Building Peace with Justice, final edition

Building Peace with Justice is a brief, weekly bulletin reflection written by members of a Public Policy sub-committee in the Diocese of Rochester. It links the Sunday readings to Catholic social teaching. Many parishes publish them as space allows.

For Sunday Bulletins on February 24
The World Health Organization says that every year more than 3.4 million people die from water related diseases, making it the leading cause of disease and death around the world with most of the victims being young children.

Catholic Social Teaching insists that we “protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental moral and ethical dimensions which cannot be ignored.” In addition, “it teaches that human dignity must be protected by allowing every person a fundamental right to life and to those things required for human life," like clean water.

Today Jesus shares his "living water" with us, which satisfies all our human needs, both physical and spiritual.

Reflection: How do we ensure that our world’s children have enough clean water? How do we live in the world as witnesses to Christ’s living water?


The End of Building Peace with Justice
From a letter written by Fr. Brian Cool, Diocesan Public Policy Chairperson, to Pastoral Leaders and Bulletin editors:

"Nearly five years ago, as the United States began the war in Iraq, the Diocesan Public Policy Committee initiated a bulletin series to counteract the public’s impression that the Catholic Church had little to say about the morality of pre-emptive war. From the beginning, the series, initially called “In Time of Conflict” then “Building Peace with Justice”, called Catholics to hear the challenging, prophetic voices from our own tradition who call us to live lives of courage that reflect our Gospel call to love one another.

The war goes on, but we feel it’s time to bring the series to an end.

This week we publish the last edition of Building Peace with Justice for publication in bulletins on February 24. Next week, a new series will begin called “Building Faithful Citizenship.” This series will run at least through this present election year and will present bulletin-friendly excerpts from the U.S. Catholic Bishops recent statement, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the catholic Bishops of the United States, along with a brief reflection."