JUSTICE AND SOLIDARITY
Our Social Justice Team‘s mission is to promote social justice and solidarity. Our role is to support the efforts that promote social justice and solidarity for the poor, the less fortunate or the victims of injustice. Representatives from the different pastoral units form the Social Justice Team for the Archdiocese of Moncton.
Our work towards the realization of this mission is to discover and expose the needs of the less fortunate such as the lack of money, no means of being heard etc. We try to defend people who have been unjustly treated and help them find solutions to their problems. We also work towards finding a remedy to this situation by collaborating with other groups with whom we share common goals.
Informing parishioners as well as the general public, about those people in our society who suffer from injustice and poverty and to show them the face of today’s poor is also one of our goals. These faces are often different from what they were in the past but they are just as real today in 2010. But we also realize that our efforts to promote social justice and charity for the poor must extend beyond our parishes or pastoral units and we therefore coordinate the actions proposed by Development and Peace.
We realize that our work is an integral part of our faith. It is this faith in God that makes us different from the other groups who work for social justice. The Church invites us to learn and share with others, the ten foundational principles of its social teaching.
I suggest that you read the article: TEN FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES IN THE SOCIAL TEACHING OF THE CHURCH by Robert P. Maloney, C.M., Depaul University. It enumerates the fundamental principles that are essential to our faith and, on which, rests the Church's preferential love for the poor.
Jesus also loved the poor with a preferential love and his teachings are rooted in God, for whom every human being is equal. In JOB 33, 6 the Bible says: See, before God I am as you are; I too was formed from a piece of clay. It is onlythrough Him that we can find the vision and the energy we need to persevere and work towards finding solutions. Through prayer and our complete confidence in God, the Spirit will work through us and give us the strength we need.
Like everywhere else in the world, our church in Moncton is constantly changing. Today we see other ways of being a church. It is gradually becoming genuine, sincere and therefore richer than it has been in the past. By having social justice and solidarity at heart, we represent a church that transmits God’s love, in our everyday lives, to the people that surround us. The same love that Jesus taught us.
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International Day for the Elimination of Poverty : Organized by the Common Front for Social Justice (CLICK HERE for the Power Point presentation).
Gladys LeBlanc, Diocesan Coordinnator
(506) 857-9531, extension 1230
justice.sol.diomoncton@gmail.com