Peter Espeut YESTERDAY MORNING at 1:10 am, Samuel Emmanuel Carter, Archbishop (Emeritus) of Kingston, died of cancer at age 83. An era has ended!
I knew him well. We first met when I entered Campion College in 1964; he was my headmaster, and I received my first (and only) caning from him. Two years later he became the first English-speaking West Indian to be consecrated a Roman Catholic bishop, and early the next morning my brother Michael and I had the honour of being altar-servers at his first Episcopal mass.
It is hard to understand what it was like dealing with the racist establishment of that day - in and out of the church. I daresay he had most trouble from some Jamaican clergy who resented serving under what thy called "that Coolie bishop". For many of the foreign missionaries he was their dream come true: the reins of the Jamaican Roman Catholic Church passing into local hands at last! In his early days he was very stiff and formal, but he warmed to his task, and infected many of us with his vision and his spirit. Upon addressing a crowd, his favourite opening was: "This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad!" He was, first and foremost, a man of God!
He presided over the church at a time of great change and renewal after Vatican Council II. In fact he attended the Council, and took as his special tasks to both bring the Roman Catholic Church into the modern world (following the reforms of the Council) and to make it Jamaican. I attended the "Days of Renewal" at Holy Cross Church he put on after he returned from Vatican II; wonderful new ideas (now commonplace) were discussed there, and I remember vividly the first Jamaican Mento Mass held in November 1966, his brainchild! It inspired me the following year to learn to play the guitar, and I helped to spread that idiom across Jamaica.
He was considered somewhat of a radical in his time. He insisted that every church community should be governed by a "Church Council", not a "Church Advisory Council", and that the spending power of parish priests be constrained by these councils. He started the Annual Synod which has become an institution. What we today call "participation", he brought into the church decades ago! He fell out of favour in Rome when he placed on the official conference table the idea of a married clergy and the ordination of women, which probably explains why his resignation in 1993 (mandatory at age 75) was accepted so quickly. He has left an indelible stamp on the local church.
He involved himself in national affairs, earning the reputation as a just man and a defender of the poor. His Pastoral Letters to his flock state his and the Church's position with undeniable clarity: "In addition to charitable donations we must take action to root out the causes of poverty that dehumanise so many of our people. This will mean committing our energies to changing the unjust economic, social and political arrangements that give rise to the present condition of the poor" (The Development of Peoples, 1987). "Human labour should not be treated as a commodity to be simply bought and sold in the market place" (The Priority of Labour, 1988). "The burden of foreign debt must not fall disproportionately on the shoulders of the poor" The Jubilee Year, 1991. These documents need to be revisited.
It was he who led the March for Peace through Hannah Town, Matthew's Lane and Tivoli Gardens in 1992. He chaired the committee which planned the PNP/JLP pre-election debates of 1993. When Death Row prisoners rioted because they felt prison conditions were inhuman and unjust, they called for him to come to negotiate with them. He was a founding member of CAFFE and until recently acted as chairman. He received the Commander of the Order of Distinction (by a JLP government) in 1970 and the Order of Jamaica (by a PNP government) in 1992.
His leadership qualities were recognised early by his peers. He was elected President of the Antilles Bishops' Conference in 1968 while only an auxiliary bishop. He served in this post for a total of 21 years out of 25. His influence was genuinely regional. He was selected to sit on the 1973 Duffus Commission of Enquiry into the brutality and fraud of the Gairy regime in Grenada with its Mongoose Gang. He was asked to be an observer during the 1993 elections in Guyana. He also observed the 1998 elections in St. Kitts and with the Carter Centre in Guyana. In 1994 he was asked by Pope John Paul II to attend the Special African Synod; and in 1997 (in his 78th year) he was elected by the Roman Catholic Bishops of the Antilles to represent them at the Special Synod of the Bishops of the Americas.
He had a special commitment to Christian unity; the motto on his coat of arms is: "That all may be one". A leader of the ecumenical movement in Jamaica, the Caribbean and the world, he made sure that the Catholic Church was a founding member of both the JCC and the CCC. In fact he was elected Chairman at the Inaugural Assembly of the CCC in 1973, and was President of the JCC several times. He was co-chairman of the official dialogue (towards church unity) between the global Roman Catholic Church and the Disciples of Christ, and after his retirement he received (in 1996) an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Bethany College, run by the Disciples of Christ.
He had a personal commitment to educating Jamaicans. He was the Founder and first Headmaster of Campion College (1960-64). He was a council member of the JTA (1964-65) and a member of the JTA Planning Committee. He himself chaired the Archdiocesan Education Board for 25 years, which helped to shape the course of the more than 75 Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Kingston. He personally chaired the board of the secondary school attached to his Cathedral and I served with him as his vice-Chairman (and succeeded him upon his retirement).
He grew up to value education. His father died early and his mother sold vegetables at Victoria Market to send her seven children to school and to maintain the family home on Hagley Park Road. From humble beginnings at St. Aloysius Boys' School on Duke Street he went to the now defunct St. Simon's College (for boys who could not afford the fees of more prestigious schools). A diligent scholar, he went on to earn four university degrees: a baccalaureate in Philosophy (Weston College) and three post-graduate: an MA in Philosophy (Weston), a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (Weston) and a Master's in Social Work (Boston College). In recognition of a life well lived in service of others he has been awarded eight honorary doctorates: Doctor of Divinity (1966), Doctor of Sacred Theology (Boston College - 1988); and Doctor of Laws (Holy Cross College, Boston - 1970; LeMoyne College, Syracuse - 1976; Loyola University, Chicago - 1979; UWI, Mona - 1988); Fairfield University - 2000), and the one mentioned above.
Velia and I were honoured when Archbishop Carter agreed to receive our nuptial vows in Trinidad (in 1991), and he called us on our eleventh wedding anniversary just a week ago to apologise for not being able to share it with us personally; although his voice was strong and his spirit high, he was not physically well enough to come. He was a fanatical Kalooki player, and Velia and I played cards with him regularly for over a decade. Recently he was in some discomfort, and his treatment for cancer was difficult for him. Now he is gone, and my greatest regret is that I never found the time to systematically tape record his life journey which he shared so liberally with me in the last decade or so of his life.
Samuel Emmanuel Carter was a great Christian, a great Jamaican man, a great mentor. My life is better because of him. Our greatest tribute will be to try to emulate him.
Peter Espeut is a Sociologist and is a Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church.
