Together for the Common Good

Introduction

Sian has asked me to speak about Caritas, People and Place. We’ll explore what it means to be a Christian, at this time in our history, in terms of our personal calling, as a parish in relationship with Caritas, and in terms of our relationship with the places where we live and work.

To do that, we’re going to look at what’s going on, reading the signs of the times, how Catholic Social Teaching can help us, and how we’re called to live that out in practice, not as a grand strategy, but as small shifts, as part of our Christian witness.

Reading the Signs of the Times

So first, as part of our Catholic practice, we read the signs of the times.

I think it was Ernest Hemingway who said that change happened slowly, and then all at once. It feels a bit like that, doesn’t it? We’re in a time of great change. It was Pope Francis who said, over 10 years ago, that this is not just an era of change, but a change of era. He described this time as a process of being stripped of false securities, where it’s no longer possible to complacently enjoy the illusions of the old era, nor credible to continue with the assumption that governments can adequately represent us. Or that the socioeconomic model we’ve been living with can underwrite a flourishing life for all.

In this process of reading the signs of the times, we always start by what we see. I’m sure we’re all seeing this now. Some people are calling it a meta-crisis. Everything going wrong at the same time. Some people are describing it as an unravelling.

It’s an age of exposure, collapse of trust. We’re seeing war, displacement, the hyper liberalisation of abortion and assisted suicide. The revelation of corruptions by elites in politics, media, in the Church, in institutional life. An age of exposure. We also have the oncoming acceleration of AI, the new industrial revolution, coming at us very fast.

We have an incompetent ideological government. We have fragmentation, an angry population, loneliness – higher among the young than the old. We have people distressed by meaninglessness, which is often framed as a mental health problem, when actually it’s an existential crisis.

Our media landscape is fragmented, and we have estrangement between different groups living in the same country, even in the same city. What you see depends very much on where you live, who you know, and what media sources you consume. This is a very difficult time that we’re in.

Changes in the Church

We’re also seeing huge changes in the Church, which I’m sure you’re seeing in your own parishes. We see the yearning for meaning and identity changing and challenging our comfortable assumptions about what it means to be a Christian.

Some of our parishes are boosted by refugees and migrants, bringing new spiritual energy, bringing new cultural practices, while some of our parishes are depleting and experiencing fast decline. Some have been closed; some have been merged; it is very disturbing and destabilising for people to manage this kind of change.

And in this culture fast unravelling, we’re also seeing signs among Gen Z of young people being drawn to the Catholic Church in particular, partly because of its tradition, because they want stability. They’re fed up with this kind of meaninglessness, this sea of liberalism where nothing means anything anymore. They’re looking for signs.

We’re also seeing signs of what some people are calling the “dirty revival”, among what we might call working class or even underclass communities, seeking evangelical forms of Christianity, which we might describe as forms of Christian nationalism.

We’re seeing lots of different symptoms and signs going on at the same time, a picture of great volatility for the Church.

Signs in the Political Economy

We’re also seeing signs in our political economy – in our economy – the way jobs work, how far our money goes. The Catholic Social Teaching tradition trains us to look at what’s happening in the political economy, because these systems affect whether human beings and communities thrive or not.

We can see that this particular type of economy that we’ve got – which we’ve had broadly speaking since 1979 – is a neoliberal system. It treats human beings as units of labour which must be cheap and mobile.

We’ve seen in previous years manufacturing being offshored to the Far East – what is described as deindustrialisation – because it generated more profit. This broke the tradition of inherited vocational jobs and all the cultural tradition that went with that. We’ve seen this economic model also attracting workers from poorer countries to leave their own families and work here on low wages for Western business models to enrich Western investors.

This “frictionless” environment was designed – and worked well – for investors. But it broke millions of relationships in our own country and other countries. And this of course is not just peculiar to the UK. This has happened across all the Western countries that absorbed this particular model.

Some of you might remember four decades ago that the idea that people should have to move to find work was regarded as right wing. You might remember Norman Tebbit saying, “Get on your bike.” It was an affront to have to leave your family to make a life. This has been rebranded as freedom.

