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Volume 8 - 4 October, 2011 Dear Parents and Students Social Justice Sunday was celebrated on Sunday 25 September. The Australian Catholic Social Justice focus in 2011-12 is on Prisons and the Justice System. The Statement from the Catholic Bishops of Australia, titled Building Bridges, Not Walls: Prisons and the justice system, points out that between 1984 and 2008, while rates of crime either stayed steady or fell, the number of Australians in prison per 100,000 people almost doubled. The majority of Australian prisoners come from the most disadvantaged sections of the community: the underprivileged, those suffering from mental illness, and especially Indigenous people, who make up about 2.3 per cent of the Australian population but about a quarter of those in prison. The incarceration rate for young Indigenous people is even higher. The Statement celebrates the work of chaplains and all who work to bring hope and support to prisoners. Jesus Christ never neglected outcasts and criminals – in fact, he sought them out to bring them his message of salvation and redemption. Inspired by the message and ministry of Jesus, the bishops present us with five challenges: to confront fear campaigns about law and order; to address the social factors that contribute to crime; to maintain the dignity of prisoners; to help prisoners after release; and to seek practical alternatives to imprisonment. No crime can diminish the fact that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. (Source: Australian Catholic Social Justice Council) God, Our Creator, We acknowledge the ancestors and original owners of this land, a land of wealth and freedom, far horizons, mountains, forest and shining sand. Maker and spirit of earth and all creation, let your love possess our land and may we share in faith and friendship, the gifts unmeasured from your hand. We pray for all the imprisoned, those on the inside, whose confinement is obvious and those on the outside, whose imprisonment is subtler. We reach out in grace, knowing that human divisions are false, that we are not the innocent praying for the guilty or the right praying for the wrong, but people praying for people, the hurt remembering the hurt, the failure reaching out in love to the failure in a single community. We remember those who seek to change difficult life stories, midwives of hope and agents of grace. We remember and pray for the victims of crime on the outside, knowing that we do not have the luxury of black and white, the simple answer or the easy question, dreamless futures and nightmare pasts.
Justice
Sincerity
FELICITY
Verity
Freedom