*** NJPN Action of the Week *** Help protect the children in Yemen
Children in Yemen are facing a living nightmare. The places where they play, sleep and learn are under attack from all sides in the war.
But one of the perpetrators – Saudi Arabia and its allies – is being let off the hook.
So far, over 8000 people have called on the UN Secretary-General to name and shame the Saudi-led Coalition.
There are only a couple of weeks left until the report is published, so If you haven’t already signed please:
Take action now and sign our petition to the UN Secretary General.
Together for the Common Good – Patience and Perseverance
For some years now, Together for the Common Good, along with other advocates of the common good, has been signalling that the current UK settlement is no longer fit for purpose.
In the past couple of years we’ve seen a decline of trust in institutions, failures of leadership and social, political and cultural division. Expressions via the ballot box have been symptomatic of a fundamental shift across the western world – a profound discontent with the dominant economic and cultural liberal consensus of the last thirty years. People are crying out for community, belonging, purpose and meaning.
But the dominant culture of individualism drives people deeper into mutually hostile echo chambers, and we are coming to a point, perhaps a watershed like 1945 and 1979, that requires a serious and ambitious plan that transcends party politics. We believe it will need to be undergirded by the principles and practices of the common good. A time like this is an opportunity – and we may yet, through the struggle and with faith, see the emergence of a new settlement. Patience is needed.
We may ask: how will we live together when we disagree about so much? How will we rehumanise systems that have lost their soul? How will communities of the left behind regain pride and prosperity? How can businesses remain free to generate wealth and jobs while also delivering on social purpose? How do we avoid burdening future generations with our debt? What needs to be done to build relationships where there is suspicion? What is the right balance for the role of the state?
So not only patience, but also perseverance is required, because how a new settlement emerges will affect its longevity. It may need to be more slow-burn than revolutionary, and more ‘bottom-up’ than ‘top-down’ – the task is cultural as well as political – and way too big for government and legislation alone. How it turns out depends on each of us, taking responsibility.
The creativity of the Christian tradition comes from the certain knowledge that God is a great deal bigger than the state or the market, setting us free from the limitations of any man-made philosophy. But this is counter cultural, and in the so-called ‘marketplace of ideas’ it’s important to be vigilant and resist being swept along by political ideologies dressed up in persuasive rhetoric and retail promises. We must be clear about our centre of gravity.
A solution that endures will build bonds of reciprocity between currently estranged groups: between the socially conservative and the liberal progressive; between old and young; rich and poor; rural and urban; people with abilities and disabilities; management and workers; business and unions; shareholders and employees; people of different ethnicities, people of different faiths and those of no religious faith…
Each of us will be able to spot points of tension – in neighbourhoods, workplaces, institutions, organisations, systems and policy: we can become attuned to the fractures that need healing and take action.
The common good is not a utopian ideal to be imposed by one enlightened group upon another. God created us with great love, to be free and authentically ourselves, not to be the same, nor to think the same. To build a common good, everyone must be included and no one left behind. It requires being willing to ‘stay in the room’, to listen and learn from each other, recognising each other as gifts.
This is the opposite of an identity politics that defines the human person through difference, like a commodity on a supermarket shelf. There can be no ‘deplatforming’ in common good thinking, no silencing because views are unfashionable. As the old saying goes, ‘do you want to stay together, or do you want to be right?’ We are in danger of reaching a point where ‘being right’ has the power to wreck our common life.
People across the churches who are engaged in the ‘bottom-up’ work of transforming society are doing so with patience and perseverance. Through building relationships between the mutually suspicious, living alongside abandoned communities, innovating good business models, bringing ethics into finance, rehumanising systems that have lost their soul, and more, they are laying the groundwork for what may become a new settlement for the common good.
More information here
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland have produced resources for use during Creation Time – 1 September – 4 October 2017.
Download Creation Time resources here:
Lancaster Faith and Justice Commission Newsletter
This latest issue includes an article celebrating the life of Blessed Oscar Romero, ways of marking the hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and related items as well as a report of the NJPN Swanwick Conference.
