A reflection by Ian Linden, former Director of the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR), in the July/August issue the Pax Christi newsletter JustPeace
We are in another Kairos time – an opportunity for radical change. The impact of COVID-19 was a stark revelation of the gross inequality in our nations…
We face choices. We can cling to little-England nationalism or be inspired by scientists who promote a global vision based on international cooperation. We can pay our key workers a respectful living wage, or just applaud them on Thursday evenings. We can root our economy in the shifting sands of financial services, and promote arms sales, or invest in sustainability and a high-tech manufacturing economy reducing emissions.
In short, post-Coronavirus, we can continue with unfettered competition and growing inequality, or we can rebuild our societies based on care for creation, justice and human dignity, building peace. The pandemic has highlighted options that once would have seemed utopian…
Today, in a world irrevocably transformed by COVID-19, proposing an ‘economy of enough’ instead of an ‘economy of no-tomorrow’, advocating concern for workers’ rights, scrapping Trident, and ending the arms trade, isn’t utopian either. It’s necessary.
A politics centred on justice and respect for human dignity does not drop fully formed from heaven.
The work for Peace and for non-violence is multifaceted. Peace is possible. Injustice can be broken.
With the the prayer of St Francis let us work and pray:
Make me a channel of Your peace
Where there is hatred, let me bring Your love
Where there is injury, Your pardon Lord…
Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope
Where there is darkness, only light…
submitted by Mary Bradley, Falmouth
Pax Christi members live by biblically inspired values of Peace, Reconcilaition, and Non-violence. These values are supported by the witness of peacemakers down the ages, and the experience of the Pax Christi community. Pax Christi is rooted in Catholic Christianity but is open to all who are in sympathy with its values and work.
