DEAR EDITOR, It struck me as sad and interesting that a parishioner of the Stella Maris RC Church in Jamaica was killed just as she finished her prayer and devotion at the church.

It is also somewhat ironic that the ministry she worked with was the Prison Ministry and the very type of individual that her ministry was trying to reform killed her. I asked myself, “What is the deeper message God is sending here?”

This took me back to our own escalating crime situation in Trinidad . What is our response when simple folks or “nobody specials” are killed in the streets of Laventille, Morvant and  Port of Spain?

How do we feel when we see the pictures of the dead bodies of young men lying face down in drains with their blood flowing on the street, decorating the front pages of our newspapers?

Are we indifferent? Have we become hardened and say, “Well as long as it is not me or my relatives?”

The killing of Vilma Mais at Stella Maris is a wake up call to the Church. If we refer to the Acts of the Apostles 7:54 – 8: 1-8 we see the disciple Stephen was stoned to death.

This was a good man of faith, filled with the Holy Spirit who had to die before Phillip moved on to Samaria to preach the good news to the people there. What is God saying to us?

Have we been praying earnestly for the removal of all that is not of Jesus from our land? Have we been asking God to forgive our individual sins and collective sins?

Our land is in pain. Our land is in need of a lot of healing. It will only happen when good people and good Catholics do more and pray more, each in their own way. If not, a lot more good people will die.

As the song says: “ If my people, would humble themselves, humbles themselves and pray. If they would seek my face and humble themselves and turn from their wicked ways. I would hear from heaven and forgive their sins. I would hear from heaven and heal their land .”

CLEVA WEEKES, Vistabella

DEAR EDITOR: Heading the list of the shocking results of a survey of 14,000 students at 60 primary schools throughout the country during the last three years is: Sexually Abused – 65%, or simply put: two out of three. ( Newsday Friday March 10).

We don't have to wait on Benny Hinn to tell us that our society has gotten worst since his last visit, and to whose coming Crusade many Catholics, we know, will find themselves attending.

Sociologically, the results are “a reflection of the social problems throughout the society” (ibid pg 10). From a religious standpoint, we know, too, it is a spiritual warfare.

Materialism is eating away at the minds and souls of our children and young people. Our society is sick and in the grip of the Evil One, whose uses ignorance, forgetfulness and laziness as vehicles to destroy souls. “So long as the soul is sick with passions, it can not perceive that which is spiritual.” ( The Teachings of the Holy Fathers on the Passions , pg 6).

Even some of our religious leaders are attacked by the Evil One with the aim of keeping their flocks asleep or scattered like sheep.

Thank God for those teachers, who provide some form of spiritual nurturing in our schools, the only spiritual nurturing many children get.

The Ministry of Education's initiative of instilling moral values in every subject area is commendable.

Teachers, despite their crucifixion in the class-room, must in their Religion classes, use the subject areas to deduce that man is 95% spiritual and 5% physical.

This they can do by helping their students identify what spiritual faculties or powers are used in their educational and Religion subjects, which are nothing but a series of spiritual exercises involving the mind, the spirit, the soul, the intellect or all the faculties as in the Five Basic Creative Arts ( A Philosophy for the Teacher , pp 6-10)

Responsible parents, parent groups, Spirit-filled leaders, Spirit-filled teachers, spiritual awareness (consciousness) and intense devotion to the Holy Spirit will go a long way to reclaim or save our children from self-destruction.

Paul Cherrie, Santa Cruz