Barbados: Priests cry out against gambling

WITH BARBADIANS and visitors spending $200 - in some cases much more - in Mega 6 tickets to win the $2.5 million jackpot, some priests have come out and condemned the gambling fever now sweeping the island.

“It is evil and should be avoided,” said Father Harcourt Blackett on Sunday in a telephone interview. The Roman Catholic cleric said that the “seriously” addictive behaviour had led to the break-up of families and ruined a good few lives.

“It isn’t just the poor people who become addicted; every one across the social strata has,” he said.

Blackett said that because of people’s addiction, they were some who borrowed to play and then could not pay back which in turn led to threats and violence.

Destructive

President of the Barbados Evangelical Association (BEA), Reverend Dr Nigel Taylor, simply said gambling was destructive.

Noting that his organisation had not conducted any scientific surveys on the effects of gambling, he said it promoted greed, caused family neglect, was a wastage of money that could be used for productive purposes and promoted gains by a few at the expense of all the other players.

“The BEA wishes to repudiate the claim being made in some quarters that the church has been silent on the matter of gambling and the ills associated therewith.

“The membership of BEA has always spoken out from its more than 300 pulpits against the practices of gambling for many years. Because some Christian churches have tolerated some of the less harmful games, such as raffles, in no way means that the church in general approves and sanctions lotteries and casinos,” he said.

Pastor Lennox Boyce, from the Silver Sands Church of God, said Barbadians were practically throwing their money away going after the big jackpot.

He saw gambling as “the wasting of a God-given resource”.

Boyce added that when people gambled, it said that “we don’t expect God to take care of us”.

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