There is an introduction to ‘Creation Time’, as well as information from Churches Together in Cumbria, opportunities for campaigning and news of future events.
The newsletter is now available to download
Lancaster F&J August 17
Seeking Sanctuary Update for July / August
‘Every migrant has a name, a face and a story’ (Pope Francis)
It’s timely to recall this quote from Pope Francis, not least because it encapsulates the individuality of all those who seek sanctuary from desperate poverty or from wars and persecution. All too often we talk about ‘migrants and asylum seekers’ as if they were all the same and we forget the individual stories behind their plight.
ARRIVALS IN EUROPE
And the plight grows ever worse. In this summer season when better weather makes crossing in a flimsy boat just a little less dangerous, the narrative of intolerance becomes even more strident, both here and elsewhere in Europe. Italy which has taken in more than 53,000 migrants since the end of the year rightly calls on other EU nations to play their part. In the current febrile climate of UK politics when politicians vie in trying show their strong-arm credentials over rights of entry to Britain, the migrants with whom we are concerned with have little hope unless the pressure is kept up by people such as yourselves: our three hundred email contacts and those with whom you share our news.
HARDER TIMES AROUND CALAIS
Migrants get seen as an inconvenience, even a threat to our security, as fewer and fewer leaders in positions of authority are prepared to defend their interests. In Northern France the numbers become ever greater and the migrants there are playing a desperate game of cat and mouse with the authorities as the feeding arrangements are barely tolerated .and where the authorities’ approach is to simply confiscate basic supplies and try to deter refugees with pepper spray and tear-gas.
In the wake of a scathing report from the Human Rights Ombudsman, eleven refugee support organisations won an appeal to a Tribunal in Lille on 27 June, demanding that police should stop hindering aid distributions and that a minimum of sources of drinking water, adequate toilets and access to showers be provided in order to avoid “the risk of inhuman and degrading treatment”. The Town Council had done nothing after 10 days, saying that it is appealing against the judgement and that the Mayor would rather go to prison than give way to the Court. The Minister of the Interior is also leading also leading an appeal.
THE SCENE IN PARIS
Phil was in Paris for a few days near the start of June and managed to go out to the complex road and tram junction where the motorway from Lille and Calais terminates at Porte de La Chapelle. A dreary landscape bordered by the orbital motorway and a rail embankment. Migrants were gathering there to sleep on the streets at night and wander them by day, hoping to be among the few who get into one of the dozen or so places becoming vacant each day the extremely inadequate official shelter. The capacity is 400 and about 200 newcomers arrive each week. Some two months ago in the 33rd such clearance since 2015, 1610 people were removed from the streets to various locations. A new police clearance on 7 July moved over 2700 to temporary accommodation such as school gymnasiums that have become vacant for the holiday season.
Like most other European states, France has yet to organise a sustainable, dignified and humane solution to the challenge posed by those escaping desperate conditions in the Middle East and Africa. A purported “new” strategy was outlined on 12th July, and includes the creation of 4,000 places of shelter for asylum seekers in 2018, followed by another 3,500 in 2019. An additional 5,000 places will be created to help refugees to access housing, with the appointment of a government commissioner for integration. Alongside these measures, more staff will be employed to cater for the objective of seeing asylum applications processed in six months (against a current period of more than a year for many cases), and to oversee new regulations to ensure the rapid deportation of unsuccessful applicants and deal effectively with people who have been fingerprinted elsewhere. Bills will be proposed in September.
UNACCOMPANIED MINORS – NEW REPORTS
A report “Nobody deserves to live this way” has been issued from an independent UK inquiry into the situation of separated and unaccompanied minors in parts of Europe, sponsored by the Human Trafficking Foundation. This concludes that protecting children on the move is not just an immigration issue but also a matter of child protection and preventing serious and organised crime. The writers point out that there is overwhelming evidence of violence inflicted by the French authorities and the police, whether it be the indiscriminate use of truncheons or the tear gassing of children and their sleeping bags. Renewed effort must be devoted to legal schemes for transfer of young people to the UK, with more transparency in procedures, improved liaison with charities who work with the children, and better dissemination of relevant information in appropriate language and formats. All matters upon which we have commented in the past!
