Inculturating the Church in the Caribbean

The Saint Lucian Experience

by

Patrick A.B. Anthony

Director, Cardinal Kelvin Felix Archdiocesan Pastoral CentreCastries, St. Lucia

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Inculturating the Church in the Caribbean : The Saint Lucian Experience

This paper examines the colonial context of the Catholic Church in the Caribbean before Vatican II, the liturgical and other reforms which followed immediately after the Council and the struggle since then to articulate a renewed mission for an inculturated Church in the contemporary Caribbean.

Focussing on the St. Lucian experience the paper explores the impact of socio-cultural movements like the Black Power Movement, the contribution of the artist Dunstan St. Omer, and the challenge of indigenous theological reflection.

Defining the Caribbean Region

The region takes its name from the “Caribs”, first nation peoples who once inhabited many of the islands, but remnants of whom remain in only a few communities in Dominica, St.Vincent, mainland Belize and Guyana. The region comprises more than 700 islands, islets, reefs, and cays, some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, and the surrounding coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America.

Geographically, the Caribbean islands consist of the Greater Antilles in the north, the Lucayan Archipelago (comprising the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands) north of the Greater Antilles; the Lesser Antilles in the south, the Leeward Islands to the east and the Netherlands Antilles to the west. The Greater Antilles include the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and the Cayman Islands. The Lesser Antilles comprises the Windward Islands (St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada & Carriacou, Commonwealth of Dominica), and the Leewards Islands (US Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Anguilla, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Barbuda, Redonda, Guadeloupe, St. Barthelemy, St. Martin, Saba, St. Eustatius, Marie-Galante, Isles des Saintes, La Desirade). The Netherlands Antilles is made up of the ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, as well as Sint Maarten, Saba and Sint Eustatius, which are also considerd part of the Leewards Islands. Politically the Caribbean also includes the island of Bermuda in the Atlantic, Barbados, and the mainland countries of Belize in Central America, and Guyana, Suriname and Cayenne on mainland South America.

Other names associated with the region but which have socio-economic connotations include the “West Indies” and the “Caribbean Community” (CARICOM). One of the consequences of colonialism in the region is that this legacy is reflected in the nomenclature: Spanish Caribbean, English Caribbean, French Caribbean and Dutch Caribbean.

This historical summary from Wikipedia1 gives a useful overview of colonial conflicts in the region: “All islands at some point were, and a few still are, colonies of European nations; a few are overseas or dependent territories:

British West Indies/Anglophone Caribbean – Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bay Islands, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Croix (briefly), Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago (from 1797) and the Turks and Caicos Islands

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Danish West Indies – present-day United States Virgin Islands Dutch West Indies – Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten, Bay Islands

(briefly), Saint Croix (briefly), Tobago and Virgin Islands French West Indies – Anguilla (briefly), Antigua and Barbuda (briefly), Dominica, Dominican

Republic (briefly), Grenada, Haiti, Montserrat (briefly), Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Eustatius (briefly), Sint Maarten, St. Kitts (briefly), Tobago (briefly), Saint Croix, the current French overseas départements of Martinique and Guadeloupe (including Marie-Galante, La Désirade and Les Saintes), the current French overseas collectivities of Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin

Portuguese West Indies – present-day Barbados, known as Os Barbados in the 16th century when the Portuguese claimed the island en route to Brazil. The Portuguese left Barbados abandoned in 1533, nearly a century prior to the British arrival to the island.

Spanish West Indies – Cuba, Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic, Haiti (until 1609 to France)), Puerto Rico, Jamaica (until 1655 to Great Britain), the Cayman Islands (until 1670 to Great Britain) Trinidad (until 1797 to Great Britain) and Bay Islands (until 1643 to Great Britain), coastal islands of Central America (minus Belize), and some Caribbean coastal islands of Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Swedish West Indies – present-day French Saint-Barthélemy, Guadeloupe (briefly) and Tobago (briefly).

Courlander West Indies – Tobago (until 1691)”

For the purposes of this paper, the term “Caribbean” will refer to those countries of the region which fall within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Antilles Episcopal Conference (AEC). According to the Caribbean Catholic Directory of 2000 : “The Antilles Episcopal Conference is that section of the Catholic Church in the English, French and Dutch territories of the Antilles which is made up of twenty ecclesiastical units consisting of five archdioceses, fourteen dioceses and one Missio sui iuris. The region included by these is composed of thirteen independent nations, three Departments of France, two parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands which have complete internal autonomy, and six British colonies.”2

In a Pastoral Letter of 19753, the Bishops of the AEC gave this description of themselves“We who are speaking to you through this joint letter are the Roman Catholic Bishops of the Antilles. Our Bishops Conference includes all the countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) as well as Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Dutch Antilles and Surinam. The Bishops from the French-speaking territories of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Cayenne attend our meetings as observers. In the Conference itself there are 14 dioceses with a joint responsibility for 1,300,000 Catholics in a total population of just under 7,000,000”.( Justice and Peace in a New Caribbean, November 21, 1975)

The Impact of History

One of the most significant events in the life of Caribbean peoples and in the Church today is the impact of history. Gordon Lewis divides this history into three periods : “The post discovery period covering the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; (2) the post-emancipation period, that is, the period following the abolition of slavery (1833 in the British colonies,1848 in the French colonies, 1863 in the Dutch colonies, 1873 in Puerto Rico and 1886 in Cuba); and (3) the post-independence period” 4. From its inception Caribbean history has been a story of violence, brutality and exploitation. Early attempts at colonization decimated the indigenous peoples resulting in a trans-Atlantic Slave Trade which, with its concomitant brutalities and obscenities, brought an estimated 9,566,000 African Slaves to the Americas between 1452-1870. After Emancipation the mass indenture of labourers from the East brought, according to Mintz’s estimates “over 135,000 Chinese, nearly half a million Indians and more than 33,000 Javanese reached the Caribbean,”5 not to mention Jews, Lebanese, Irish and Syrians.

