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Catholic reflection on social justice has been supercharged by Pope Francis, who in his encyclical Laudato Si declared the Cry of the Poor and the Cry of the Earth to be central to faith. He also insisted that neither could be addressed simply by technological fixes but required personal conversion to see the world as gift to be respected, a home, and not as a prison or a mine.
In the Apology to the Stolen Generations the Australian Government spoke on behalf of all Australians in recognising that it acted wrongly in removing Indigenous children from their parents. It recognised also that the reason for the removal was the disrespectful claim that its targets were defined, not by their shared humanity, but by their race. This disrespect caused lasting damage to the children and families.
With the killing of Soleimani, the US has signalled a redrawing of accepted lines in international combat and diplomacy. Most significantly, the killing will be a lightning rod for attacks this decision was meant to prevent even as it assists Iranian policy in expelling any vestige of US influence in Iraq and the broader Middle East.
'Refugees/not refugees — here it is all the same,' a man tells me with a shrug. There seems to be both recognition of the impossibility of the situation for all who have been left here — but also an attitude that no one should be left behind.
I recently visited Port Moresby as part of a delegation of Catholic leaders. I have worked with refugees and migrants for more than 20 years in different countries. I have been part of many serious and confronting human rights struggles. Nonetheless, I was not expecting what I saw and heard in PNG, and it deeply touched me.
If we wish to persuade the public that a group of people is being treated unjustly, we portray them as innocent victims. We represent them as a class and as virtuous in order to change public opinion. Stories of violent behaviour by members of the group, however, reveal the reality that no group is uniformly composed of the virtuous and innocent.
I'm a white man in a white man's world, his mother tongue the lingua franca everywhere. I may not be rich, but I am more or less free, and my calling has let me travel the world. It's easy for me, not having had to fight for mine, to ask us to go deeper than identity when we write. But when James Baldwin says the same thing, it compels.
The Pope's speech was newsworthy because in Australia sentences to a lifetime in prison without parole are becoming less contentious and more used. His approach to prisoners and their criminal behaviour is in such strong contrast to strands of Australian culture in which exclusion and the denial of hope are an instinctive response.
To accuse someone of being 'politically correct' has become a fast and effective way to shut down attempts to make public spaces safe and welcoming to all people. It means that those whose words and actions are at best thoughtless and at worst discriminatory can continue to avoid having to think about what they said or did.
When devising policies for people on the margins, Australian governments seem always to settle on punitive measures. Although imprisonment has a place in penal policy, the focus should be on the persons who perpetrate crime and on those who are damaged by it. Penal policy is ultimately about ensuring just relationships.
In Boochani's experience, Australians were homogenous and unreflective parts of a machine designed to dehumanise, cow and corrupt the people who sought protection. This report and the departmental response suggest that in on-shore detention the human destruction is not directly intended. It is seen simply as irrelevant.
'Male and Female He Created Them' could have addressed how Church teachings could better coexist with LGBTQI+ experiences to benefit LGBTQI+ students. But that can't work if the document's authors don't listen to LGBTQI+ voices and when the foundational argument is to problematise LGBTQI+ people's existence.
145-156 out of 200 results.