by Gerard Hand

Fr. Willy Slavin, around the time the Justice and Peace Commission was starting in 1982, said that it was very important that justice and peace groups should not become parish sodalities – ie clubs or societies. As an integral part of evangelisation, justice and peace work is essential to all parish life and there is a danger that it could be seen as a club for the like-minded. The same could be said for groups of parishioners trying to gain a deeper understanding of the teaching of Laudato Si’ and the living that has to come from that.

The question for the J&P group is how to bring the ‘justice and peace dimension’ into the life of the whole parish, whether in the liturgy, sacramental preparation or working with those on the margins of society. A second question is how to avoid diluting the prophetic challenge of the Church’s teaching in order to bring more people on board.

The same applies to a group committed to the environment and climate change. We need to keep balancing ‘direct’ Laudato Si’ work with integrating the values into parish life, and at the same time look for ways of cooperating with other churches and community activities. As we pray and plan, the challenge is to keep in tension working with our own congregation (many of whom will never be at an inter church meeting) and valuing the strength of working with other churches. That has to be an ongoing task; the nature of the cooperation will depend on where each church is in its own life.

The group in the parish needs to be sufficient as a team to act decisively on the issues they have identified, while at the same time being open to helping people in the parish develop their understanding of what is before us. It needs to be accepted by the parish pastoral council and parish priest not as the conscience of the parish, but as a group of parishioners helping the council and the whole parish develop their consciences, so that we are open to the hard decisions and choices before us as a church and society.