ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, Father Clement Paul has added his voice to the debate surrounding Barbados’ low birth rate.
Some people have come out in support, but it has to be acknowledged that what Father Paul is saying, is very different from what they would want us to believe.
For a start, some of them see nothing wrong with the low birth rate that resides in this country. This is not the vicar’s call.
The little I know of the priest stems from the five years I spent, with others and him, sitting on an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) committee; he is not one to lash out at every issue. He thinks before he speaks.
Father Paul opines that as nature has its own laws, when this is violated, it causes imbalance. Because of this imbalance, is why our pension ages have risen from ages 60 and 65 to 67. My understanding is that there was even talk of carrying the age to 70.
My question is, simply, when will the age surpass 70 and where will it end? Will it come to the abandonment of pensions, other than for those privately harnessed, as the state becomes unable to follow through, because there are insufficient people in work to contribute to the necessary pension fund?
This writer takes the point that paying people to have children, whether single or married couples, is not the ideal situation. One has to accept, though, that this tax law already exists in Barbados, to the tune of $2 000 for two children, for those who qualify. The call for encouraging people to be married has to be commended.
Senator Dr Rev. David Durant and I had our foundation in Christian teachings by his mother, Sister Durant, who was our Sunday school teacher, at the Pilgrim Holiness Church in Chimborazo, St Joseph. I understand where that call was initiated.
History is replete with the clarion call for women, in particular during the sixties, to push for building careers, rather than pursue the noble cause of child bearing. The Bible speaks to being “fruitful and multiply,” and I suspect this had little to do with agriculture or mathematics.
No one is here suggesting that all young people go and breed like rabbits; it calls for an understanding of one’s position and standing in society, considering the future of self and our country, and prudently making a sensible determination that fits within the realm of things.
– REV. H. MALCOLM GIBBS-TAITT, consumer analyst
