Dealing with a troubled world through Catholic Social Teaching
by Sean Morris, Commission Member
One of the things I do at my local Catholic church in Mytholmroyd on a regular basis is be a bidding prayers leader. We have a resilient rota and the people that do it put lots of effort into it, always including prayers from our prayer tree, and allowing all to speak out with a personal prayer for us as a church community to join in.
I too, think a lot about this, reading beforehand the Sunday readings so that I can link my prayers to the thoughts of Jesus or Paul or an Old Testament prophet of the day. I must admit though the world I see out there makes it ever more difficult to think of prayers that can adequately explain the concerns I, and I am sure many of you, have of the state of the world.
As I write this, the Middle East remains in turmoil. It’s not clear Iran’s and the United States conflict will move into a full peace process. Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon are seething with hatred of each other. Gaza remains one of the greatest miseries of any conflict there has ever been. The West Bank sees settler domination of the Palestinian population.
Then there is the Ukraine and Russia conflict. A battle line that has hardly moved at the expense of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of men, while innocent Ukrainian and Russian civilians fear the next drone attack on their house or flat. And conflicts abound elsewhere, whether it’s Sudan, Myanmar, and, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross over 130-armed conflicts of some kind, most of which rarely get onto our TV screens, or smartphones or our newspapers. That’s not without thinking of the impact of climate change as we start another punishing heatwave with record temperatures everywhere.
Here in the UK, I am an electoral administrator, and I am on my third election this year. I see in them lots of rancour, a highly divided country, and many people disillusioned with their position in life and the cost of living of that life. I am 54 in July, and I must admit to feeling a sense of great unease about the state of the world, and of my country, despite me living through the dread of nuclear conflict during the last decades of the Cold War.
So how do we deal with all of this pain and human suffering? As a Catholic, I do something all members of the Commission must do, which is to go back to our Catholic Social Teaching, that life-affirming body of moral and ethical doctrine developed by the church, rooted in scripture, of the sacrifice of the saints and the writings of the church, turning to our God for guidance in life.
Whether that is holding that every human life is sacred and made in the image of God, or our belief that we are inherently social and we have a right or duty to seek the well-being of all, we know that we have rights and responsibilities that we must stand up for, truly believe in and advocate to all. We have a moral call to stand up for the poor and vulnerable, to ensure the dignity of workers and to know we are all one human family, regardless of all the differences which often lay at the heart of the conflicts noted above. By caring for God’s creation, we also stand up for our children and future generations.
I delight in the wonderful work of Pope Francis, and now Pope Leo, to remind us that, as Catholics, we must care for all of us, whether by supporting a food bank, advocating for fair change and calling for peace. Unlike many of our politicians, Pope Leo does stand up for those who the world so often ignores. We all need to be brave and follow that example in our own communities. So, using scripture and the love of God, my bidding prayers seek solidarity and a call for change, and they always will.
Let us as a Commission keep doing the same.
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