The breaking of relationship with place has been a huge change over this period. It has led to civic degradation on a vast scale. The shift of the knowledge economy and the service economies then had a further impact. Communities that suffered at the sharp end of this globalisation were then described as deficient and backward.

I regard all of this as a breach of the common good. We’ve become fragmented as a result. No wonder we now see a politics of discontent.

The Underlying Philosophy

But what lies behind all of this? Again, Catholic Social Teaching trains us to understand by looking at what is happening to the human being.

Every era is shaped by an animating idea. And the idea underpinning the era that’s in the process of breaking down comes from a philosophy – the philosophy of liberalism, in particular an extreme strain of liberalism around the idea of the “unencumbered self”. In other words, “I don’t need you.” This promotes the idea of freedom from constraint: from the constraint of family, from country, from borders, from history, freedom from God, freedom from natural law. That’s the philosophy that underpins our system.

This ideology is inherently unstable because it relies on a false anthropology, a completely different view of the human being than we have as Christians. Our view of the human being is that we are relational beings made in the image of God, whereas this false anthropology sees human beings as isolated, rights-bearing competitive individuals.

The philosophy we’ve been living under, goes against true humanity. Eventually it liberates society from truth, it liberates society from mutual responsibility. Its spirit is actually anti-human, which is why the system is now breaking down.

This misconception of the human being has led to the emergence of what we now see: identitarian politics on the right and on the left, distorted forms of victimhood, the culture wars. This has led to spiritual confusion and de-moralisation.

This individualism has also distorted the meaning of social justice. We now have a conception that’s based on identity, animated by the oppressor-oppressed dynamic, rather than our traditional understanding of social justice.

This eats away at our shared values and erodes our sense of citizenship. It dissolves relationship. It undermines the particularity of place, and it commodifies what it means to be human.

This puts human beings and communities under immense strain. It causes psychological distress and pathologies. Its overemphasis on rights erodes our sense of mutual responsibility. The “me” culture – the “I” this, the “I” that – it’s everywhere. It drives us to outsource more and more things that we used to do as families, communities and as neighbours, to the state or the market.

For example, I can sit at home and order anything I want on Amazon. I don’t need anybody. And I can get what I need from the state without a relationship with anybody. This weakens civil society.

The Antidote: Relationship

So, what do we think is the Christian response? And why would we want to talk about all of this when we’re here to talk about social action? I wanted you to see the causes of the unravelling so you can see clearly what the antidote needs to be.

Context is vital if we’re to discern an authentic Catholic response. And because, as Pope Leo says in Dilexit Te, we’re called to respond in a way that’s appropriate for the times. He says the Church’s vocation is not merely devotional but prophetic, challenging unjust systems and reordering social life around dignity and solidarity.

The antidote to individualism and the unencumbered self is pretty obvious, isn’t it? It’s relationship. That needs to go all the way down everything we do, like a stick of rock.

I think you can see how severe the problem is – and that the false anthropology requires an antidote. We are called to shift our behaviour. To look at what we do and how we do it. To become a people, a consecrated community called to embody Christ’s love – to become a holy nation.

A grounded way to understand this is that we’ve got to make everything we do more relational. As the new Industrial Revolution comes upon us, we have the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. In mid-May, Pope Leo is likely to publish a new encyclical on AI and the future of work. This is going to be a massive justice issue.

We will need to embrace practices that help us stay human. We will need to get our heads around what it means to live a truly human life. In this new time, it’s not so much about what we campaign about, but more about who we build relationships with, and who God wants us to become.

Throughout Catholic Social Teaching, the tradition has always emphasised the relational:

We know Pope Francis constantly talked about the culture of encounter and integral ecology.

Benedict XVI, borrowing from Newman, emphasised the connection between human beings in “heart speaks unto heart” – profoundly relational – that truth is received in relationship, that the human being is first and foremost a listener before a speaker.

John Paul II insisted that the human person is created from love, fulfilled in communion. He said that man cannot fully find himself except through the sincere gift of himself.

