The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference today released a 15-page statement, “Living the Gospel in Times of Social Division.”
“We are living through an era of heightened community tension and a growing normalization of abusive behavior, incendiary language and violence,” said Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, S.D.B., of Perth, the president of the bishops’ conference. “The Gospel offers a different path. It calls us back to Jesus Christ, who meets division not with hostility but with mercy; not with the logic of ‘us and them’ but with the costly love that heals and transforms.”
The Australian bishops’ tradition of releasing an annual social justice statement dates to 1940.