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In the book Inculturating the Church in Africa, Peter Kanyandogo sees a connection between the slave trade, colonization and evangelization. Of the slave trade he writes “ What is more insidious is that the slave trade was justified with pseudo-scientific and theological theories which tried to prove the inferiority of the African people.”6 He continues “ With a combination of a number of factors, the abolitionists managed to stop the slave trade. But in the meantime, another dehumanizing phenomenon was getting into gear. Africa was subjected to another degrading experience, colonization. The slave trade prepared the ground for or went hand in hand with colonization.”7 Kanyandogo concludes “Colonization in most cases went hand in hand with evangelization…The evangeliser and colonizer originally agreed, at least one one point, namely their civilizing mission. The African therefore had to be helped to go a step higher in the human scale”8.

Gabriel Malzaire ( now Catholic bishop of Roseau, Commonwealth of Dominica), sees a similar relationship between slavery, colonization and evangelization in the Caribbean context. He writes, “A significant part of the history of the Caribbean has been shaped by the presence of the European Church. From the very start the Spanish pioneers exhibited a strong link between Altar and Throne in the expansion of Spanish rule in the New World.”9 He continues, “For a long time the Church in Spanish America went along with the exploitation of the indigenous people even to the point of owning land and slaves”10. He endorses the position of renowned Caribbean historians Augier and Gordon that the African slave trade was supported by the Church through the rationale that “firstly…the slaves were slaves in Africa already and secondly, that coming into a Christian society they would have opportunity for conversion.”11 And on the question of evangelization he quotes Idris Hamid “…there was no clear division between State and Church… The State was the Church and the Church was the State in Europe.”12

Jason Gordon (now Catholic bishop of Bridgetown/Kingstown, Barbados/St. Vincent) implicitly endorses this analysis in his use of Immanuel Wallerstein’s critique of ideology. He states “Globalization or the emerging world system, is the continuation of the project of colonization that began in 1492 when Columbus left Spain in search of India. This exploitation has become more brutal through the expansion of capitalism. The same ambiguity within anthropology and culture… that triggered the debate on the humanity of the Amerindian and then the Negro, allowing millions of Amerindians and Africans to be subject to the most brutal atrocities in the service of the expansion of empire, is still operating today”13.

One of the consequences of slavery and indentureship in the Caribbean is the legacy of multiculturalism. Perhaps there is no other region of the world where multiculturalism is the norm and diversity the glue that cements communities. The Caribbean is one of the only places in the world where one can encounter an individual who may be able to legitimately trace Amerindian, African, Asian and European ancestry in his/her family. So although the Caribbean may be more readily associated with Usain Bolt and Bob Marley, the sentiment of the National Anthem of Trinidad and Tobago, “Here every creed and race find an equal place” is more authentically reflective of Caribbean reality. However, not each island or country of the region reflects the wide cultural and ethnic variations mentioned above. The island of St. Lucia, for example, which we focus on in this paper, has a total population of 165,313 (according to the 2010 Census) of predominantly African descent, with a small percentage of descendants from other ethnic groups. The Census revealed that the Catholic population had continued to decrease from 82% (1991/105356), 71% (2001/106497) to 61.5% (2010/101586).

A Young Episcopate

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Although Lumen Gentium provided much scope for renewal in ecclesiological reflection through fresh emphasizes on the Church as “Mystery” and notions like the “People of God,” in the Caribbean context this “kairos” moment would run into a massive road block viz. that of a young and inexperienced episcopate. A brief explanation will suffice. The Antilles Episcopal Conference was established in 1958 with only ten dioceses (Belize & Belmopan, Grenada, Port-of-Spain, Castries,Cayenne,St. Pierre/ Martinique, Georgetown, Kingston, Roseau and Curacao) none of which was an archdiocese. In 1967, the Holy See established three archdioceses in the region: St. Pierre/Martinique, Kingston/Jamaica and Port-of-Spain/Trinidad. The two other current archdioceses of Castries/St. Lucia and Nassau/Bahamas were established in 1974 and 1999 respectively.

Moreover, most of the Bishops of those dioceses were foreign missionaries. The first Caribbean cleric to be ordained a bishop in the region was Samuel Carter S.J. who became Auxiliary Bishop of Kingston on 1st February 1966 and Archbishop of Kingston on September 25, 1970. He was privileged as a priest to have accompanied his archbishop to the Final Session of the Second Vatican Council. The first Caribbean native to be appointed an archbishop was Anthony Pantin C.SSp. who was appointed archbishop of Port-of Spain on November 19, 1967. This means that the leadership of many of the new dioceses of the region comprised of persons who did not participate in the Council. Add to that the general resistance to change which followed the Second Vatican Council, the new ecclesiological thrusts of Lumen Gentium was not readily grasped nor implemented. Here, the observation of Ashley Smith is apropos “One of the major characteristics of the Church in the Caribbean is the sparcity of thoroughly prepared, highly competent and self-assured Church leaders.”14

In the case of the diocese of Castries, for example, the then bishop, Charles Gachet F.M.I. returned from the Council and reported to the clergy and laity. The vast majority of clergy was made up of foreign missionaries who tried to implement what the Bishop suggested about reform of the liturgy, but were not ready for a new ecclesiology. For many the new role of the laity was discomforting. The laity likewise was quite ready to continue in subservient relationship with the clergy. Malzaire summarises the situation thus :

