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.