Monday, February 12, 2007

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. 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".