The Human Rights Foundationhas also issued a report describing and condemning routine police violence and use of pepper sprays against sleeping people and their property in Calais – including minors. This received immediate widespread mainstream media comment in France and we can but hope that the mounting pressure will eventually reduce violence.
THINGS THAT WE HAVE DONE
All this is happening now. We need to persuade those around us and those in positions of influence (your MP perhaps?) to let basic humanity transcend whatever politics they carry and dare to start to care about this. And above all we need to stop blaming people who have zero power and stop using dehumanising language.
We helped to prepare videos for Refugee Week, and you can see three of the results here . There are plans to include these in an exhibition in Parliament later this year, and we hope that they will get noticed by some of the MPs who have not visited Calais.
If you are involved with a Faith Community you may be interested in our newly produced prayer cards which focus on the plight of those who have perished on their journeys, the majority lost at sea, including the many children known to have drowned. We are requesting a donation of £5 per 100 and if you are interested please email us for further details. As well as a newly-composed prayer, the cards include a statement of solidarity indicating the themes for action and a note of the link to our newly-added website page listing useful organisations that can help.
ACTION TO BE TAKEN
The various operations in Calais continue to need goods for distribution to the places where they are needed, predominantly by skinny young men and teenagers. The urgent items listed at the start of July are fabric and foil sleeping bags and waterproof carrying covers; trainers and socks (sizes 40-43); waterproof jackets, t-shirts and jogging bottoms (sizes S & M). And all the other items previously requested are still needed – just a little less urgently.
When you have pondered this update and wondered if there can ever be a change of heart among officials and politicians, start finding out about how you can be of practical help. Our new website page listing UK support organisations may provide you with some ideas.
Start donating. Start volunteering. Demand that more imaginative solutions are considered and that children are not allowed to suffer. Start doing something about the situation!
STOP PRESS – ‘Migrants are now out of fashion’
This was the comment made by a young volunteer with the Auberge des Migrants to Ben during a visit he made to Calais on Monday. The situation in Calais is now so critical that hundreds of blankets are needed each and every day as the Police use pepper spray on the ones they find, rendering them useless. The Auberge intended to distribute 500 blankets that day and luckily the blankets which Ben brought over from well wishers in England helped to make a difference as there are desperate shortages of much needed goods. listed above. Ben says: ‘Migrants are still to be seen in the usual places in and around Calais, but they both look and are more destitute than ever. If conditions in the “Jungle” were bad, their current conditions are much worse. We must continue to advocate for the voiceless victims of war and persecution’.
‘Seeking Sanctuary’ aims to raise awareness about people displaced from their homes and to channel basic humanitarian assistance from Faith Communities and Community Organisations via partnerships with experienced aid workers. Our special concern is for those who arrive in north-western France, mistakenly expecting a welcome in the UK. Almost all the 8,000+ migrants in Calais in October 2016 were moved away, hopefully to better accommodation. 1616 unaccompanied minors also left, along with hundreds of vulnerable women and children, hoping that claims to stay in the UK or France would be processed. Many judge that they have been let down, and hundreds have returned to sleep rough near Calais and along the coast. The Grande-Synthe camp near Dunkirk burnt down in April 2017, displacing around 1400 people, over 950 of them moved elsewhere, whilst the rest remain nearby, joined by scores of newcomers weekly.
They need food, good counsel and clothes, which are accepted, sorted and distributed by several Calais warehouses, which also supply needs further afield.
Further information from Ben Bano on 07887 651117 or Phil Kerton on 01474 873802.