Pope Leo is saying that it’s through relationships that we grow. That only genuine relationships and stable connections can build good lives.

If you put this relational vision side by side with the epidemic of loneliness, particularly among young people, and you see a very stark difference. This relational anthropology runs throughout the Catholic social tradition but it’s tended to be too abstract and too theoretical. It needs to be brought back down to the ground and embedded in our Christian witness.

There are lots of layers for this.

The Family

We must strengthen families. Catholic tradition sees the family as the building block of society. The school of love, it is fundamentally a relational form, where we learn how to relate, how to love, how to take responsibility. It’s where we first learn who we are, how to live with the unbidden, how to live with people who we didn’t choose.

But many families are struggling. As we saw earlier, so much of what we used to do as communities has been outsourced, and these skills have been lost. We’re hearing about kids coming to school, not knowing how to use the toilet, for example. Basic parenting is under threat.

Our churches and charities should make it a priority to build up the strength of struggling families. And to do so in a relational way, perhaps by pairing a struggling family with a family that knows what it’s doing. Lots of grannies would love to help a single mum, for example.

The Parish

It’s important to realise that in the Catholic social teaching condition, the parish is seen as an “intermediary institution”, alongside others, like clubs, associations, local businesses, schools, charities, other religious bodies. In a healthy society, you’d have a thick layer of local institutions. The Catholic tradition trains us to see the parish in relationship with its neighbours.

This critical to the health for society. If you don’t have that thick layer, if all you have is a chicken shop and a betting shop on the High Street, life is too harsh: there’s not enough of a buffer zone between the person and the state or the overbearing market.

This layer of local institutions is vital for humanising our lives together. Each institution is called to a vocation, an outward facing responsibility, to live up to its role for common good, whether it’s serving great pizza, or running a great fishing club. All are called work together with neighbouring institutions for the common good of the area. The parish has a special role here. A parish can animate those relationships, connect them, supported by the Caritas of the diocese.

The purpose of the Church is not primarily to serve its own community. The days of the recusant Church are over. The country desperately needs the outward-facing parish and what we can offer. Not necessarily as a charitable service provider, but to unveil the sacred in the lives of people in the neighbourhood.

We must realise how lonely people are and how much this culture has depleted the sense of meaning. The local church especially has an important calling – especially when local life is poor – to engage and to help build up local institutions, to enrich that layer of local life.

Listening

As Bishop Alan was saying, listening is at the heart of this. Mindful that we’re operating in a sea of individualism, the Church’s approach must be relational. Outward-facing, proactively building relationships, infusing the life of the wider community with our Christian rehumanising narrative.

That starts with intentional listening, being receptive, receiving, and learning from our neighbours, and discerning through the work of the Holy Spirit what God is doing in the neighbourhood. Listening with great respect to other human beings. Hearing that person’s story. Never underestimate how powerful it is for someone to be heard, for their name to be used, for their story to be listened to.

Also, I know some of you are involved in organising. The practice of the one-to-one conversation is a very useful tool. But be careful not to instrumentalise your listening for a campaign or a project, initially. Because what comes up from the ground is really what’s so precious. We must not be imposing a project but listening to see what comes up. You should hold back before you hear what the community actually needs. That’s the principle of Subsidiarity. We should not impose what can be done more locally. Otherwise, you inadvertently disempower people.

When you’re listening, you may hear things that contradict your views. It may be challenging. But that is better than living in a silo. It’s better than being in the echo chamber. So be prepared to feel uncomfortable, and that is good, because it will lead to a deeper understanding of what is going on. Fundamentally, the dynamic should be relational and reciprocal, rather than the delivery of services or rolling out a project.

Catholic Social Teaching and the theme of Relationship

Catholic Social Teaching covers every aspect of human life – from the economy to the family, from rights and responsibilities to moral judgement, from bioethics to civic life. Its fundamental purpose is to help us bring the spirit of Christ into everyday life. In fact, its stated purpose is to build a civilisation of love. Its intention is to see families and communities flourish and to uphold the integrity of the human being – because we are made in the image of God.

