Today is the 110th anniversary of the birth of a Jamaican priest, the late Monsignor Gladstone Wilson, who was born in 1906 and died in 1974. In his day Monsignor Wilson was regarded as the seventh most learned man in the world and fourth in the Roman Catholic Church. Receiving the first of his four doctorates when he was only 23 years old, Wilson was also a language scholar who spoke 14 languages fluently. In his youth, Monsignor Wilson attended St George’s College where he converted to the Roman Catholic Church. He was a university lecturer at a theological college in Rome and returned to Jamaica in 1941.

What was Jamaica like in 1941 when Father Wilson (later Monsignor) returned to the island? The birth of nationalism in the mid to late 1930s has been called the beginning of the ‘New Jamaica’. The first 15 years between 1935 and 1950 were critical in the start of this whole thrust.

While the road to self-government started with the Morant Bay Rebellion and continued with the efforts of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, things started to get formally organised with the establishment of the National Reform Association in 1935. Separate from that, what might have started as a discussion among the friends of Norman Manley at his home (called ‘Drumblair’) became known as the ‘Drumblair Circle”. Today the manifestos of both major political parties have strains of the Drumblair Circle.

At the time of Monsignor Wilson’s return to Jamaica, the Drumblair Circle was in full swing. According to the late Wilmot “Motty” Perkins, “before the advent of the University of the West Indies, all intellectual activity revolved around Drumblair”. In Norman Manley’s Drumblair Circle classical music and all sorts of intellectual thought, including scholarly writings and political ideology, were discussed. Immediately upon his return to Jamaica, Monsignor Wilson was invited by the elder Manley to be a part of this circle of friends.

When the elder Manley was criticised by an American-born Roman Catholic priest for his socialist positions, Norman Manley said that he did not understand the criticism because everything that he was trying to do was a part of the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. This indicated that Norman Manley was reading the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Was it Monsignor Wilson who introduced the elder Manley to Roman Catholic social teachings? Those criticisms of Norman Manley were made in 1941. Monsignor Wilson returned to Jamaica in 1941. Was there any connection between Manley’s answer and Monsignor Wilson?

It would be Michael Manley, son of Norman Manley, who as prime minister introduced the National Minimum Wage in Jamaica in 1975. I have often argued that Michael Manley was the ‘printout’ of his father. The idea of a minimum wage came straight from the encyclicalRerum Novarum (New Ways) by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, who mentioned the need for a living wage, especially in light of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, where many workers were being paid ‘starvation’ wages. Was it Monsignor Wilson who sowed this idea in Norman Manley’s head that was passed to his son? Perhaps!

The Manleys were never Roman Catholic, but read widely. They would have known of the encyclicals of Pope John XXIII, who reigned as pope from 1958 to 1963. In the 1970s Michael Manley introduced worker participation at the workplace beginning with government entities and later the Employee Share Ownership Programme. But such ideas were found in the encyclicalsMater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher) published in 1961, andPacem en Terras (Peace on Earth) published in 1963, both by the late Pope John XXIII. Again, were the seeds of this weaving of Roman Catholic social teaching into the Norman Manley version of socialism sowed by Monsignor Wilson? Perhaps.

Earlier documents of the Roman Catholic Church stated that one could not be a good socialist and a good (Roman) Catholic at the same time. That was because in those days the words ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ were used interchangeably by the linguists who did the translations of the documents. This was made clear in 1971 in the documentJustice in the World. It was also reiterated inJustice and Peace in a New Caribbean in 1975 by the region’s Roman Catholic bishops. It is worthwhile for all Roman Catholics to remember this in this year of mercy as proclaimed by Pope Francis.

When the body of National Hero Marcus Garvey was re-interred in Jamaica in 1964, Garvey was ‘churched’ at Holy Trinity Cathedral as it was believed that he was baptised a Roman Catholic before he died in a Roman Catholic hospital in England. It was Monsignor Gladstone Wilson who preached the homily. If possible, Garveyites would do well to research the speech through theJamaica Information Service or maybe the National Library of Jamaica on East Street, Kingston. A priest who died more than 10 years ago allowed me to listen to his tapes, but his family has not been able to locate the tape from among his things.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com