“We have already noted…that in colonial times the Church in the Caribbean was an extension of the Church in Europe in all its shapes and forms. The theology was a top-descending one rather than a low-ascending one. Its priesthood obviously was schooled in that mind-set, and therefore the experience of Church was little different. It lacked a proper incarnational dimension, one might say. The ecclesiology of Caribbean Church was measured according to its proximity to the way of being Church as perceived in the north.”15

Black Power : The Turbulent 60s and 70’s in the Caribbean

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the phenomenon of “Black Power” 16 swept the United States and the Caribbean. It was a social, political and some would say, economic movement, which sought to address the plight of the dispossessed especially of African and East Indian origins. This caused social upheaval in the Caribbean with protests, demonstrations culminating in the “Black Power Revolution” in Trinidad & Tobago and an attempted military coup there in April 1970. Christian Churches, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, was one of the targets of demonstrations.

Although the Catholic bishops of the Caribbean at their Annual Plenary Meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica on September 5, 1969 had issued a statement on Black Power, pledging “to seek out and vigorously promote the good to be found in the Movement”17 that did not appease. On February 26. 1970 demonstrators entered the Catholic Cathedral in Port-of-Spain and draped black cloth over a number of white statues of saints18. Shortly afterwards a public crucifix in San Fernando was smeared with black

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paint by Black Power demonstrators. This sent shockwaves throughout the churches, and propelled some of the changes that Lumen Gentium and the Second Vatican Council had been calling for.

Passages from such Vatican II documents as Ad Gentes (art. 19) calling for local or ‘Particular Churches’ adapted to local culture and living and developing “under the guidance of its own bishop”19 began to assume a new urgency. Likewise, such statements as “Thus from the seed which is the word of God, particular native Churches can be adequately established and flourish the world over, endowed with their own vitality and maturity.”20 The response to the situation of the Catholic Church in the Caribbean was the erection of new dioceses, such St. John’s-Basseterre (1971) and St. Thomas (1977) and the appointment of local/Caribbean clerics as replacement for missionary bishops21. As I mentioned before the consequence was that the region now had a relatively young Episcopal Conference which lacked the boldness to take on some of the tough theological and pastoral issues of an emergent world church, or to fully embrace “the vision of the universal Church as a mosaic of truly authentic local communities.” 22

Socio-political upheavals, like the Black Power Movement, did force the bishops to try to be at least some kind of ‘light’ to the Caribbean world. Over the years they have published a number of pastoral letters on issues impacting Caribbean society23.

In a seemingly direct response to accusations of racism on the part of the Church arising from the Black Power Movement, the Caribbean bishops, in 1975, made a public confession of guilt on behalf of the Catholic Church. In the now famous Article 13 “We want to Confess in Frankness and Humility,” of the Pastoral Letter Justice and Peace in a New Caribbean, they wrote :

“We want to confess here in all frankness and humility, that the record of our Church in this respect has not always been as good as it should have been. In spite of the example of many dedicated priests and religious who have lived among the poor and fully shared in their hardships, too often the Church we represent has seemed to be on the side of the wealthy and powerful. And in order to maintain a position of privilege, it has sometimes closed its eyes to wrongs and injustices crying out for redress. In the colonial past the Church sometimes acted as if it were a part of the establishment condoning either openly or by its silence the existing order. And in the post-colonial era the Church in some places has not accepted the need for change with sufficient alacrity and good will. Our Church has also been guilty on occasion of acts of racial discrimination and of perpetuating social and class divisions. For these commissions and omissions of the past and present we the Bishops of the Antilles Conference humbly beg pardon from God, the Lord and Judge of history, and from you, the people of the region”24.

Vatican II and the Church in the Caribbean

The appointment of native bishops to lead the church in the Caribbean was only one step towards making the Catholic Church in the region more reflective of the mind of the Council. Lumen Gentium, in particular, was proposing an ecclesiology so different from the dominant ideology in the colonial church, that a radical conversion would be required by all. Nowhere was this more evident than in the new role proposed for the laity and the new relationship implied with the hierarchy. Clergy would have to adjust to the new relationship with the laity and the laity would have to be schooled in understanding its new rights and responsibilities. The new role of the laity in parish management and in the liturgy, their specific vocation to evangelize the secular world, their witness in marriage and family life, their call to political involvement, and the need for a spirituality suited to their particular status, all proved a great challenge to the Church.

In St. Lucia and the wider Caribbean, traditional church organizations, youth groups, religious confraternities and sodalities were the norm of the day. However in the 1970s a number of movements aimed at lay empowerment reached the region from outside. These included the Charismatic Renewal, Cursillio, CORE, to name a few. Although these were all from outside the region, the Charismatic Renewal, for example, spawned a number of “Covenant” communities, which were all home-grown. Many of these have now become significant indigenous ecclesial realities, carving their own niche in the

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history of the Catholic Church in the region. “The Living Water Community” (cf. www.livingwatercommunity.com), a lay community of men and women founded in Trinidad & Tobago, is a fine example of such an indigenous ecclesial institution. The community runs a 24 hours Religious Television Network (Trinity Communications Network); St. Maximilian Kolbe Hospice for dying persons; Marian House (Centre for Youth); Fountain of Hope (Skills training and job creation programmes for young women); a Shelter for abused and abandoned children (“Our Lady of the Wayside”; Caring Centre & Soup Kitchen; a Communications School (The Caribbean School for Catholic Communication).