See our latest news here:
“The Church is there for life, not for profit” says missionary who works with Latin America’s indigenous people
MEDIA RELEASE
NATIONAL JUSTICE AND PEACE NETWORK OF ENGLAND AND WALES
23 July 2017
“The Church is there for life, not for profit” a Columban priest and CAFOD partner told the National Justice and Peace Network of England and Wales annual conference this weekend. Based for five decades in Latin America, Irishman Fr Peter Hughes was contrasting Church support for marginalised communities with the destructive practices of large-scale mining and agribusiness companies in the Amazon rainforest.
He lamented destructive practices of extractive industries, and described the Amazon’s three million indigenous people as “today’s lepers, reduced to nothingness”. He said he was not totally against mining, “but it must be done in a more respectful way, respecting international law”. He warned that the planet’s fresh air, water and biodiversity are all being undermined with consequences for the whole Earth community.
He spoke about the REPAM initiative, which led him and Church leaders to accompany indigenous leaders from the Amazon to Washington in March to meet the American Commission for Human Rights, members of the U.S Congress, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. This was an important step towards promoting a Church with an Amazonic Face – supporting indigenous peoples in their struggles to defend land, rivers and rainforest. “They made quite an impact in their frathered headresses” he said “but lives have been reduced by extractive industries and could be reduced to oblivion in a very short time”. He felt we have much to learn from peoples who have lived sustainably in the Amazon for thousands of years, “never ceasing to have harmony with their habitat”. The U.S. Bishops expressed support for REPAM’s work, and he hoped the visit of Pope Francis to the Peruvian Amazon in January next year will highlight the plight of its indigenous peoples.
Fr Hughes was speaking to the weekend conference on the theme, ‘A Sabbath for the Earth and the Poor: The Challenge of Pope Francis’, and around 260 Justice and Peace activists attended from most dioceses of England and Wales and some in Scotland. He is an advisor to the Instituto Bartolome de las Casas and CELAM, the collegial council of Latin American bishops. He thanked Pope Francis for his inspirational leadership in producing Laudato Si’ six months before the discussions in Paris that led to an international Agreement on Climate Change. He pointed to Paragraph 139 of Laudato Si’ which says: “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.”
His suggestion that we need to review our notions about progress and good living were picked up by Ruth Valerio of Tearfund, whose talk focused on the need for “inner ecological conversion”. She urged the conference to “get out and reconnect with the natural world”. Her books, ‘Just Living – Faith and Community in an Age of Consumerism’ and ‘L is for Lifestyle’, are about living more simply and avoiding rampant consumerism. She felt “Pope Francis has presented us with the challenge of living with love and joy in this our common home”.
Kathy Galloway, a former leader of both the Iona Community and Christian Aid Scotland, lamented that the poorest suffer most from environmental destruction when they have “drained resources the least, waste nothing, and don’t fly around the world”. She urged that we live more sustainably and avoid a “privatised religion” which does not engage with the struggles of the most marginalised. There was a plea to support campaigns that challenge unjust and violent structures, and “to look outside the holy places for places where God’s reign is breaking through”. Examples in Scotland ranged from anti-nuclear protests on the streets, churches opening their doors to asylum seekers and “guerrilla” gardening. She reported being very moved by a panel organised by Church Action on Poverty from the Leeds Poverty Truth Commission which highlighted the suffering caused by poverty in Britain and the role of Church groups in building up support and hope.
The challenge to work at a macro level tackling structural injustice and the micro level of living more simply was reflected in workshops and “sabbath” time. The first included workshops on Care for Creation; Sustainable Agriculture; Mining; Indigenous People; Stigmatisation of the poor; Divestment from fossil fuels. And there was time for relaxing and contemplative activities such as a nature walk, visiting prayer spaces, an art session on the theme of the beauty of creation, and Tai Chi on the lawn. Discussing the harvesting of elderflowers and the production of elderflower cordial is not usually discussed at an NJPN Conference! And having time to visit the NJPN oak tree, now 30 feet tall, which was planted at the Swanwick Conference centre on NJPN’s 25th anniversary.
