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Marian Pallister, chair of Pax Christi Scotland & a Justice & Peace commissioner, reflects on the importance of dialogue – and song – in peacemaking.  Image: GlasgowLive.

Those of us old enough to remember the 1988 BT advert starring Maureen Lipman as over-supportive grandma Beattie, chatting on the phone to her grandson Anthony who has just failed all his exams, know that ‘It’s good to talk’.

And of course, we have it on a much higher authority these days. Pope Francis has said ‘If there is one word that we should never tire of repeating, it is this: dialogue. We are called to promote a culture of dialogue by every possible means and thus to rebuild the fabric of society.’

Every means possible?

I would suggest that using music can encourage dialogue, and I hope that everyone has heard ‘Welcome home’, written and sung by the Maryhill Integration Network’s Joyous Choir (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCJgydF2Nw).

Who can forget the solidarity shown in Kenmure Street, Glasgow, back in May? ‘Welcome home’, was written to celebrate that solidarity, when hundreds gathered to prevent the Home Office from carrying out a dawn raid to take people from their homes.

The peaceful protest in itself offered the opening of a dialogue with the Home Office – the chant taken up in the song, ‘These are our neighbours, let them go’, stated the feelings of the local community but also far wider society in Scotland which has made it clear for many years that we welcome refugees.

The Kenmure Street raid by immigration enforcement officers was a bad strategic move on the part of the Home Office, of course. If they thought that this multicultural area of Glasgow was going to let this happen, they completely miscalculated. 

But Priti Patel failed to enter into dialogue that could lead to peace and understanding. Instead, she went on the attack, stressing that ‘Immigration is a reserved matter for the Government here [in London]…Quite frankly it is pretty clear that when it comes to the nationalists in Scotland they would much rather have an immigration policy of open borders, no checks when it comes to criminals coming to the UK, and no border controls.’

She added that the Westminster Government was ‘…changing our laws and bringing in new legislation so the government can remove people that should not be in our country.’

In a further speech, she said the Glasgow immigration protesters were protecting ‘rapists and murderers’.

Criminals? Rapists? Murderers?

These are our neighbours.  They are people seeking asylum, who deserve a safe home, just like the rest of us. The Joyous Choir’s song has been my earworm since I first heard it. I hope it may get into your ear, too, and that we sing it in solidarity with all of our friends and neighbours, near and far. We are, as Pope Francis reminds us, all part of the human family.

My prayer as someone working for peace is that the Church and Scottish politicians (like those who condemned the Kenmure Street raid) come together to offer to dialogue with Ms Patel, with the aim of reducing the hostility, toning down the rhetoric, recognising the neighbours that we would like to welcome home – rebuilding the fabric of a peaceful society.

Find Pax Christi Scotland at www.paxchristiscotland.org 

In this week's blog, 'Early and Unjust Death', Honor Hania reflects on Fr Gustavo Gutierrez and the significance of his preaching on the Preferential Option For the Poor.

"To be poor is to be familiar with death. It is very easy to see these things when we are working with poor persons. They speak with familiarity about death, the deaths of children or other persons because it is so frequent. Certainly, death is one aspect of human life, but I am speaking of early and unjust death. Poverty means physical death due to hunger, diseases and other factors. The poor are familiar with these other aspects of death".  Gustavo Gutierrez

Fr Gustavo Gutierrez, the renowned Peruvian theologian, often uses the phrase "early and unjust death." It was a way of explaining simply the dire effects of poverty on people's lives. Occasionally he uses it to describe the catastrophic consequences of the Spanish conquest of Peru on the indigenous people- disease, malnutrition etc. - but more often he is referencing poverty today and its unavoidable, stark outcome: death. 

Gutierrez did not view poverty as inevitable. He considers it the result of structural injustices that leave people in sub-human conditions, hardship, sickness and deprivation, while others enjoy massive riches.

His proposal  is the adoption of what has become known as the 'Preferential Option for the Poor.' In essence, this means that in any given circumstance, we need to think first of the effect on the most vulnerable. It acknowledges that there are people who are without the necessities of life and that their condition is urgent; therefore, a conscious attempt must be made to try to improve their situation:  we must 'take a Preferential Option' on their behalf; they are in special need, and therefore have a particular claim on Christians.

The point is not that the poor are better people or more loved by God, but simply that they are in circumstances which require urgent attention. Gutierrez puts it this way: 'The very term preference obviously precludes any exclusivity; it simply points to who ought to be first – not the only –objects of our solidarity.' Pope St. John Paul II expressed this as 'primacy.' He wrote, 'This is a Preferential Option, a special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity…' (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, parag. 42). 