If the Church in the Caribbean was to be reformed and renewed according to the Council, a massive education programme would be required. This education began with the reformation of the liturgy. When I returned from the Regional Seminary in Trinidad to my homeland St. Lucia in 1972 for priestly ordination, most Catholics at home had barely heard of the Second Vatican Council. It is true that the then bishop, Charles Gachet F.M.I., gave regular reports on his return from Council sessions. The average St. Lucian hardly knew what he was talking about. What everyone knew was that the Mass was no longer in Latin but in the vernacular, that the priest now faced the people at Mass, and they argued about the merits and demerits of such changes. It would take a long process of education before the “person in the pew” would understand the rationale for what was happening.

English Speaking Caribbean Liturgical Reform after Vatican II

One of the mechanisms used for education in liturgical reform in the Caribbean after Vatican II was the “School of Liturgy.” This was a one or two weeks institute where persons involved in all aspects of the liturgy would come to learn about their roles. It was one of the few structures in the region where the general membership of the Church would have an opportunity to be formally instructed on Vatican II. The Antilles School of Liturgy was started jointly in Trinidad & Tobago in August 1977 by the Benedictine Abbey (Mt. St. Benedict), the Pastoral Centre at the UWI Catholic Chaplaincy, St. Augustine, and the Regional Seminary of St. John Vianney and Uganda Martyrs. The ‘School’ was subsequently held in several Caribbean territories. Prior to that, in many dioceses of the AEC, Catholic choirs borrowed heavily from the repertoire of Anglican, Methodist and other protestant music available .   In the late 1960s and early 1970s North American and British ‘folk’ songs from the Medical Missionaries, Russel Roide, Joe Wise, Sebastian Temple, Estelle White et al.; and in T&T the rise of “The Mayaro Six” and the Goretti Group ( ‘Sing Out My Soul’) using these songs in the Liturgy. There were    two ‘waves’ of musical“invasions” from North America – the advent of the music of St. Louis Jesuits, Weston Priory, Carey Landry, Glory and Praise, and the easily available music contained in the “Monthly Missalette” type of publication, snitched from the pews in North American churches and brought back to the Caribbean and disseminated.

The rise of the Black Power Movement (1970) and the subsequent consciousness, together with the appearance of the Antilles Pastoral Institute (API) in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad, made the territories of the AEC acutely conscious of cultural heritages – especially in dance and percussion (pan and drums). This began to spill over into new music for worship – especially the work of Richard Ho Lung and Barry Chevannes in Jamaica. In September 1971, Archbishop Anthony Pantin of Trinidad & Tobago formed a Liturgical Music Sub-Committee with the mandate to hold composition workshops in view of #121 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. In 1973 the Antilles Episcopal Liturgical Commission was initiated and animated by Bishop Anthony Dickson in Barbados. It included persons like Fr. Ildefons Schroots O.S.B. and Bro. Paschal Jordan O.S.B. That same year, the Liturgical Music Sub-Committee of Trinidad revised the Holy Week Music Book and added new compositions by a team of local composers.

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In 1975 the Sub-Committee organised a “We For Jesus” festival in Trinidad & Tobago showcasing local compositions it had collected. Between 1973-1981, the Caribbean Conference of Churches(CCC) organised similar liturgical music outreaches with Noel Dexter (Jamaica), Patrick Prescod (St. Vincent) and Paschal Jordon O.S.B. (Trinidad & Tobago/Guyana). Soon a number of Caribbean liturgical publications appeared : (a) Caribbean Hymnal I & II (1980;1983); (b)the AEC Catholic Caribbean Hymnals of 1998 and 2014; (c) the CCC’s Sing A New Song I,II & III (1974 to 1981) and the publication, in 1984, of a book of Responsorial Psalmody for the 3- Year Cycle of Sundays. In 1985 there arose the “Drum Mass.” In addition, there have been the publication of music CDs by Caribbean musicians like Llewellyn Gill (St. Lucia), Francisca Allard (T&T), Pamela Rudder (Barbados); Curtis Moise (Barbados), Michael White (T&T), Paschal Jordan and the Youth Quake Group out of Grenada.

St. Lucian Artist, Dunstan St. Omer

In the St. Lucian and Francophone Caribbean context, the question of language became a big issue. It is true that in all these territories there were compositions in the native French Kweyol language, but it was felt that genuine inculturation should go even further. The Antilles Episcopal Conference appointed a sub-committee to look at translating the four Eucharistic Prayers of the Mass into “Kweyol.” It is several years now since the translations were submitted to the AEC for forwarding to the Holy See. To date, no one has heard anything about the ‘translations’. In St. Lucia, liturgical inculturation went way beyond the question of language. Just as in Trinidad, the steel pan, the only musical instrument to have been created during the 20th century, now forms part of Catholic worship, bringing inculturation to a different level, so it is in the case of the art of the St. Lucian painter, Dunstan St. Omer.

Designer of the Saint Lucian national flag, Sir Dunstan is the Caribbean’s premier church muralist. He is the ‘father’ of the St. Lucian madonna and creator of the Caribbean cubist style which his friend, the St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott has named “Prismism”. St. Omer’s story is remarkable. He began to paint at the age of six. At about eleven years, his aunt took some of his paintings to Harold ‘Harry’ Simmons, the father-figure of art in St. Lucia who then invited him to his studio. This was the beginning of the young artist’s formal training. “The years of association with Harry Simmons were not merely years of formal training, but of initiation into a whole new realm of consciousness. Harry had invited and welcomed the young Dunstan, like the young Walcott (Derek), ‘Spa’ and others, into his world of self-discovery, into his domain of self-acceptance. With him who had incarnated in himself the St. Lucian spirit, they were to discover the ordinary folk and his culture, the country-side, the St. Lucia they had not seen from the cocoon of their social class”25. In 1946 he left St. Lucia for Curacao where he came under the influence of the Greek painter, Pandelis, the best painter in the country at the time. Upon his returm to St. Lucia he was given his first church commission at the age of twenty-two, in 1950, to paint the altar of Our Lady’s chapel at La Clery.

