As part of the preparation for the celebration of its Patronal Feast this year, the Santa Rosa Parish organised the viewing of the DVD series called TAKE a BITE over the period Monday, August 20 through Friday, August 24.

This series is organised into five presentations and challenged those of us who attended the five presentations to reflect on the term “Social Justice”.

The first presentation gave us an overview of Social Justice. Here we recognised that social justice required us as Church to reach out to those who are marginalised and dispossessed. In reaching out to the hungry for example, we are called upon to not only provide them with food but to also identify why they are hungry and to take action necessary to address the cause of their hunger. Social Justice is very much part of being truly and fully Catholic.

Social Justice embraces charity but goes beyond charity. Social Justice has both a short-term aspect (e.g. making food available to the poor today) and a medium/long-term aspect (e.g. finding the root cause of the poverty being experienced by others in community and working to correct the root cause(s) of poverty). It derives its place in our spirituality from sacred scripture, the sacraments and the social mission of the Church.

Groups such as the SVP, Mary Martha Group, and the Santa Rosa Soup Kitchen can be seen to be functioning at the threshold of social justice; our parish community is challenged to work with these groups to identify the root causes of poverty and destitution in Arima and to take action to eliminate these causes.

Wherever there is inequality and inequity, there is room for social justice. Our Church’s history reveals a long tradition of social justice. In fact, there are several encyclicals written by the Popes (past and present) that call us to the social mission of the Church i.e. social justice.

The second presentation focussed on Life and Dignity of the Human Person. In this presentation, we recognised that social justice was all about treating each human being with dignity – a dignity that is derived from the fact that each human person is a child of God, created by God, in the image and likeness of God, and everything that God created is good.

The commandments tell us that we cannot say that we love God but fail to treat each other with dignity. Arising from this presentation is the burning question “How do we as Church take the lead in our communities and in the wider country in terms of treating each human person with dignity?”

While we are still grappling with the answer, we recognise that firstly we must each treat our own bodies with dignity; secondly we must treat each member of our family with dignity; then extend that treatment to others in our schools, our workplaces, and our communities.

This is no easy task but it is achievable through building awareness, through formation at all ages and good example with the help of God’s grace.

This calls for catechesis at the level of the family, first communion class, confirmation class, adult faith formation and every group within the parish. A related issue here is how do we as Church influence the decisions of our government particularly in terms of ensuring that human dignity is given its rightful place among the values that inform our country’s development.

The third presentation focussed on our role as Stewards of God’s Creation. Stewardship has traditionally been linked to time, tithes and talents. This presentation defined a steward as a manager of the affairs of God on earth. In this presentation, we saw social justice in terms of reverence for the environment. God created the world and He saw that it was good.

He has entrusted us with the care of the environment. Accordingly social justice is about being stewards of all God’s creation. This poses a challenge to us as Church to turn back the clock in terms of the destruction to the environment that is so visible in our communities.

Here again, we recognise that this is no easy task but it is achievable through building awareness, through formation at all ages and good example with the help of God’s grace. This too calls for catechesis at the level of the family, our schools, our first communion class, our confirmation class, our adult faith formation programmes and in every group within the parish.

The fourth presentation focussed on Global Solidarity and Development.
Here we looked at social justice from the individual and local level to people and countries at the global level. Daily we read of conditions/situations of inequality, inequity, discrimination, abuse of human rights and deprivation of groups of people in countries around the world.

Social justice calls us as Church to be in solidarity with the cause of such people around the world and to take action in support of the development of such people and their countries.

The fifth presentation focussed on Rights and Responsibilities. Here we revisited the link between social justice and the dignity of the human person and reflected on the basic rights which flow to each human person consistent with that dignity.

Social Justice then has much to do with protecting these basic rights on the one hand as with effectively and consistently taking up our responsibilities on the other hand. As Catholics we are called to find balance between our rights and our responsibilities.

In retrospect, the five presentations turned out to be more than a BITE. In fact, these were more like five mouthfuls. The participants recommended that we repeat the series in the parish, this time giving a week for each presentation.

Members of the congregation are asked to look out for the dates of the TAKE A BITE series in the parish and to make very effort to come out and participate in the reflection and discussions.