Saturday evening saw a performance of “Romero – the Heartbeat of El Salvador” and during the conference Mass Archbishop Oscar Romero was adopted as NJPN’s patron.
At the final action planning session feedback included Arundel and Brighton Diocese setting up a diocesan environment group, East Anglia producing a draft environmental policy and Westminster pushing to become a fairtrade diocese. The Jesuit parish in Preston, Lancaster Diocese, is working towards becoming a livesimply parish. Steve Atherton of Liverpool Archdiocese, who said he felt like as “endangered species” as the only full time J&P worker left in England and Wales, spoke about producing resources for Autumn’s Creation Time which have been picked up by many Liverpool parishes.
Children at the conference produced a video “Can children and young people make a difference”. The answer was positive, with one quote being, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. The youth group told participants: “We all say we want to tackle poverty – you need to get out there and do it!”.
Media contact and more photos from:
Ellen Teague on 07956 317 338
#NJandPNetwork
#columbansUK
More reports and pictures to follow in the coming weeks
The International Peace Bureau: The Ban Treaty – Next Steps:
An historical document was adopted by 122 states at the UN on July 7th: the treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.
For many years we have been working for and promoted such a treaty. As the South-African Ambassador said, we faced through the last years “an incredible amount of pressure”, we were accused of being “irrealistic” and divisive, but this treaty had to be achieved as a “moral duty”.
Now a ban treaty of nuclear weapons is in our hands, and as atomic bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow said in her moving statement on July 7th, “This is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons”. It is the result of intensive and constructive negotiations at the United Nations in New York in which civil society has played a crucial role, and will be a major driver towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Read more here:
*** NJPN Action of the Week *** Africa’s Debt Crisis
Jubilee Debt Campaign is asking for an urgent response to this latest campaign.
An audit into secret loans to Mozambique has been released, and it has raised huge questions about the role played by London-based banks.
Please write to your MP now to ask them to support new regulations on debt transparency.
To support the campaign click here:
World Mission Conference 11th October 2017, London
For the last few years the Catholic Missionary Union of England & Wales has promoted a Conference for anyone interested in World Mission in collaboration with Missio, the Mill Hill Missionaries and Heythrop College.
This year we are pleased to have as a speaker Fr. Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, SJ, from East Africa.
It should be an excellent event and we recommend it to you warmly.
If you would like to book free places on the conference,
Click here
European and US Catholic Bishop Call for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons Globally
July 6, 2017
BRUSSELS— Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich, president of Justice and Peace Europe, and Bishop Oscar Cantú, chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, issued today a declaration arguing for “the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
Entitled “Nuclear Disarmament: Seeking Human Security,” the declaration was issued to coincide with the conclusion of a meeting hosted this week by the United Nations “to negotiate a legally binding treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.” Although the United States and most European nations are not joining these negotiations, the Catholic bishops acknowledge, “[t]he fact that most of the world’s nations are participating in this effort testifies to the urgency of their concern, an urgency intensified by the prospect of nuclear terrorism and proliferation, and to the inequality and dissatisfaction of non-nuclear states about the lack of progress in nuclear disarmament efforts.”
Recognising the need for national and international security, the bishops of the United States and Europe implore the leaders of their nations to work with other nations to promote peace through nuclear disarmament. “The indiscriminate and disproportionate nature of nuclear weapons, compel the world to move beyond nuclear deterrence,” the declaration reads. “We call upon the United States and European nations to work with other nations to map out a credible, verifiable and enforceable strategy for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
“Complete nuclear disarmament is a necessary step towards comprehensive and global peace,” said Archbishop Hollerich. “In line with teaching of the Church the Commissions for Justice and Peace in Europe will continue to advocate for non-proliferation and – in fine – the abolition of all nuclear weapons both within the United States and Europe, and globally.”
Read the full statement here:
