Mike Mineter, member of the Commission for Caritas, Justice and Peace of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, reflects on today’s Kairos.
This is a Kairos time: an intense time of crises that calls us to pray and work for transformation in many ways. We still hear people say “we are in COVID19 together” – yet it is now demonstrably true that the price paid in lives is much greater among care givers, ethnic minorities, and people in poorer communities.
Inequality has been highlighted. Over and above this crisis there is an urgent need to respond to how humans are harming the Earth: it is likely that world-wide this calendar year, more will die prematurely from air pollution than directly from COVID19.
Members of our Archdiocesan Commission felt that those of us in relative ease, with time and energy available, owed it to those losing lives, loved ones and livelihoods to strive to build a better future. The Commission is therefore launching working groups that will focus upon defined themes.
These groups don’t seek to be experts, but to be informed and to communicate with relevant parish groups, the Commission itself, and through it the Archdiocese in order that together we can be more aware, engaged and active in seeking a more just future.
The groups aim to pray, learn and reflect together, recognising that prayer and reflection need to end in action – including raising awareness in our parish communities. Groups will share ideas, experience and resources (such as liturgical, briefings, links to other initiatives). It is too early to say how the groups will develop; drawn initially from our Archdiocesan J&P network and parish groups it is hoped that in time these will broaden out to include other Christians, people of other faiths and indeed, following the Holy Father’s lead, all people of good will.
The groups aim to help guide us to positive, practical and sustainable action for the common good.
The initial groups are:
- Laudato Si: It is five years since Pope Francis published Laudato Si, yet the Church seems far from committing to it seriously. Recognising ourselves as a part of the Earth in communion with creation, and hearing the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, we are called to conversion in how we live, personally, in communities, and socio-economically. We are urging a) the formation of circles in parishes, urgently; b) people to join the GCCM animators course.
- Food and Food Poverty: To identify where there is good practice - and where further improvements can be made in respect of the Ecological and Sustainability of food and management of food wastage.
- Palestine-Israel: We will seek justice for all in the Land called Holy, alert to current and impending events and informed by the Bishops’ communique.
- Refugees: Seeking that the human rights of all refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Scotland are respected.
- Poverty: bringing experience of responses such as credit unions, and aware that those paid least are keeping us alive.
The working groups will maintain links with each other because while their focuses differ, their domains overlap. There are guidelines for how they relate to the Commission. Each group is co-ordinated by a member of the Archdiocesan Commission and is at a different stage of development. Those interested in joining a group are invited to email mike.mineter@gmail.com.