Sandie Cornish

This chapter considers the impact in Australia of the social initiatives following the Second Vatican Council, including the work of and disputes over the Catholic Commission Justice and Peace, the Nestor Enquiry, and development of the Bishops' Commission for Justice, Development, Environment and Peace and the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council.

Taking a synodal path in the generation of Catholic social thought, teaching, and action calls for a deeper engagement of the whole people of God. Synodality moves beyond merely consulting the laity for their practical experience or technical knowledge by taking seriously their faith experience and theological insights. By mobilising synergies between a community engagement approach to practical theology and existing elements of the Catholic social justice tradition, theologians and bishops can contribute to the development of new expressions of synodality in relation to thought and action on social, economic and ecological justice.
This article describes a community engagement approach to practical
theology, and identifies synergies with the Catholic social justice tradition. It notes and reflects on previous attempts in Australia to expand participation in the development of local Catholic social teaching. Finally it explores four possible directions for the development of new expressions of synodality in Catholic social justice teaching and action in Australia: co-responsibility for agenda-setting; open-ended processes; uncovering the theological insights of the community; and structures for shared leadership and collaboration.

Millions of people are on the move. Often their rights claims are seen as conflicting with those of host communities and as threatening national sovereignty. This article presents a brief overview of the response of Papal Catholic Social Teaching (CST) on migration in the post Vatican II period, and that of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences. It suggests the following areas for potential development in CST on migration: criteria for the acceptance of migrants when the common good prevents the acceptance of all who have a moral claim on a community; engaging with the gendered experiences of women migrants and the social construction of complementarity as subordination; and moving beyond a nuclear-family-centred perspective. In the interplay between local and universal CST, the Bishops of Asia have the opportunity to contribute more to the development of CST as a more truly international and less Eurocentric body of teaching.

Laudato Sí is an important and timely teaching document with great relevance for the peoples of Asia. Pastoral agents in the local churches of Asia need to understand this teaching in order to play their part in making it known, and interpreting its implications for local faith communities. This paper provides hermeneutic keys to assist pastoral workers to understand the encyclical and its place within the corpus of Catholic Social Teaching. It examines the context in which the encyclical was issued, its purpose and audience, the teaching authority that it holds, its methodology and main concerns, and its contribution to the body of CST. These reflections are intended to better equip pastoral workers in Asia to engage more deeply with the meaning and implications of the encyclical for the thinking and action of local churches. Through such engagement, they may be able to make contextualized contributions to the ongoing development of the local and universal social teachings.

Benedict XVI focuses on the goal of human flourishing, questioning anything that hinders this objective. He suggests that a human centred perspective on development is needed, and highlights the need for space within the economy for values such as love, gratuity, gift and solidarity.

This article comments on the results of the St James Ethics Centre's informal terrorism and capital punishment survey which reported a range of views. The inconsistent approach to capital punishment among Australians seems to be driven more by emotion and social identification than principles, or practical reason. The author argues that with the possibility of error in the justice system, the practice of death penalty is a danger to the society that practices it, and that society is hypocritical to condemn a man for murder and then to commit murder in carrying out the sentence.

Information and communication technology is a tool with the potential to engage young people educationally, civically, politically and socially. Its use among young people is widespread: research undertaken by Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre indicates that almost all young Australians are online, with 90 per cent of 16-25 year olds using the internet daily (Nielson 2010a, p 139). In spite of its pervasive use and its potential to engage young people, research suggests Information and communication technology (ICT) is a resource that currently appears to be underutilised within the youth sector (Metcalf et al 2010, p15). Research into its current and potential use in the alternative education sector is noticeably absent. As national attention focuses on increasing school retention rates, alternative education programs could play a critical and growing role in supporting young people who have disengaged from mainstream schooling. Given that the benefits of ICT are largely u...