He recalls his feeling of elation and affinity with Michelangelo upon taking this assignment. “Yet within, there was a conflict, a disturbing uneasiness. For the first time he was coming face to face as an artist with the faith of his people. He was to depict Christian divinity in a place of public worship. As a black man, his deepest sensibilities impelled him to paint them ‘black’, but there was the haunting demon of social acceptability. Would people accept it. He felt they would not. Thus, although at that time he was painting a mural …in which Neptune and other deities were being depicted as ‘black’, at La Clery he could not bring himself to do the same.”26

In 1973, Bishop Charles Gachet F.M.I., of Castries who had attended all the sessions of Vatican II, invited the artist to paint a mural of the holy family on the walls of the Church of the Holy Family, in Roseau/Jacmel, St. Lucia. The artist accepted the challenge and produced one of the most iconic Catholic

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murals in the region today. The St. Omer of 1973 had come a long way since the 1950s. In St. Lucia as elsewhere in the Caribbean, black consciousness was in vogue, and people were becoming more conscious of themselves. Dunstan felt that he had matured into acceptance of his blackness and was ready to help others along. As he explains “ I can’t go like a politician, take a loud-speaker and talk about my blackness; that doesn’t have meaning. I must do something about my blackness. I must show my blackness in its glory, in its beauty, in its reality.”27 That was the confidence with which the artist approached the mural of the Holy Family for the church at Jacmel. “He was going to paint that wall, all 800 sq.ft. of it, with images that reflected the beauty and nobility of his people.”28 Bishop Gachet fully respected the artists’s insight and encouraged him. He once told him “You have a tremendous understanding of the mysteries, and anytime you paint a person you paint him nobly.”29 With such endorsement and encouragement Dunstan completed :

(a) The mural of the Holy Family which Derek Walcott has immortalized in Canto V “For the Altarpiece of the Roseau Valley Church, St. Lucia” of the poem ‘Saint Lucie” in his 1976 collection Sea Grapes30. St. Omer uses the African mother-mask form for Mary’s face, and an African antelope’s face (symbol of divinity) for the face of the infant Jesus. The mural is complete with rural scenery : conch-shell blower (symbol of the apocalyptic angel with golden trumpet), bele dancers, chantwelles and native musicians. When the present writer participated in a five-years Popular Catholicism in a world church project with the Center for Mission Research and Study at Maryknoll in the mid-nineties, St. Omer’s ‘Holy Family Mural’ was chosen as the cover for the final publication, out of all the submissions from the seven participating countries which included Chile, Peru, Ghana, Tanzania, Southern India and Hong Kong31.

(b) The La Rose Mural for the Church of St. Rose de Lima in the parish of Monchy, depicting both the La Rose and the La Marguerite Floral societies which were rivals and had been excommunicated in 1860 by Msgr. Ethelridge, then Apostolic Administrator of Port-of-Spain. The mural is divided into two sections: one portraying the ‘ascetical spirit’ with the saint, the first communion child, the nurse, policeman and other social workers; while the second portrays the ‘Dionysian ethos’ of the celebrations : the revelers and merry makers. The infant Jesus is giving a crown of roses to either side, indicating, according to the artist, the validity of both lifestyles.

(c) The twenty foot Black Christ ( Pantocrator) of the Church of Sts. Philip and James in Fonds St. Jacques.

(d) The Last Supper mural ( which the artist calls the ‘First Supper’, an allusion to the institution of the Eucharist) for the parish church at Desruisseaux. The Apostles are depicted as odinary St. Lucians, sharing some home-made loaves. Christ, though central to the mural, is not represented at the supper. He is depicted on the cross and as a gigantic wafer of light which is also a globe. The globe happens to be the actual door for the tabernacle in the church.

(e) The murals that now adorn the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Castries.

In the area of Caribbean Christian iconography, besides his mural, Dunstan St. Omer is known for his ‘Madonnas’( mother and child in foetal relationship. It symbolises what the artist believes is every man’s love for his own mother and every Catholic’s love for the Virgin Mary. St. Omer’s love affair with the Virgin stems from his black consciousness and inability to relate to European images of Christ. As he once said “If my faith depends on Christ being white, I think I will lose my faith: because the relationship that exists in the world between the white race and the black race, one of prejudice and inferiority for the blacks, and if as a growing man I have to accept that the one person I feel I could follow of necessity must be white, somehow I think my whole life is in vain”32.

According to St. Omer, his first ‘Madonna’ came by accident in the 1960s. He was experimenting with modern forms and found himself paining a world which is a womb.” The work took the form of a foetus with mother and child bound in profound intimacy. Ever since that first ‘accident’ he has

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experimented with the form, painting red, blue, green, black, an yellow madonnas. Using the classical African mask form, he paints the features dark to indicate our ancestral heritage.33”

Besides St. Omer’s contribution to Church art through his murals and madonnas, he also designed all the new stained-glass windows for the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Castries. Reaction to the work of St. Omer will serve as a springboard for our discussion of the need for ongoing education and formation of both clergy and laity in St. Lucia and the region, on the teachings of Vatican II fifty years later. Within that context we shall now explore the achievements and shortcomings of the Conference on Catholic Theology in the Caribbean Today which celebrated 20years of indigenous theological reflection during its 17 th Conference in Trinidad & Tobago a few months ago.

