Peace & Justice

This is the blog of the Commission on Peace and Justice for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Social Justice Calendar

Okay, we know that we are late for the month of December, but we present the following calendar of dates with a relation to social justice anyway. We include January and February, and will re-post them at a later entry.


December, 2006
1st * World AIDS Day
2nd * North American Martyrs in El Salvador (Sisters Maura Clark, Ita
Ford, Dorothy Kazel and laywoman Jean Donovan, killed on this day in
1980)
2nd * International Day for the Abolition of Slavery
3rd * International Day of Disabled Persons
5th * 12th * Hanukkah
7th * Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope: The Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in The Modern World * Vatican II, accepted by Paul VI- 1965.
8th * Immaculate Conception
10th * Human Rights Day (United Nations)
12th * Our Lady of Guadalupe
12th * Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe
14th * St. John of the Cross
25th * Christmas
26th * Jan 1 * Kwanzaa (African Heritage)
28th * Feast of the Holy Innocents
29th * Jan 1 * Hajj (Annual Islamic Pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia)
30th * On Social Concern (Encyclical letter by John Paul II * 1987.
Condemns the wealth gap between Northern and Southern Hemispheres, proxy wars by US and USSR, exaggerated security concerns, the arms trade, poor nations driven into debt, consumerism in the rich nations, unemployment and underemployment elsewhere.)
31st * Last day of the UN Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997 *
2006)


January 2007
Poverty Awareness Month (Catholic Campaign for Human Development)
1st * Mary, Mother of God
1st * World Day of Peace
6th - Epiphany
7th * Baptism of the Lord
7th * 13th - National Migration Week (US Conference of Catholic
Bishops)
15th - Martin Luther King, Jr.
16th * Religious Freedom Day
18th * Chinese New Year (Confucian/Daoist/Buddhist)
20th * Islamic New Year
22nd * Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope (US &
Mexican Bishops' Pastoral Letter on Latin Americans immigrating to the US *
2003)
17th * International Day for the Eradication of Poverty
27th * Auschwitz Death Camp Liberation, 1945
28th * The Puebla Conference Document, 1979 (Latin American bishops'
appropriation of Vatican II in the conditions of widespread
impoverishment throughout their continent * origin of the phrase 'option for the
poor')
30th * Gandhi's Death, 1948
31st * Thomas Merton's Birth, 1915

February, 2007
African American History Month
2nd - Presentation of the Lord (Feast)
11th * World Day of the Sick
13th * Economic Justice in South Africa * Pastoral Statement (1999)
14th * Valentine's Day
19th * President's Day
21st * Ash Wednesday
22nd * Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Apostle
25th - First Sunday of Lent