Markets & Justice

Markets & Justice
Freely operating markets yield a just outcome?

White Australia Has A Black History

White Australia Has A Black History

Thursday 25 December 2014

The suffering of ancient Christian communities; those who have Ebola; economic poverty; floods of refugees & displaced people; failure of many nations to see the common good ...



'Then Herod sent the wise men to Bethlehem saying, 
Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, 
bring me word so I may also go and pay him homage.’ (Matthew 2.8) 
 
The deceit and cruelty of governments and rulers has not changed in the 2000 years since King Herod. 2014 has been a year of desperate suffering for many Christians, unparalleled for centuries. Christian communities have been uprooted from the places that they have dwelt since within living memory of the time of Jesus. Along with them, others have been harried and hunted, blown up, tortured, beheaded, raped and have seen their families, their livelihoods, their futures destroyed. Indeed, the cry of the martyrs rises across the earth, ‘How long, oh Lord, how long?’

At the same time we have seen the scourge of Ebola sweep across three countries of West Africa, striking people down above all when they exhibit their deep compassion for the human dignity of others through touching and holding them, or through washing their bodies after death. The acts of love have become the means of infection and death.

In other places, immense economic poverty continues to spoil the lives and diminish the dignity of human beings. In Europe, migration across the Mediterranean has reached extraordinary levels, and the countries of Europe have ceased to see the common good as obliging them to support each other in loving and receiving those who have fled through such horrors, such dangers, and such privations. Rightly, Pope Francis has said that the Mediterranean must not become a vast cemetery. Individualism and selfishness is causing countries to withdraw into themselves and look only after their own interests.

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