The Folk Research Centre, St. Lucia

Dunstan St. Omer’s attempts at indigenization of St. Lucian church art is a good example of inculturation. It was one other area of adaptation of liturgy according to the mind of Vatican II, besides language and music. What was more important is that the process was initiated by the Ordinary, Bishop Charles Gachet FMI, a foreign missionary, and had his full support. This lent legitimacy to what the artist was doing and tempered criticism of his church murals. For as Ad Gentes had stated, alluding to Lumen Gentium 13 “From the customs and traditions of their people, from their wisdom and their learning, from their arts and sciences, these Churches borrow all those things which can contribute to the glory of their Creator, the revelation of the Savior’s grace, or the proper arrangement of Christian life”34. Moreover, his murals were not limited to St. Lucia. Church authorities in Trinidad invited him to paint murals at the Regional Seminary of St. John Vianney and Uganda Martyrs, Mt. St. Benedict; and he was also invited to decorate with his murals a brand new ultra-modern church building in the parish of St. Michel, Francois, Martinique.

Despite the support and encouragement of the Catholic bishop of Castries for St. Omer’s work, there were many among both the clergy and laity who were not supportive. Some found his use of “black figures” and ordinary St. Lucians to depict sacred personages, offensive and even sacrilegious. It was obvious that most reactions were based on feelings and emotions and not grounded in a reasoned or studied understanding of the teachings of Vatican II. Things came to a head as the archdiocese of Castries prepared for the visit of the late Pope Saint John Paul II to St. Lucia in 1986. As part of the preparations the marble high altar was moved to a location to serve as the Blessed Sacrament Altar, while the ‘table’ part of the altar remained for the celebration of Mass facing the congregation. The artist Dunstan St. Omer was invited to redecorate the Cathedral.

Whether it be in protest against changing the position of the high altar, or in reaction to the kind of murals the artist was known to paint in churches, a storm erupted in the cathedral parish. It would take a long time for things to calm down. While all of this was happening, St. Omer went along and completed his murals in time for the Papal Visit. The reaction to the Cathedral restoration highlighted the little impact Vatican II had made in the area of education in the faith over the last twenty years. It was the need for that kind of education which propelled this writer to begin two instituations in St. Lucia (a) The Folk Research Centre (http:// www.stluciafolk.org ); and (b)The Archdiocesan Pastoral Centre ( now the Cardinal Kelvin Felix Archdiocesan Pastoral Centre). The Folk Research Centre was established in 1973 for the promotion of research into St. Lucia’s history and culture. The Pastoral Centre was established in 1982 to promote the pastoral, theological and spiritual formation of the laity.

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The initiative to establish the Folk Research centre was motivated by Nostra Aetate’s call for a new approach to evangelization in mission territories which would seek and find the “seeds of the word” planted by God in every culture. Nostra Aetate like Lumen Gentium had called for a new relationship with local culture and a greater appreciation for native customs and traditions. One of the greatest impacts of the work of the Folk Research Centre is in the area of language development, especially Kweyol linguistics. The French Kweyol/Kreyol spoken by 11 million worldwide, is the lingua franca of Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Cayenne, St. Lucia, Dominica, and is also spoken in parts of Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago.

Although Haiti had developed a writing system for their Kreyol several decades before and had Kreyol liturgies with hymn, scripture and a Kreyol Mass, at the time of the estyablishment of the Folk Research Centre there was no orthography for the St. Lucian/Dominican Kweyol. This led to a collaboration between a group of linguists from the Universite Antilles-Guyane (GEREC), the University of the West Indies and the Folk Research centre’s Mouvman Kweyol Sent Lisi (MOKWEYOL). A series of consultations were coordinated by the Folk Research Centre developing and testing a new Kweyol orthography for St. Lucia/Dominica while the Francophone islands developed their version of the writing system. Today, the St. Lucian orthography is officially recognized and used widely, even for government business in Parliament.

The Kweyol orthography is not the only initiative to have emerged out of the Folk Research Centre. The Centre’s collaboration regionally and internationally with the promotion of Kweyol language and culture let to the formation of an international alliance of Kweyol/Kreyol speaking countries called BANZIL KREYOL. This group successfully lobbied UNESCO to declare October 28 each year as “International Creole/Kreyol Day” (Jounen Kweyol Entenasyonal). In St. Lucia, this celebration has become the single largest national cultural event to have emerged within the last forty years. For the Catholci Church it has become a great moment of inculturation of the liturgy, when songs, prayers and other indigenous traditions are celebrated. Although the New Testament has been translated into Kweyol and an attempt was made to translate the Eucharistics Prayers, as mentioned earlier, into Kweyol for official liturgical usage, to date there is still no word from Rome on the matter! No matter what happens, the work of the Folk Research Centre remains a sterling example of the impact of Vatican II on the Church in St. Lucia and the Caribbean.

Conference on Catholic Theology in the Caribbean Today (1994-2014)

The Conference on Catholic Theology in the Caribbean Today arose from the need felt by many in the region to develop a way of doing theology which is rooted in our reality. The following are some of the characteristics of our Caribbean reality that must be integrated into our theological method:

1. The practitioners of theology are all involved in ministering to others –giving spiritual direction, giving homilies at liturgical services, speaking to Church groups, being part of Church administration.

2. Many people of the Caribbean are very well educated, some of them more so than their peers in North America or Europe.

3. The people of the Caribbean are very religious; they belong to a wide variety of religious institutions. They like philosophical discourse, especially on religious issues, even though many have not received extended formal education.

4. The laity play a very important role in the Church of the Caribbean and will do so more and more in the future. They administer parishes, conduct services, give homilies, are spiritual directors; some of them have received training in these fields.

