An Open Letter To Cousin Thwaites

An Open Letter to Cousin Thwaites

Dear Cousin Thwaites; This letter is being written to you at a time when the Roman Catholic Church is being called on to play a much greater role in the social, economic and cultural development, not only of Jamaica, but of the region as a whole. If Roman Catholics of whichever order or rank within that Church is to hold and function in public office, then it is important to know which when hat to is to be worn. Here I would like to draw on my own limited experience in wearing two hats.

There was a time, when I was the chairman for the Aintree Peoples National Partys Group while at the same time being a vice president of the Aintree Citizen Association, Horace Prince at the time also held a position of Vice President in the Citizens Association as well as being a member of the party group. The Citizen Association President at the time was the Rev. Mark Wedderburn J.P., a person with sympathies for the Jamaica Labour Party. As all members of the Citizen Association will point out, that at no time, was any attempt made by me to impose on the Citizens Association, which represents citizens of all political views and no political views, the positions and policies of the Peoples Nation Party, nor did the Chairman, the Rev. Mark Wedderburn tried to impose either the positions of his Church or the Jamaica Labour Party on the association. In fact, the Member of Parliament, the Hon Fitz Jackson, does not have too many pleasant memories of me, for the simple reason, that I tried my outmost best to hold him accountable for any promise he made, be it to cut the park, be it to assist the small traders along the corridor below the Path Finders Bar to regularize their status on the land they occupied or to paint the Marlin Avenue nursery. As the chairman of the party group, Comrades will recall, that I stood firmly against those who took strike action in the carrying out of party work as a result of disputes for their cut of touch pork, a good comrade will recall that I advised him against

the existing traditions-not to seek nor accept contract for work. When the Member of Parliament failed to cut the park for Christmas as was promised, I took my machete and went single handily and cut that park, for the simple reason , that the Peoples National Party , through its Member of Parliament, had made a promise to the Citizens Association, and the words of the party in the community was being opened to questioning and doubt. When I became a member of the Church and felt that there might be a conflict of interest between my position as the Chairman of the party Group and the teachings of the Church, I gave up my position of Group Chairman and did my best to withdraw from active politics.

Cousin THwaites, it is not my view, that you should withdraw from active politics nor give up your position as the Minister of Education, rather it is my firm that there is a need for you to recognize that you are the Minister of Education for all Jamaicans, Christians and non-Christians, Jews and Gentiles, Blacks and Whites, Indians and Chinese, heterosexuals and homosexuals, not some Jamaicans. As the Minister of Education, you are aware that a society cannot function the way it should, if significant numbers of individuals do not have a sense of belonging and being wanted by that society. In fact , the larger the number of individuals who feels alienated by the society, the larger the number of individuals who feel unwanted by the society, the more dysfunctional is that society. I refuse to believe, that, the task of a Roman Catholic carrying the duties of the Minister of Education , is to increase the level of or perception of alienation in the society and hence its level of dysfunction. I would prefer, to believe the opposite, that a Roman Catholic carrying out the duties of the Minister of Education, would seek actively, creatively and energetically to reduce the sense of alienation felt by many and to ensure that the children of all Jamaicans without exception benefit equally from the education system. The position, you as the Minister of Education has taken towards the gay community is very unfortunate. Unfortunate because it seeks to ignore the fact, that there are a number of Jamaicans who are physically built and or mental capable of being a part of a heterosexual relationship. In the community of Aintree, Greater Portmore, there is a young man, who is an ardent Church goer and

practicing Christian, who no Christian woman or any woman for that matter would seek to marry, for the simple reason that he is physically and mentally more female than male, with his masculinity in part determine by hormone injections. At Ms. Chins club in Half Way Tree, once danced a young lady, whose un- erect clitoris was at least three inches in length. Then there was a lecturer at the former St. Andrew Community College, who while was physically male, think s like a woman, acted like a woman and was a woman in all things except in anatomy. The above individuals, and children who are similar to them, your position is saying that they should either be either seek to become part of what must be an abnormal heterosexual union or be prepared to take the oat of celibacy in order to receive equal benefit from the educational system. Should your position be taken to its logical conclusion, it is saying :- (1) that they are not the children of Jamaican citizens and or legal taxpaying residents, but either orphans and or unwantedunwelcomed aliens and (2) that these children and individuals should not be born. Here, I would like to point out that, one cannot be pro-life and pro-choice at the same time, if these children should not be born, how does one prevent their birth, their coming into this world? The answer would be, either by selected compulsory abortions or selected compulsory sterilization, both of which runs counter to everything that the Catholic Church believes in. Thus, the follow up question should be:-Having being born, citizens of this fair island, should they be treated any less or in any way unequal to other children? I think the answer that the Roman Catholic Church would give is a clear and resounding No!

There is also a need to examine your approach to the question of prayer in school. While I am not in principal, against prayer or devotion as it is called in schools; I am extremely concerned, that the perception is given, that you are for only :Christian prayer or devotion in public schools. This perception, raises a number of concerns, namely:- (1) Is effort to be made by the schools, to indentify and invite religious leaders from other Faiths to conduct devotion/prayer with the children of their Faiths? If, not, then one is again speaking of a policy to exclude and alienate others of other Faiths. (2) Would a child be punished for not attending religious devotion? If yes, one is saying that the curriculum of the public schools and private

schools which are funded from the public purse is a Christian curriculum, thus other religions, beliefs and or non-beliefs are not to be taken into account. While, I do stoutly defend the rights of my own daughter to attend Christian devotion/prayer, I also believe , and hold firmly to that belief, that the daughter of one of my younger cousins, he is a Rastafarian, and his sons who are practicing Rastafarians, should in no way be forced or compelled or led to feel alienated or marginalized for not attending Christian devotion .

Here I would like to invite, you my cousin Thwaites to look back at the history of the Catholic Church in the period of the unification of Germany under Bismarck. There you will see, that, the approach that you seem to be taking is in no way new, and in fact it was actually used against the Roman Catholic in Germany, an approach and position taken by the then ruling Protestants, which led to the expulsion and imprisonment of many Roman Catholics, laymen, priests and nuns alike. Should one be guided by history, then one should seek to avoid the errors made by others and draw upon ones own experiences. It would be most unfortunate, that you as a practicing Roman Catholic, in any way and in any form contribute to the creation or encourage the continuation of a culture and a set of policies which have in the past, in many countries, led to the prosecution of individuals on the basis of their religious beliefs.

Please, note, that the above is very much different , from asking or demanding of the Governor General to state his position and the position of his Church on female genital mutilation. Female genital mutilation is an act of violence and gender discrimination. It was and is most unfortunate, that the Governor General of Jamaica is yet to develop a known public position on this issue.

Cousin Thwaites, Roman Catholics, holding political office, is not new to Jamaica or to the region as a whole. As such, I have taken, the liberty, to attach a copy of a speech made by the late President Kennedy of the United States.

Yours truly Basil Fletcher, A contribution to the Kaddish

Reverend Meza, Reverend Reck, I'm grateful for your generous invitation to speak my views. While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida--the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power--the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms--an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues--for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers. But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--

and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril. Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office. I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so--and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test--even by indirection--for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it. I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none-who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him--and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.

This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died." And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died--when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches--when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom--and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey--but no one knows whether they were Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo. I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition--to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress--on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)--instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic. I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts--why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as Ireland and France--and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and De Gaulle. But let me stress again that these are my views--for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters-and the church does not speak for me.

Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. But if the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same. But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith--nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election. If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people. But if, on the other hand, I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the Presidency--practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution . . . so help me God.