The tradition not only helps us to diagnose, but it helps us to make a constructive response that we can embed into our Christian witness. The theme of relationship flows throughout. We can see this in the key principles:

The Common Good

Often this principle is misunderstood. People think it’s a woolly idea. The classic definition from Gaudium et Spes is “the sum total of conditions in which allow people either as groups or individuals to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily.” But the trouble with that definition is it’s pretty abstract isn’t it? It doesn’t actually tell you who creates the conditions. The tradition holds that we all have a part to play – not just government. Responsibility is taken at different levels: international, national, regional, local, community, family, the person – we all have a part to play according to our gifts and abilities.

To understand the common good, you can think for example of a choir, with a variety of different voices. It might be a pretty ropey choir but everyone’s having fun and it creates a lovely atmosphere and everyone flourishes. That’s a simple way of thinking about the common good. You can also think of the Corinthians vision of the body: all parts of the body have an important function.

The common good is not an outcome imposed from above. It is not utopian. It emerges from people acting together, participating freely. It doesn’t emerge from coercion. You can understand it as a “shared life.”

How do we develop a shared life? It requires dialogue, listening, negotiation, forgiveness, forbearance. It cannot be built in a safe space insulated from dissent. It requires truth. It balances rights and responsibilities.

Human dignity

Let’s look at the dignity of the person. This is another major principle. In fact, the entire architecture of the common good is based on this. Our true anthropology is so different from the isolated individual. We are all equal in the eyes of God, and yet we’re not made to be the same. This is quite different from this modern form of social justice that talks about “equity”. We are not designed to be the same. Catherine of Siena for example, when discerning the mind of God, said that we are designed to complement each other. This is the whole point of how humanity is created.

Respect for Life

Flowing from human dignity comes the principle of respect for life – from natural conception to natural death. We affirm the beauty of every baby and every human being no matter how vulnerable.

The Dignity of Work

Also flowing from the dignity of the human person is the dignity of work. This flows throughout the whole body of Catholic Social Teaching. It flies in the face of a system that consigns people to a life on benefits. We have millions of people on Universal Credit. We are geared for welfarism rather than work. This is very dangerous.

Increasing numbers are out of work or in precarious work. And as we get into this AI acceleration this is going to increase radically. In the Catholic tradition, putting people on welfare is not justice. Rather, the tradition is to help people have their own vine and fig tree – a way of supporting themselves and their family. Our advocacy needs to be emphasising an economy that can deliver fair wages and decent work. We mustn’t give up on that.

Work is not just a way of making a living. People thrive through the purpose and relationships that come from decent work and this should be the cornerstone to a politics of the common good. Short term welfare is absolutely vital but the welfare state was never designed for the scale on which it’s now delivering. Self-esteem and skill are undermined if a person is parked on benefits for too long.

We also now have over 900,000 young people not in employment, education and training. This is not only an affront to human dignity but dangerous for the stability of the country because they don’t have a stake in it. Again, in Dilexit Te, the emphasis is on the dignity of work rather than welfarism. Pope Leo is saying that clearly. And this only gets more pressing as the robotics and AI revolution takes hold. We must not capitulate to a dystopian future of worklessness and Universal Basic Income – this is not a settled Catholic position.

Subsidiarity

This is a principle in Catholic Social Teaching, vital in terms of upholding human agency, and about taking responsibility. Its definition holds that responsibility must be taken at the appropriate level, and that decisions should be taken closest to those they affect; no central authority should be doing what can be done more locally.

You can apply that to your own organisation, to the parish, you can apply it to the country, to a family. And its purpose, the purpose of this principle, is to empower the person to participate according to their gifts and ability. Even profoundly disabled person, perhaps tetraplegic, can still do something. Everyone has something to give. It was a key teaching of Benedict XVI that everyone has something to give.

Subsidiarity prevents domination and dependency. It prevents the centralisation of power. Catholic Social Teaching has always been very alert to systems that over centralise power: it critiques communism just as it critiques capitalism. Capitalism centralises too much power in capital, communism centralises too much power in the state.