5. The above is particularly true of women, both lay and religious.

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In the light of the above, the Conference on Catholic Theology in the Caribbean Today has from the beginning taken on some characteristic:

a. It is pastoral, composed of people involved in ministry;b. It is composed of laity, priests and religious, all on an equal footing;c. Though composed mainly of practicing Catholics it includes presentations by members of other

Churches and faiths. It engages in dialogue with members of the church where the meeting is taking place who cannot take time off to be at the conference full time;

d. It is in full communion with the Antilles Episcopal Conference, but it is conducted by the directors of the Pastoral Centres of St, Lucia and Suriname. Before also included were the directors of the Pastoral Centre of Trinidad & Dominica.

Since the first conference was held in St. Lucia February 2-4, 1994, there have been sixteen conferences in different parts of the Caribbean, from Jamaica in the north to Suriname in the south. Conference themes over the years include : (1) Theology in the Caribbean Today I : Perspectives (2) The Spirit World (3) Ritual (4) Faces of Jesus in the Caribbean (5) Faces of Jesus in the Caribbean : II (6) God in History – The Caribbean Experience (7) Caribbean Personhood (8) Caribbean Personhood II – The Challenge of Violence (9) Caribbean Personhood III – Sexuality (10) Ecclesiology : The Church in the Caribbean Today (11) Ecclesiology : The Church in the Caribbean Today – Part II (12) Being Church in a Plural Society (13) Being Catholic in the Caribbean Today ( A Festschrift for Fr, Michel de Verteuil, C.S.Sp.) (14) Being Catholic in the Caribbean Today—Part II (15) Perspectives in Caribbean Theology – 17 Years Later; (16) Vatican II and the Church in the Caribbean (17) History and Memory.

The following list of speakers and topics from last year’s conference in St. Vincent (June 17-21, 2013) will give an idea of the breath of our discourse on 50 Years since Vatican II :

(i) The Shadows of Yesteryear : The Antilles Bishops and History after Vatican II (Dr. Anna Kasafi Perkins)

(ii) Vatican II and Catholic Theology in the Caribbean (Dr. Gerald Boodoo)(iii) The Way forward for the Church in the Caribbean 50 years after Vatican II (The Idris Hamid

Memorial Lecture: Round Table) by Archbishop Joseph Harris C.S.Sp., Bishop Jason Gordon, Prof. Terrence Julien, Sr. Annette Chow SJC, Dr. Miriam Sheridan

(iv) Creation Spirituality : What’s in it for the Caribbean? By Sr. Annette Chow SJC (The Cheryl Herrera Memorial Lecture)

(v) Vatican II and the Liturgy (Fr. Michel Francis)(vi) Mount St. Benedict and the Impact of Vatican II in the Caribbean (Bro. Paschal Jordan OSB)(vii) “Out of the Depths”: A Literary Exploration of Post-Vatican II Images of God and the

Church (Dr. Sylvia Rose-Ann Walker)(viii) The Ethos and Ethics of Human Sexuality : Beyond Vatican II (Fr. Clyde Harvey)(ix) Vatican II and the role of women : A case for continued aggiornamento (Peter Jordens)(x) “Wherever it is loved ones go” : Death and after-death in Derek Walcott’s Poetry (Patrick

Anthony)(xi) Research Projects : (i) The Role of Oral Literature in Moral Development (Sr. Rose Leon

SJC) (ii) Siparee Mai : Recent Developments (Fr. Martin Sirju) which is an ongoing public discussion on popular Catholicism in Trinidad & Tobago.

At our recently concluded conference in Trinidad & Tobago (June 9-13, 2014) under the theme “History and Memory” we reflected on the last twenty years of our efforts at theological reflection in the Caribbean. For the thirty-eight (38) participants, remembering our genuine attempts over those years at exploring God in the Caribbean, Caribbean personhood, the faces of Jesus, and being Church

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in the Caribbean was heartening. For we were convinced that as we plumb the crevices of Caribbean experience in search of God’s footprints, we are in fact keeping alight the torch of Lumen Gentium and Vatican II in the region.

End Notes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean .2. Antilles Episcopal Conference, St. James, Trinidad, Printing Plus, 2000, p.11.3. Justice and Peace in a New Caribbean, November 21, 19754. Goron K. Lewis, “The Contemporary Caribbean: A General Overview”, in Sidney W. Mintz and

Sally Price, eds. Caribbean Contours (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) p.222.5. Sidney W. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974)

p.313.6. Peter Kanyandogo, “Rethinking African Ecclesiology: Challenges from People’s Rights and

Participation” in Cecil McGarry and Patrick Ryan, eds. Inculturating the Church in Africa (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2001) p.99.

7. Ibid., pp. 99-100.8. Ibid. Kanyandogo quotes F. Eboussi-Boulaga (Christianity Without Fetishes, Maryknoll, New

York : Orbis Books, 1984) who argues that colonization and evangelization are inseparable, though different, since missionary activity exercised natural and religious authority over the Africans :

“It is the authority at once of reason and of revelation, of civilization and of faith, the former being both condition and product of the latter in each pair. For what is original and unique with Christianity is that these tandems are unified and circular. Here we have the reason why evangelization and colonialism are inseparable. In themselves they are very different but they are not opposed. Indeed they coincide with respect to the task of the rehabilitation of the retarded, fallen human being.” (pp.20-21).

9. Gabriel Malzaire “Towards a Caribbean Christian Civilization” in Patrick A.B. Anthony (ed.) Theology in the Caribbean Today 1: Perspectives (St. Lucia: Archdiocesan Pastoral Centre, 1995) p.7.

10. Ibid., p.8.11. Augier, F.R. and Gordon, S., eds. The Making of the West Indies (Trinidad/Jamaica: Longman

Caribbean Ltd, 1970) p.137.12. Idris Hamid, A History of the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad 1868-1968 (Trinidad: St.

