A Roman Catholic priest broke from tradition and blessed no toys during the celebration of the Feast of the Holy Innocents at the Lady of Perpetual Help Church in San Fernando yesterday.
Father Martin Sirju had asked parents not to bring their children’s toys to church.
Instead, he anointed the children’s forehead with blessed oil, placed his hands on their heads and said a silent prayer for each of them. Sirju said there was nothing wrong with blessing the toys.
“I don’t think it is wrong to bless the toys. I just don’t think today is the day to do it.”
Sirju said he researched it and did not see the significance in blessing the toys, except that it is a tradition in T&T.
Sirju said the blessing of the toys cheapens the true meaning of the Feast. A few parishioners who did not know about the priest earlier request brought their children’s toys to church. The toys remained on the pew while the children went forward to be blessed. It has become a tradition for parents and guardians to take their children to church with their Christmas toys to be blessed.
The Feast on December 28 is in commemoration of the massacre of male children, between the ages of two years old and under, ordered by King Herod in Bethlehem in an attempt to kill baby Jesus.
The priest used the occasion to comment on violence meted out against children in various forms, including through physical abuse and the lack of love and education.
“The lack of love is form of violence against children,” he said.
He said one of the greatest responsibilities of parents was to love the children they bring into the world, but noted that many children, including teenagers, sometimes cry out to him and his colleagues for love and attention.
“How do we start to take away violence from a violent Trinidad, we start by loving our children.”
Another form of violence against children, he said, was the lack of education, especially of people in the lower income bracket.
Noting that the majority of the prison population was illiterate and many suffer from mental illness, he said: ‘This is the net effect of neglect by many stakeholders not just in the education system but a network of people that neglect when it comes to education, contributing to the violence that we see in our society and the lack of proper education of the poor is itself a next violence inflicted on them.”
Another form of massacre of the innocence, he said was the level of physical and sexual abuse in the country.
He said his friend, a licenced therapist, who came here to work after working with low income families in the United States told him the level of physical violence inflicted upon children in T&T was much more widespread than in New York.
Saying that people needed to relate in more a peaceful manner, he said the first example has to be set by the parents.
“If they do not communicate in a peaceful way to their children, their children will not communicate in a peaceful way.”
Sirju said the fourth way, a more subtle way, in which violence was meted out to children was by not baptising them.
Teaching children carols and the scriptures, he said, should not only be the responsibility of the church.
He said some children could recite by heart songs from the US and Jamaica, but they do not know Christmas songs by heart.