This principle also places an emphasis on distributed leadership. It’s important for example, in a parish that we ensure responsibilities are shared and distributed, not only between the priest and the laity, but also so that power is not always held by the usual suspects. I’m sure you all have that experience – we all have it in our parishes. It’s often a group of people who are wonderfully dedicated, who do most things. But it is very important to try and distribute power further, to get more people involved. Everyone has something to contribute and people like to be asked. Even if they can’t do it very well, if they’re not perfect, we have to allow space for people to grow into those roles.

In your social action too – for example if you’re running a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen, this Subsidiarity principle would mean that you should be looking for ways to adjust the dynamics so that people who are receiving can also give. For example, to ask “Would you like to help sweep up? Would you like to help serve next time?” It is vital to give people pathways in, to volunteer, to get a sense of coming back into the dignity of agency. If we don’t do this, we are delivering a lovely service with great kindness but inadvertently encouraging dependency and disempowering people.

Solidarity

One of the most well-known principles in Catholic Social Teaching, this should always be used in partnership with Subsidiarity. Solidarity views human beings as social beings designed to be interconnected by relationships, mutual concern and support. It’s said to be “a determination to work for the good of all.” No one should be facing the struggles of life alone. In practice this means building trusting relationships locally – particularly with people who are poor – honouring each other’s concerns and acting together.

This is perhaps where your organising work comes in – for example to tackle damp housing or standing together to demand decent local jobs. The lesson for the Church and the Christian charity is that our social action must be relational. That may mean a shift from where we are – from the service provider dynamic to a posture of solidarity – where we forge relationships and accompany each other in mutual respect, where we suffer and celebrate together.

We must get over this “us and them” dynamic – the benevolent church giver and the recipient. We must blur the line between the giver and the recipient. This is what Pope Francis was saying again and again in all of his World Day of the Poor letters, and Leo XIV is doing it too. We should stop keeping people at arm’s length and build those reciprocal relationships.

The Option for the Poor

This principle is relational too. It is not like the modern categories of intersectionality. Don’t get confused with the progressive ideas of justice. Our tradition is quite different. We don’t sort the poor into a hierarchy ranked by colour, creed or victimhood. The Catholic tradition is not an either/or doctrine, it doesn’t set people against each other. It doesn’t adopt an oppressor-oppressed framework.

Instead, it recognises all who are poor. There are many forms of poverty, not only material but relational and spiritual too. People who are lacking the knowledge of God for example, or who are lonely or isolated, too busy or who are without the sustaining framework of relationships. But we mustn’t lose sight of poverty in terms of economic injustice because we have a dysfunctional economy. We must keep that front and centre.

The poor might be refugees, they might be immigrants, they might be from white working class communities, they might be people who are lonely, they might be people who are low paid, they might be in broken families, they might be people who are lost. All of these people are worthy of love and affection.

In Dilexit Te Pope Leo is drawing our attention to the failure of our economies to meet the needs of the poor. Indeed, drawing our attention to an economic model that is generating poverty in all its forms. That’s what this type of economy does. Pope Francis used to describe it as an economy that kills. This is not extreme. It’s actually a settled position of Catholic Social Teaching. This is why we emphasise the importance of solidarity with the poor who have been humiliated. Pope Leo XIV says that love for the poor is an opportunity also to renew the Church, to be a Church of Beatitudes.

There is more to this principle than is immediately obvious. Yes it refers to charity and almsgiving and a call to justice – but there’s another deeper relational meaning. This goes back to the Bishops of Latin America in 2007 in the Aparecida document. They asserted that if the more comfortable, the middle class church is not in relationship with people who are poor then it will not see the full picture and will get the wrong conclusions. They taught that the poor have an openness to God and to others that the affluent and the busy sometimes lose. The Latin American bishops also taught that the Church needs to be evangelised by the poor. Pope Francis often said that, and that is why he used the language of smelling like the sheep.

