EDITORIAL: Partisan politics and the pulpit
With the imminence of a general election in Barbados, the public discourse assumes a penchant for divers matters that would not otherwise enter into the public domain. These include the franchise rights of prisoners,; political campaign finance reform, the extent to which the vote is or may be treated as a commercial commodity and one that seems to have arisen for the first time this year; whether priests should play a role in partisan politics.
That a priest may participate in the assessment of any aspect of official policy for its compatibility with the norms of a just and progressive democratic society cannot seriously be disputed. And we have witnessed, over the years, the sacerdotal view being expressed on issues such as the decriminalization of abortion under certain circumstances by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1983; on the proposal to examine casino gambling (indeed, the committee appointed to carry out this assessment was chaired by a prominent cleric) and, if memory serves us well, there would have been observations on the propriety of officially sanctioning the “union other than marriage” and the legitimation of children born out of wedlock, as there doubtless will be on such topics as the abolition of the death penalty, the decriminalization of both marijuana and of homosexual activity between consenting adult males in private if it should ever come to that.
The current iteration of the debate appears to owe its origin to a statement made to a reporter from another section of the press other than the Barbados Advocate by Monsignor Vincent Blackett, a local Roman Catholic priest. According to the prelate, I don’t think that we should run for public office, People might have their own preference for who they want, but we have to transcend that. We have to be above that…” It seems clear that the goodly Monsignor is not referring merely to the priest making ex cathedra observations on policy issues, but rather to him or her contesting a seat in an election.
Certainly, there is no proscription of such an initiative in strict law. Once the individual satisfies the requirements of section 43 of the Constitution, that is that he or she is a citizen of Barbados of the age of twenty-one years or upwards; and has such connection with Barbados by residence therein as may be prescribed by Parliament, and so long as they do not come within any of the disqualified categories as stipulated in section 44, then he or she is free to seek office as a member of Parliament although, given our historical political culture, success might mean ultimately becoming a candidate for one political party or another.
It might be this last moreso than any thing else that we believe could prove an impediment to the likelihood of any priest qua priest becoming an elected member of parliament.
The debate exists elsewhere. In a letter to the New York Times published in May last year, a Floridian Rabbi, Gilbert Rosenthal, admitted that he had indeed spoken out on moral issues such as civil rights and that he had opposed the Vietnam War. He concludes however, “But I felt that it would have been wrong to turn my pulpit into a political forum. The glory of our country is its separation of church and state. Heaven help us if we betray that legacy.”
We too enjoy a constitutional separation of church and state and while this cannot prevent the priest from speaking out on what may be loosely termed “moral issues”, it should restrain the use of the pulpit to advocate a partisan political view. Anything else would, in our view, trespass on the sacred ground of constitutionalism.