Andrew’s Theological College, 1980) p.12.13. Jason Gordon, “Faces of Jesus in Caribbean Theology” (Caribbean Theology Today, Fifth

Annual Conference, January 5-9, 1998) cf.www.caribbeantheologytoday.net/rationale/publications/faces-of-jesus-in-caribbean-theology)

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14. Ashley Smith, “The Religious Significance of Black Power in Caribbean Churches” in Idris Hamid (ed.) Troubling of the Waters (San Fernando, Trinidad: Rahaman Printery Ltd.,19730 p.85. The following comment by Smith is also pertinent. He states “ The truth is that the Missionary Churches have either refused to permit members of their Black constituency to prepare to succeed their European mentors, or undermined their efforts in cases where the latter have managed to earn the privilege of administering at high level. It is by no accident that, despite the reputation of the region for producing academically brilliant persons in a number of areas, it is only during the last fifteen years that the Episcopal Churches of the region (and that, mostly in reaction to nationalist agitators in non-religious spheres) have had the courage to elect native members of their constituencies to the top-most administrative posts.(ibid).

15. Malzaire, p. 15.16. Walter Rodney, one of the principal proponents of the Black Power Movement in the Caribbean

writes:“The historical reality that lies behind the black-power movement in the Caribbean is the history of the region, this history, however, is not to be found in the white text books of the masters. It is the story of the deculturalization of the two principal ethnic group s and their struggle for survival as slaves or indentured labourers on the plantations.”

This quotation by Michael Campbell-Johnston S.J. is from his response to Earl Augustus’ “The Spiritual Significance of Black Power for the Christian Churches” in Idris Hamid (ed.) Troubling of the Waters (op.cit.p.116). Campbell-Johnston also quotes Dr. Omawale of Guyana who suggested that the Black Power in the Caribbean must set out to do three things: first, “it must effect irrevocably the break with imperialism which has prevented any real development of the region even after independence;” secondly, “it must also bring about the complete and real rise to power of the black masses of the region;” and thirdly, “in order to realize these goals, it has to sponsor the evolution of a relevant native philosophy and culture based on the contribution of all the people.” (ibid.p.117).

17. Cf. www.aecrc.org/documents/aecbishops-blackpower.pdf.18. The following is a description of the incident by journalist Raoul Pantin in the January 29, 2011

issue of the Trinidad Express:

“It has never been certain who came up with the idea of marching on the Cathedral. But it was a cry quickly adopted by the demonstration that morning. "We going in the church! We going in the church!" was the chant struck up as the demonstrators marched along Independence Square.

In a solid wave, the demonstrators entered the Cathedral, brushing aside the protests of two priests who were on duty at the church that morning. Some of the demonstrators draped black cloth over the "white" statues of saints in the church. And then UWI Student Guild President, Jamaican Carl Blackwood, stepped up on the podium in the church to address the demonstrators who had occupied the pews in the church, railing against "white racism" which, Blackwood charged, was a practice of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Cathedral "invasion" didn't last very long. Shortly thereafter the demonstrators spilled back out of the church and continued their protest march in downtown Port of Spain.

But the Roman Catholic Church was to figure yet again in the 1970 Black Power upheaval, this time directly involving then Roman Catholic Archbishop Anthony Pantin”.

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19. Cf.“The work of planting the Church in a given human community reaches a kind of milestone when the congregation of the faithful, already rooted in social life and considerably adapted to the local culture, enjoys a certain stability and firmness. This means that the congregation is now equipped with its own supply, insufficient though it be, of local priests, religious, and laymen. It means that it is endowed with those ministries and institutions which are necessary if the People of God is to live and develop its life under the guidance of its own bishop” . Ad Gentes in Walter M. Abbott (ed.) The Documents of Vatican II (U.S.A : The American Press, 1966) p.607.

20. Ad Gentes, art.6.21. Local/Caribbean bishops were appointed to the following dioceses : Kingston (1970), St.

George’s-in-Grenada (1970), Georgetown (1972), Castries (1974).22. Patrick A. B.Anthony, “A Case Study in Indigenization” in Idris Hamid (ed.) Out of the

Depths (San Fernando : St. Andrew’s Theological College, 1977) p.185.23. The following is a list of some of the pastorals with the date of issue. This list is not

exhaustive : (a) Antilles Bishops Speak on Black Power (1969); (b) Justice and Peace in a New Caribbean (1975); (c) True Freedom and Development in the Caribbean (1982);(d) Evangelization for a New Caribbean (1992 (e) Evangelising Family Life for a New Caribbean (1994); (f) AEC Statement Calling for Lifting of Embargo against Cuba and for Dialogue between the US and Cuba (1995);(g) On Capital Punishment (2000); (h) Justice and Peace Shall Embrace : On Crime and Violence (2003); (i) Caring for the Earth – Our Responsibility : An Invitation to Reflection (2005); (j) The Gift of Life (2008).

24. Cf.www.aecrc.org/documents/Justice and Peace in a New Caribbean.pdf25. Patrick A. B. Anthony, Dunstan St. Omer : The Man and his Works (St. Lucia : Jubilee

Trust Fund, 2007) p.7.26. Ibid., p.9.27. Ibid., p.12.28. Ibid.,29. Ibid., 14.30. “Saint Lucie” in Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984 (New York: Farrar, Straus

& Giroux, 1986) pp. 309-323.31. Cf. Thomas Bamat and Jean-Paul Wiest (eds.) Popular Catholicism in a World Church :

Seven Case Studies in Inculturation (New York: Orbis Books, 1999).32. Anthony (2007) p.2133. Ibid.,pp.21-22.34. Ad Gentes, 22 .

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