This challenge about being evangelised by the poor is very challenging to the middle class Church. Relationships must be reciprocal. There must be a shift away from the default of the service provider dynamic.

We can see how this theme of relationship runs throughout Catholic Social Teaching. You might notice where you’re doing this really well in your parishes or social action projects. In other areas perhaps you’ve fallen short. We’ve all been subject to this culture – it’s been very powerful, so don’t beat yourself up. Don’t think you have to rush and do this all at once. The Church has been infected just like the rest of the culture. But we can repent – which means turning back to God – and make some small behaviour changes so that we become better aligned with our tradition.

Being a Christian in the new era

What does it mean to be a Christian in this new context? It’s not good enough to think that we can keep on doing things in the way that we’ve always done them. This is a new time. Some are calling it a post-Christendom context. We hear a lot about secularisation – but things are changing.

There are signs of people turning to the Church. People who’ve never even grown up in a Christian family. For them, as much as for anyone else, our witness must be shaped around an authentic integrated Christian anthropology, a true sense of what it means to be a human being, one that incorporates not only an inward-facing, deep spirituality and interiority but also an outward-facing common good thinking approach. Social action must be integrated with spirituality.

Relational spirituality

What can we do in practice? First, teach people to pray. Giving people the tools to talk to God and to hear God is fundamental. Empower people with the framework of a daily practice.

But also, we must ask: how can we make prayer more relational? How can we reimagine ways of making liturgy more communal? In Adoration, for example, rather than sitting in rows, perhaps have a semicircle and music to make it more inclusive for young people.

We should always have the outward-facing question in mind – a prayer directed not just individually but to all of us: “What is God doing here among us? How is He calling us?” This calls us to a collective language. It is not just about me. We can ask: “How is He calling us in this place, in our parish, at this time?” This will develop a habit of attentiveness, a sense of God’s work among us in the neighbourhood and in the wider society. Who does He want us to connect with?

Some of you will be familiar with the Conversation in the Spirit methodology as part of the Synodal process. Try and put aside from your mind for a moment all the internal Church machinations and just remember that method of the conversation. It develops a sense of dwelling together, of listening to what Holy Spirit is telling us. You can use that as a tool to begin to tune in to the neighbourhood. You can use it as an outward-facing approach to listening. Perhaps you could use a passage and see what God is saying to you through that scripture.

We’ve got lots of tools in our spiritual toolbox. The Catholic tradition is incredibly rich. We need to be ready to share it because people are coming to Church now. Lectio, the Examen, the daily practices of prayer, dwelling in the Word. Try experimenting with new approaches. I know for example a church that instead of the homily has Lectio where everybody participates. Be open to reimagining some of these things to make them more relational.

Attentiveness to Place

We’ve mentioned being a people – in this place and in this time. We need a posture that’s rooted, both physically and metaphysically, in our neighbourhoods. It is no longer viable for the Church to be inward- facing serving its own people. We’re called to engage outwardly with our neighbours while in listening mode, attentive to the Holy Spirit, tuning in with what’s going on, conscious of context.

It’s often common for parishes to carry on as if it’s business as usual. But this is a new time. We need to develop a new practice of noticing. We might walk in pairs in the neighbourhood. We might sketch on a piece of paper our neighbouring institutions, and ask “Who do we know? Do we know that business? Do we know that school? Do we know that charity? Who don’t we know? Where are the blind spots? Do we know someone who knows them?”

We can begin to get a sense of the setting in which the church sits. It’s all our business. You will discover that within the congregation the laity have many gifts, many connections. Suddenly this can bring the congregation alive. The congregation is no longer just sitting there listening to a sermon, having a cup of tea and going home again. They actually have an active part to play in the common good. We need to cultivate a sense that we all have gifts and skills.

The gift of migrant Christians

Some of your parishes will have new Christians arriving from other cultures. This is a gift of God. You may have Nigerians, Keralans for example. Integration may initially be difficult because of different cultural practices. On Leaving Egypt, the podcast I co-host, we interview people who are dealing with these kinds of changes and we meet with Christians who come here, from for example, Sudan, Nigeria and Malawi.