Gutierrez challenges the Church to take up this Preferential Option. "Poverty is the threat and the reality of an unjust and early death….The issue is not whether the Church has other goals, other ends; the issue is whether the Church will announce life, announce the Resurrection, be a witness of this definite love in history. And poverty is a big challenge today to this announcement."

Fr Gutierrez will celebrate his 93rd birthday on 8th June. We wish him health and happiness and continued strength to preach the Preferential Option.

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Quotations from: “Theology from the experience of the poor : a talk delivered by Father Gutierrez at the 1992 Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This week in our blog Duncan MacLaren gives a facinating insight into his life, having lived in many different countries, experiencing different cultures and problems including here in Scotland where he has been inspired to join his local community council to help create a just society. 

There are many ways to turn interest in Catholic Social Teaching into a loving praxis that transforms people and ultimately the world. Many people are put off by politics even though it is really the way we construct a just society – or don’t! Being involved in party politics means making compromises and occasionally going against what you regard as the common good if there is a clash between your faith-filled beliefs and the secular pragmatism of the Party. One way of being involved in a non-party political way is through working in your local community council. 

I came at this from working in the international development sphere for SCIAF and Caritas Internationalis for a quarter of a century. My work took me to communities in more than seventy countries, most of them in the global South (so-called ‘developing’ countries). Working for and among these communities in countries far from my West of Scotland roots was (and still is) my passion. The background philosophy to such work was the Catholic Social Justice Tradition, and especially the magisterial Catholic Social Teaching. But the question for me was how can you exercise this teaching in your own, pluralistic patch?

When I came back to Scotland at the end of 2013 after eighteen years overseas, I realised that I knew communities furth of our shores better than my local community. To become better acquainted with the issues in my home area, I was urged to join my local community council. That was six years ago and since then I have become the Chair of the Merchant City and Trongate Community Council (MCTCC), covering much of the Glasgow City Centre. 

Through my participation in MCTCC, I have been taught the relevance of local democracy and have seen subsidiarity in action. I and my colleagues have been involved in opposing planning which took agency away from local people and veered too much towards the interests of developers whose motives were dominated by profit to the exclusion of decent, affordable housing or a building of beauty. We have tried to remind a Council hungry for funds that ‘development’ does not necessarily mean erecting buildings but also creating green spaces and other areas where we allow people’s wellbeing to flourish.

We have worked successfully with locally elected politicians from across the parties, recognising, at least in our area, their keenness to serve the residential community, albeit with the caveats given above. We have a good relationship with our community police who have to deal with everyone from street people with addictions to more serious, violent crime and everything in between. I have taken a particular interest in the policies around begging and drug issues, knowing that these vulnerable people who may annoy the hell out of you when they approach you in the street for the ‘bus fare home’ but, in the end, require long-term public health assistance, not police enforcement to disappear off the streets for a day or two.

At one of the Community Council meetings, I said to a councillor who headed some important committees that affected people’s lives, why don’t you plan for roads, pavements, and buildings through the lens of the most vulnerable? I meant, for example, people with disabilities, the less mobile around us, young mothers with large prams, people with visual impairments, people who are strangers in the city. They are usually an afterthought on a Council checklist rather than being at the forefront of development and planning thinking. That way, we would ensure that we would develop the City for everyone, almost automatically.

The Councillor looked at me with some astonishment but perhaps a seed had been planted in his efficient mind and change might happen with solidarity, the common good and the option for the poor becoming, perhaps not the terms used, but the ethical philosophy permeating the planning and development processes. That is perhaps one small way of coming closer to achieving the Beatitudes at a very local level in our communities, and using Catholic Social Teaching principles to guide our praxis.

For more information on community councils, see
 https://www.communitycouncils.scot/. 

Dr Duncan MacLaren KCSG was Executive Director of SCIAF and Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis headquartered in the Vatican. He was a Visiting Professor at Australian Catholic University, Sydney and lectured in Catholic social ethics and international development studies. He also coordinated a programme to offer tertiary education to Burmese refugees from camps in Thailand. In Scotland, he is a member of the Bishops’ Committee on Inter-religious Dialogue, a Lay Dominican of many years’ standing and a member of the Order’s International Justice and Peace Commission. As he writes here, he is Chair of the Community Council which covers much of Glasgow City Centre.