita remarked that if her child would have to go to a government secondary, she could find no Syrians, no French Creoles and no Chinese who did. Anita realised — according to her — that she had never been comfortable in the Catholic Church. It was not a question of belief — it was a question of belonging. Syrians owned the Church — watch a Syrian wedding, funeral or see them take over a parish. French Creoles — don’t talk. They owned God Almighty. She could not even express her dissatisfaction within the Church. How could she? Syrians and French Creoles were all holy people, no Church charity could do without their generosity. She was out of place. So she thinks she’ll join Orisha. After all Indians had their own religion, White people had Catholicism. It was time for Black people like Zandolee to find their own hole.
Faith or success?
Anita is not alone: the question of entry into a Catholic secondary school is one of the sore points for many Catholic parents. Talk what you like of the 20 percent being in fact very few in numbers, that it is not only the Catholic secondary school who facilitates ‘benefactors’ or that the wealthy may be hidden away at Maple Leaf or The International School, few believe it. Don’t worry, it has little to do with the transmission of Faith. It has to do with quite worldly success. Catholic prestige schools are the best for ensuring that your child keeps his or her mind firmly fixed on the essentials: winning scholarships, getting a collection of ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels and entering the elite. If you are fooling yourself that Protestants, Hindus, Muslims choose Catholic schools because they pass on some particle of the Faith or some particularly Catholic view of the world, forget it. They send their children there for exactly the same reason that Anita wants her child to go to a Catholic school: to succeed. Moreover it is this ‘success’ which determines both a prestige school and its ranking. To maintain prestige rank is to produce scholarships — QED. The lack of an overall Catholic policy encourages this. Each Catholic congregation: Holy Ghost, St Joseph’s, Holy Faith, is autonomous and mainly interested in their own schools and the prestige of their own orders.
It is not surprising that the Catholic primary school has received, with a few exceptions, little attention. Traditionally it is the follow-through from Catholic primary to Catholic secondary which has made Catholic education both one of the principal ways of transmitting the Faith and the principal method of assuring social mobility for the poor. Ask the Irish in Boston or New York, once as gang-ridden as Blacks are today. Well here is still to some extent fulfils the ‘social mobility’ part — for those of other religions. The Catholic poor are less likely to qualify for their first choice than the poor of Presbyterians, Hindus or Muslims — and wait until Pentecostals schools come fully on stream. I need not add that the collapse of the Catholic school as a means of transmitting the Faith is happening at a time when everything from media to politics integrate into a materialist society. It is also a time when both family and neighbourhood are in crisis. Any wonder Catholics are leaving the Church?
Anita is not alone for another reason. Scratch below the surface of many Black Catholics ranging from priest to vagrant and hurt and/or discomfort will emerge. They may theoretically love the Church — but it isn’t their Church. To the Syrians and French Creoles, add the High Browns, and to Anita add Vishnu or Kamla. Few will talk about it openly. It is one of those behind back affairs. Hurt is not only about schools — it is often about a phrase or a sentence which while in ‘normal’ societies would betray a certain narrowness of vision if not downright ignorance, may here be the cachet of colour status. This may be remarks about head-ties and saris, or doubles served at the entry of Church, or the decline of Carnival — any Africanisation or Indianisation may become paganish with the danger of the lurking devil. Whatever the statistics say, Blacks, Browns and Whites are convinced that it is a “White” Church.
Part of the explanation is there in the population statistics. While Blacks form the majority within the Church and Indians a substantial minority, nevertheless only about 45 percent of the Black population is Catholic. In terms of the middle class, Black Protestants are likely to outnumber Black Catholics. In the case of Indians one in 10 Indians are Catholic. Whites and Syrian-Lebanese present a different picture. While both are small populations in the country and therefore small populations within the Church, nevertheless over 80 percent of all Whites and 98 percent of the Syrian-Lebanese community are Catholic and nearly 67 percent of the mixed category. In the case of the ‘mixed’ not only is a high percentage of their middle-class Catholic, but a fair percentage are historically linked to Blacks through the same master-slave relationships as the ‘French Creole.’ While Black Catholics are numerically a majority therefore, they are sociologically a minority. Moreover while Catholicism binds Whites, Syrian-Lebanese and to a smaller extent ‘High Browns’ as groups, it cannot do the same for Blacks since it is not their majority religion. There is therefore an incipient conflict within the Church which has never been faced whether it is at the level of the laity or of the priesthood. But it also accounts for the invisibility of Black Catholics and therefore both insensitivity and lack of concern. There is no serious history to forge the sense of a common pilgrimage or to permit bitterness to be exorcised. It should be underlined that these problems are in Trinidad and Tobago unique to Catholicism —most of the other religions including within Christianity are practically mono-racial.
The impression of a White Church has been intensified by the emergence of wealthy areas carved out of former poorer villages. Parishes may span two distinct communities. In addition squatter pockets may change the composition of the parish and be largely ignored. Spectacular wealth and increased impoverishment have not helped. If both in Britain or in France commentators have underlined that, at least in public, the wealthy are indistinguishable from the rest of the population, this is not so here. If Catholic churches abroad frown on a show of wealth — not so here. Weddings and funerals taking place almost in juxta position to the impoverished, may be the chosen occasion for the flaunting of wealth. In this cocktail of wealth, colour and status, it takes little for water to be more than flour and for the Anitas to leave.
Catholics in prison
That it was a ‘White church’ was so firmly ingrained that it was a shock to discover that Catholics made up the largest single religious group in prison. These were not there because they were Catholics —they were Black and poor. The shock led to little action. At the largest prison — Orange Grove — in spite of chaplains Catholic prisoners are lucky to have Mass in any year and will not usually receive that comfort the Church offers to the sinful — confession. A lay group holds service on Sundays. If Catholics are little interested in those in prison they can hardly be surprised if others are. If Catholics were the largest group among the youth in prison some time ago — take a count before Sunday service today. The Catholic service is now relegated to the second service on a Sunday morning at the YTC. The first service is Pentecostal, accompanied by sweetdrinks, icecream, snacks — name it. Guess which a young prisoner chooses. Little by little the Catholic space has been reduced. Few care.
It isn’t only prison — it is also reintegration on release. Reinte-gration into a parish can be crucial — well forget that one unless you want to join the Anitas. I have tried. Here again it is Pentecostals who reintegrate into Pentecostal communities gaining not only the prisoners but his family. That Blacks are leaving the church is widely known. There has been an answer to this: the Shouter Baptists being now legal, the Catholics who before were Shouter Baptists and never really Catholics have simply come straight. Really? But this would have been reflected in the 1960, 1970 and 1980 censuses. Even if it were so the doubling of the number of Shouter Baptists would not numerically account for the decline in Catholic numbers. Got another reason? Well it is the small islanders coming in. Perhaps. But between 1911 and 1960 small islanders had swamped in during the depression and the US base years. And yet the Catholic population rose from 33 percent to nearly 37 percent. Any other reason?
And more next week.