They are bringing the gift of a pre-modern sensibility to our spirituality: a sacramental awareness of God which we’ve lost in the West. While people from those cultures are looking for belonging, the Western form has become formal, reserved, and individualistic. They can help us develop a more participatory form of religious practice and a develop a deeper sense of belonging.

One-to-ones

There are many actions we can take to build a sense of shared belonging. We can make people feel more welcome. The one-to-one conversation is a useful device that should be integrated into the life of a congregation. It is not only a method of getting to know each other, it is a method of getting to know the neighbourhood.

Being countercultural

We can make small relational shifts to counter the fear of the other. We are in a culture now where many people fear each other. People don’t make eye contact on the tube. But Christians are called to be countercultural. We’re called to a different way of being. Perhaps making intentional eye contact in the shop, refusing to use the self-checkout. Connecting with other human beings is vital. We can say hello in the street. It sounds a bit weird that this is radical but it’s important. It will help to generate a culture of encounter.

The contributory principle

Our social action also needs to be relational. Whether it’s the SVP, whether it’s work with refugees, a food bank, a homeless shelter, volunteering in prison – we should be making small shifts to enhance participation. We must build in the contributory principle – so that people can participate rather than just being a recipient. We must avoid fostering dependency and help people build up skills.

Part of this principle is telling people the truth and being real. A friend of mine, who works with homeless people, said a woman who was formerly homeless who he hadn’t seen for a few years came up to him one day and said, “Jon the best thing you ever did for me was evict me.” He asked her what she meant. She said, “I needed that kick up the backside.” We must restore the balance between grace and truth: be compassionate but also be real. Catholic teaching is a both/and tradition.

From welfare to work

We must think beyond volunteering and campaigning. The imperative now is to work with local businesses to create a shared determination to cultivate decent work. The conception of social action is not only about delivering services. It is about building a pathway back into decent work.

In terms of advocacy, we shouldn’t be arguing just for more benefits. We should be asking the questions why this kind of system generates so much poverty, why wages are so low. This particular low wage economic model has been devastating for our society. We should not be putting up with it.

Again, in Dilexit Te, Pope Leo says “the most important way to help the disadvantaged is to assist them in finding a good job”. He adds, “By working we become a fuller person, our humanity flourishes, young people become adults only by working.” It is clear what we should be doing.

Now of course, not everybody can work. There are people with disabilities for whom that is not possible. However today I’m talking about the young people in our country who are not in work and should be – and people who are able to, who have perhaps fallen into depression, perhaps post COVID. We should be helping those people find their way back.

Confident Christian Witness

Part of our calling in this new era is to develop a more confident Christian witness. In recent years people have become a bit shy – some charities for example, have been dumbing down Christian language in order not to upset funders or because they have been told by secular progressives that it’s going to upset another faith tradition. Rather, we should be asserting our Christian identity – not in a triumphalist, dominating manner, but in a generous, capacious way.

We can speak about what it means to be a Christian. For example, we can say children are a gift not a right. We can say we are designed for relationship, that we care for our elderly and don’t kill them. These are becoming strangely countercultural things to say. But this what is needed to build a proper confidence. Bear in mind that secular society is not neutral – it is actually evangelising people into another belief system – to become consumers.

Truth speech is a central aspect of being a Christian. Many of you will have experienced that feeling of self-censorship. “Oh, I don’t feel I can say that. I must keep it to myself.” But if that feeling is causing you to compromise your conscience then you must speak. Do not go along with groupthink. You must find a way to tell the truth – have the courage to inject a note of doubt. Because you will find that other people are thinking the same thing. We may have to sacrifice a sense of safety in doing that. We may have to get used to being uncomfortable.

We are called to be non-tribal. Indeed, we’re called to be exceptional. Our Lord said, “and if you greet only your own people what are you doing more than others? Do not even the pagans do that?” That’s from Matthew 5:47. Being truthful is important.

