21st Sunday Year B - Homily 6

 Homily 6 - 2024

The Australian Church has traditionally recognised this Sunday, the last Sunday of August, as Social Justice Sunday —and it has been doing so since 1940, the year after I started Primary School. Over those 80+ years, it has often produced a Social Justice Statement commenting on social issues that were particularly relevant at the time. This year its annual statement is “Truth and Peace — A Gospel Word in a Violent World”. I find it a deeply thoughtful statement this year, and, for me, it speaks to a number of confusing issues running through my head.

Its context is our "Violent World"; and it explains Why: “The last century was the most violent in human history, with the piles of corpses of Auschwitz and Hiroshima its demonic emblem. At the dawn of the new century and the third millennium there were hopes for a time of peace. But that was not to be. In 2022, it was reported that there were 55 state-based conflicts around the world and 82 non-state conflicts. According to the United Nations, this is the highest number of violent conflicts the world has faced since the Second World War. Two billion people live in countries
wracked by such conflicts.

We are all too aware of some conflicts such as the slaughter in Ukraine and the Holy Land, with the media saturated with reports of these wars and the immense human suffering they bring. But other conflicts – without the same global implications, perhaps – tend to be overlooked or forgotten. The scale of human suffering is immense, the loss incalculable.”

Most people say that they want peace. Why then do we not have it? This is where the Statement really comes into its own. The first part of the Statement asks what else is really going on in our world. It explains by reflecting that peace requires trust —and societies, by and large, have lost trust. Trust, in its turn, is based on truth; and sadly it seems that in our modern world we have lost touch with truth, particularly the truth of the God-given dignity of every person

Let me read another sample of what the document contains:

“Facts have always been contested and falsified in public life, but something new has emerged in recent times with the convergence of a number of factors:
…A plethora of competing truth claims, largely because of new technologies and social media.
…Platforms like Facebook and X enable the rapid dissemination of fake news and conspiracy theories...
…allowing misinformation to spread within ideologically aligned networks which often generate a culture of indignation and manufactured outrage.
…the demise of traditional gatekeepers of factual information, as traditional journalism undergoes great change and we see the rise of partisan news sources which favour ideological appeals over factual accuracy.
…The power of a well-resourced persuasion industry …, the goal of which is not to inform or educate but to influence….
…A generalised atmosphere of social distrust especially of “elites” and experts…
…Changing ethical perceptions of what level of misleading or “spin” is and is not acceptable, with even blatant lying overlooked in public discourse.

That may give you a slight taste of the document’s approach. It’s serious; it’s not entertainment. But I think that reading it is well worth the effort; and personally will be reading it again — and probably more than once.

[Google will help you to find a copy. I think I simply asked it: “Catholic Social Justice Statement 2024.”… and then clicked “Download Statement”]