The news that pornographic video clips of secondary school students are in circulation via the cell phone has been met in some quarters with a kind of nonchalance that can leave understated - and often unstated - that all aspects of this sordid affair are evil.

True, as many have said, given the eroticism on display everywhere, what has happened in our schools and among our schoolchildren is not altogether surprising. Add to that the attraction of the powerful multimedia format and what has taken place then becomes to some extent explicable. But activities of the kind that were reported last month have the potential of doing great spiritual harm to the society.

No one should expect that the problem will simply fade away with time, affecting us little. Last November, a similar kind of deviance was reported in Tobago. These incidents invite leaders and ordinary citizens alike to reflect on the causes of the problem and to find beneficial ways of treating with the issues they raise.

They are not a matter only for the Ministry of Education or some other Government department to deal with. But it seemed that Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar was taking this view when, at a recent sitting of Parliament, she accused the Education Minister of failing to deal with the situation that had developed.

The minister, for her part, following the Opposition Leader’s line, informed a subsequent sitting of Parliament that investigations had been taking place at the nation’s schools and that three persons involved in the apparent assault of a schoolgirl had been arrested and charged.

Certainly the matter needed the prompt attention of the Education Ministry, but is that as far as responsibility goes? And, is shock and disgust by citizens – however sincere – all we will take from this affair? Questions of morality – right and wrong, good and evil – are everybody’s business: no one can exclude himself or herself.

Issues of the real world

Further, if we attempt to deal only with behaviour and treat in isolation the case of the video clips for example, we ignore at our peril what gives rise to the behaviour and matters of morality.

As a nation we risk evading the issues of the so-called real world, a dangerous environment that our youth must inhabit. Put another way, we may lose the opportunity to explain to our young people a part of that real world in which they must exist.

At the launch of Carnival 2007 in Scarborough last weekend, the Assistant Secretary of Community Development and Culture in the Tobago House of Assembly Wendell Berkely told the people of Tobago to enjoy themselves but with due consideration and respect for others.

“Don’t overdo,” he cautioned. After Carnival, he said, “we all have to go on living in Tobago”.

His appropriate and reasonable appeal sounded extraordinary – but it should not. More often than not, however, persons in public office today avoid addressing issues that relate to moral standards, no doubt because they themselves so easily come under public scrutiny and because of a mistaken notion about rights and freedom. But no one gains when this responsibility is left to someone else. 

From a Christian perspective, the Gospel of Christ must be proclaimed today creatively and with even greater zeal because the Gospel has the power to save us – not only from damnation but from misconception about who we really are, about good and bad, and right and wrong.

 Says St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians 15: 1-2, the second reading this Sunday: “The Gospel will save you only if you keep believing exactly what I preached to you – believing anything else will not lead to anything.”