Civic friendship

As we come towards the end, I want to talk about civic friendship. This isn’t just about personal friendship. This is about being intentional about building connections with neighbouring institutions. And building connections with unlikely people who we wouldn’t normally come across, reaching outside our comfort zone to be the exceptional people that God calls us to be.

Increasingly, we can sense that governments cannot fix the problems that we face. Subsidiarity teaches that our approach must be to build capacity from the ground up. There is always something we can do. But we cannot do it on our own. This is where the hope lies, there is a lot that we can do together, even if we disagree on some things. Working together, we do not have to feel powerless.

Civic friendship is part of our Christian witness as families, in our communities, in our workplaces, in our local relationships. We can all make connections. This actually has a cosmic purpose. Even the very small thing, reaching out to somebody else, just having a coffee with them. Hearing their story, beginning to bridge across an estrangement. If you multiply that many times you’ll see that this is how we regenerate what’s been lost.

God is calling us through relationship to be a rehumanising force, to be a resistance against the principalities and powers that are so dehumanising.

We need to proactively encourage positive relational forms. If you notice a little group in your area that’s generating something good and positive, encourage them, strengthen them, connect them with others. Notice where this is happening. That’s a little element of the kingdom of God. Whether it’s part of the Church or not. Remember the Holy Spirit works throughout society not just in the Church.

I know a woman for example who’s discovered it is her vocation to be a connecter in her neighbourhood. She lives in a street where most of the neighbours didn’t know each other. They’d lived there for 25 years without forming friendships. She has soup nights. People have connected. They know she’s someone they can trust. Meeting each other through her, the street has changed.

The true meaning of Caritas

We’ve talked a lot about charity and social action. The true meaning of Caritas is of course love. But somewhere along the line our idea of charity morphed didn’t it? It’s moved from the understanding of love to mean “service provider”. We have to get back to that original meaning.

In the World Day of the Poor letters, Pope Francis and now Pope Leo have been saying that charity is meant to be personal. It’s not about outsourcing. It’s not about welfarism or activism. It’s personal. The gift of time is powerful.

Our actions don’t need to be big. They don’t need to be a project. They don’t necessarily need funding. They don’t need to be grand. So don’t be intimidated. Don’t think “I don’t know where to start.” You can start straight away with a conversation. And by asking the Lord to guide you who He wants you to speak to, where He’s drawing you.

Occasions for communion

There is a wonderful phrase I would like to share with you: an occasion for communion. Pope Francis loved this. It comes from the Synodal documents, and it invites us to make everything we do an occasion for communion.

Ultimately human beings – as relational beings – thrive in communion. People are desperate for contact with other human beings. They’re privately embarrassed and ashamed to be lonely. That’s why we’ve got so many dating apps, so many platforms with people trying to connect.

The Church could be doing something here – for example organise a dance night with a great band and invite people. Or create a space for young people just to play games. Or ask people what they want: do a survey in the local neighbourhood. Say, “we’re thinking of organising something. What would you like?” Whatever you do, think how you can make it an occasion for communion.

Little things can grow

I know someone who noticed that young mums dropping off toddlers would use the church car park. One day she thought of serving some coffee. She did this regularly. The mums used to come a little bit early and hang about a bit longer to talk and be together. Now there is demand for a regular night together. Now that may seem really small. But actually, it’s transforming the lives of some of those women who were isolated. Little things seem insignificant but cultivate them and you begin to see associational forms developing. This is important.

Called by name

No one should have to go through life alone. But many people are. People are so touched by the connection with another human being. To be called by name. A friend of mine who is a psychoanalyst said you have no idea of the level of distress that people are living with. You won’t see it on the front end. People look very competent like they’re managing their life well. But the level of distress that this type of society is causing is actually severe.

What you see depends on who you know and where you are. Not everybody is seeing this. Peaceful life goes on of course, but that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a problem. We are called through Catholic Social Teaching to notice what is going on.

Jenny Sinclair is Founder and Director of Together for the Common Good (T4CG), a Christian charity dedicated to spiritual and civic renewal. Working with leaders, churches and schools, T4CG helps people read the signs of the times and play their part for the common good.