NOT IN MY CHURCH!
Rector of the St Lucy’s Parish Church, Reverend Curtis Goodridge, is putting a ban on funerals with “mourning colours optional” requests.
This, after he was outraged by the provocative and utterly inappropriate dress by some young people at a funeral on Tuesday.
“Mourning colours optional is just giving young people leeway to wear what they want, where they want and how they want. If there is a request for mourning colours optional, the funeral will have to go somewhere else.
“It is not for St Lucy’s Church. I will be speaking to funeral directors, and any time that is mentioned they will have to tell the families, ‘Not St Lucy’s Church’,” Goodridge told the WEEKEND NATION yesterday.
The priest made the decision after presiding over the funeral of a 31-year-old car accident victim. Some young women, he said, were wearing outfits not fit even for the bedroom. Goodridge said he was so shocked by the kaleidoscope of colours, the exposed tattoos and flesh that he was forced to speak about it at the start of the service, prompting some young people to exit the church.
“I remarked that Crop Over was in the church . . . . I thought I was at Kadooment. I thought some of those things were costumes. Their dress was outrageous. I don’t think those type of things are suitable for church. The church has standards. The church has rules and regulations set out by God in the Scriptures. Our people need to know that they must uphold standards,” he said.
Goodridge explained that he did not think it out of place to speak at the time since the offence had been committed at that point and there would hardly be another forum in which he would be able to speak to them.
“Our young people need direction [and] guidance, and the church must give it. When I started to speak I saw some of them, one right in front the pulpit walk away. I felt it was disrespectful and irreverent to the Lord, the deceased, the family, the priest and the church. I don’t think I was saying anything that was wrong. Young people believe that they can say and do what they like and no one is to say anything,” the priest stated.
Goodridge said he expected to be labelled “old-fashioned and old-timish” but he was adamant that he was not about to allow the behaviour of society to be brought into the church.
“I’m not going to tolerate it. There are certain things I see in the world being brought into the church, but the church must be taken into the world,” he stated.
There were funerals during which weed or alcohol were thrown into the graves, which was shocking, Goodridge said, but the display on Tuesday he had never seen in “all his years”.
“It really was ridiculous,” he said.
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