Mary Nash

The Palmerston North Justice, Peace and Development Commission is a small group appointed by the Bishop for advice about advocacy and action on social justice issues in line with the Church’s social justice teachings. Through prayer and discussion, we discern how those teachings apply in our Diocese.

Our Commission’s work has included:

• the Living Wage and other industrial matters;
• the campaign against the End of Life Choice Bill;
• tangata whenua rights in relation to land owned by the Church;
• promoting and facilitating Caritas Lenten programmes;
• assisting the Diocese’s work for Refugees.

The Commission held a strategic planning hui on Sunday July 14. Facilitated by Josh Chandulal-Mackay, it was for all diocesan parishioners to let us know about which justice, peace and development issues to focus on for the next three years.

One of our goals was to identify projects over the next year to help shape a diocese that emulates the Church’s social teachings. We referred to Dorothy Day (co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement) who worked to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – a challenge made many times by Jesus in the Gospels.

Our day ended with renewed energy to spread this message and to recruit more people to act for social change in favour of the poor, the ill and the vulnerable in our society; while following Pope Francis call to protect our mother Earth.

By working directly with parishioners, we can more effectively liaise with the Bishop about issues. We invite WelCom readers in the Palmerston North Diocese to contact us with suggestions about how to further peace and development in our diocese. Please consider the following questions and email your suggestions to us.

• What social justice issues are important to you?
• How do you want to work on them?
• How do you want to communicate with the Commission, and how would you like us to communicate with you?

Please email Josh Chandulal-Mackay at [email protected] or Mary Nash at [email protected] with your suggestions.

Published in WelCom August 2019