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When US-based Catholic Jason Evert was due to speak to Catholic schools across NSW, there was a backlash, sparked by online activists. The controversies around Evert’s visit highlights just how difficult it is becoming to walk that line between the values and demands of the Church we represent, and the society in which we live.
As Australia grapples with educational inequality, those in the Catholic education system must ask: how do we test for a clear commitment to Catholic Social Teaching and the seminal role it plays in enunciating the guiding principles of Catholic education, particularly in regard to it being offered, ‘first and foremost … to the poor’?
The Church must speak up to be relevant, but those who seek to ‘speak for the church’ must be brave. They risk exposing themselves to claims of bias unless they stick to a very narrow agenda and speak in extremely measured terms. Yet if they are too bland they risk being irrelevant to the sharp end of political debate and their intervention becomes little more than a symbolic ritual.
One reasonably could ask whether this is the moment to write a book about the potential of Catholic Social Theory to contribute to Australian politics and policy. After all, the Church is still struggling to come to terms with decades of child abuse, hardly a recommendation for social potential. We currently also are attempting to make sense of a Plenary that is both confused and confusing.
Eureka Street was named Publication of the Year at the 2021 Australasian Religious Press Association Awards, with the judges citing its 'authenticity of voice and fidelity to the Gospel'. They said Eureka Street was 'grounded in the social teachings of the Catholic Church, it addresses issues both national and international, and gives readers access to some of Australia's best public intellectuals.'
What we have is a rare opportunity — in all likelihood a once-in-a-lifetime chance — to shape the future and emerge from the pandemic as a better, fairer nation.
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.
Despite criticism of past protests by Scott Morrison and Matt Canavan, the next School Strike for Climate is happening Friday 15 March. In the wake of the Covington Catholic High School controversy, how should schools take seriously the challenge of educating students to be engaged citizens responding to urgent issues?
Whenever institutional interests are put ahead of the legitimate concerns of others, including the poor and marginalised, there develops a trust deficit. This deficit is gripping institutions here and overseas. Its impact is deep and destructive. Facets of Catholic Social Teaching point the way to reversing the downward trend.
To consider cricket as work would strike many people as odd. They would see it as a hobby, a recreation, a game or a calling. Professional sportspersons receive little attention in Catholic social thought, which is a pity because a Catholic understanding of work provides a helpful perspective. Its crucial insight is that work is a human activity, and that each human being is precious, unique and needs to be respected. Neither people nor work can be seen as means to an economic end, or as expendable.
In an age of 'budget repair', social policy risks becoming just a sidebar to economic policy which is a contest of ideas about how best to grow the size of the pie thereby providing a slice for 'the deserving poor' without having to redistribute too much of the pie, while 'the undeserving poor' drop off the edge as they would have anyway. For those of us schooled in Catholic social teaching, the so-called 'undeserving poor' are the litmus test of our commitment to the human dignity of all persons.
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