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10/04/2020

Stefan Lunte, Secretary, Justice & Peace Europe, reflects on the effects of COVID19 in France. Weekly Blog.

I would like to greet you from Europe and offer the friendship of Justice and Peace here. After all, we are facing the same problems during this pandemic and we are all working for justice and peace. I’m sure we share some experiences.

In France, the first cases of COVID-19 were detected on 24 January. On 24 March we had 22,302 confirmed cases and 1,100 dead in hospital. There may be more dead in care homes and in general, but they are not documented yet. Since 17 March we have been living with relatively strict confinement measures, which are generally well respected. There are of course exceptions in some parts.

Health services are under severe strain. This is especially true for the east of the country and Paris. We haven’t had masks and other personal equipment, or ventilators. Nor has a wide spread campaign to test been possible because the necessary kits for testing have not been available.

Information is sometimes contradictory and the media has stirred heated conflicts around scientific debate. The best example is the question using Chloroquine as a medication in hospitals.

As in many other countries, people invent new forms of solidarity in order to distribute food and other necessary items. New forms of connectedness via social media are replacing missing physical contact. Radio stations, traditionally quite strong in France, have adapted their programmes and provide some source of comfort. Newspapers struggle more because of the restrictions on mail delivery and the confinement in general.

Two days before the confinement – I think you refer to it as ‘lockdown’ - a first round of local elections had been organised to renew city councils in about 30,000 French communes. However, the vote for new mayors couldn't go ahead. In the remaining 5,000 communes, a second round of the elections is necessary but has been postponed at least to the second half of June. In general, the elections suffered. On the eve of the poll, people were told to go to vote but restaurants and pubs were ordered to close. These conflicting messages led many people to stay at home.

Highbrow journals such as Revue des Deux Mondes Esprit, and Etudes refer to Albert Camus’ novel La Peste and compare the crisis responses of Western and Eastern societies - one stressing the freedom of the individual, the other its responsibility.

There are no masses, and with funerals being restricted in attendance and only held at cemeteries, the Church in France is limited to social media and initiatives like the ringing of all bells in France on the evening of the Annunciation Day on 25 March and lighting candles in homes.

People are no longer accustomed to stay at home for longer periods and apartments, especially in urban areas, are not designed for this. The real test for French society, as for you in Scotland, will be the impact of confinement measures after three or four weeks. Bon courage.

03/04/2020

COP26

COP26 has been postponed but that doesn't mean we should stop campaigning for climate justice. Marian Pallister reflects on the decision to move the climate conference due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Weekly blog.

It came as no surprise that COP26, planned to take place in Glasgow in November with over 26,000 delegates expected to attend, has been postponed. The UN emergency meeting at the beginning of April could really have had only one outcome, as the domino effect of COVID 19 knocks over country after country.

By November, some countries may well be back in business – God willing. But to invite thousands to come together to discuss one of the world’s most pressing issues while the other one still rages on would be foolish to say the least.

Justice and Peace Scotland has been involved in an interfaith initiative to welcome and support delegates. That initiative will obviously be on hold, too, until a date is announced for 2021.

But – and it is a very big but – none of this means that campaigning on the climate emergency stutters to a halt. Why should it? Let’s remember that while many thousands across the world may die as a result of the spread of COVID 19, it is the planet itself that is under threat. It is our common home that will die if we don’t act now. COP26 was to have been – will be – the most important climate conference to date. Now Justice and Peace Scotland, a campaigning organisation with so many committed supporters, aims to keep climate at the top of the political agenda and in everyone’s minds.

We cannot be complacent because the current lockdown has cleaned up our air pollution and cleared our waters with almost miraculous speed.

Whatever our grand intentions while we remain in social isolation, as soon as the starting gun is fired, the fuel-guzzlers will race onto our roads again. Cruise liners will sail the seven seas, polluting the cities they visit and the seas they glide through. Airlines will sardine thousands into their planes and propel them skywards once more.

They say the oil industry is on its knees right now, and we’ve all noticed the drastic drop in petrol prices. But this is an industry with the cunning to get back on its feet to fight another day.

We are also up against the likes of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a
UK-based think tank founded by Nigel Lawson, a self-confessed climate change denier. In February of this year, the foundation said on its website that there could be “astronomical” costs for the UK economy to reach the government’s net-zero target. Surely there will be astronomical costs of a different sort if we don’t reach it?
There are those whose fossil fuel investments pit them against renewable energy. Those who say Sir David Attenborough is wrong about the state of the Arctic.

We say differently. All last year, Justice and Peace Scotland campaigned for climate justice. The speakers at our September 2019 conference offered a host of evidence. Pope Francis has called the climate emergency a “challenge of civilisation”.

COP26 off, so the game’s a bogey? No chance. Let’s fight on and use this time of isolation to make our voices heard on the need for drastic change

27/03/2020

Our world is changing.

This week in our blog, Marian Pallister reflects on how the church is adapting to the changing world around us.

The Guardian assures us that Shakespeare really may have written Macbeth while self-isolating from the plague. Centuries before that, the plague hit what today is a united Italy but in the late 1200s was a long boot of little kingdoms and principalities.

It was the fleas on rats that spread that plague. The rats came in on ships from the many countries with which these little kingdoms traded. They were, in effect, victims of globalisation in the very infancy of the concept, operating commercial routes across eastern and western Europe and around the Mediterranean.

And today? Health professionals are fighting best they can. Self-isolation and social distancing really could help stop the monster in its tracks. And we are getting to grips with technology to access church services of all denominations. Our world is changing.

When we were told the churches would close, I had a conversation (electronic, of course) with a friend who agreed that ‘spiritually bereft’ was the right phrase for how we felt. I shed a tear when our parish priest sent us off after the last daily Mass with the words ‘Know you are loved’. Two days later I was tuning in to our Bishop, who now celebrates daily Mass on Youtube. On Sunday I ‘went’ to Mass at my parish church, where like many parishes across Scotland our priest did his best with the technology - but knows a man who’ll make it better.

Much of social media is swamped by increased anger and frustration expressed by frightened and anxious people. I hope we all learn the language of nonviolence. I hope clarity of instructions becomes best practice. But if we use technology for family, friendship and work, it could be that post COVID-19, we are better able to tackle that other major problem of the 21st century. Because we do have to stop driving our cars, boarding planes, and taking those cruises that Boris Johnson assumes every 70-plus in the UK enjoys as a matter of course. Sorry – that last remark was less than nonviolent.

In Argyll and the Isles, we are short of priests. During Lent, until the churches closed, I wore my SCIAF ambassador’s hat and delivered talks in three areas. In the first, the parish priest has ‘only’ to cover two churches, a 50-mile round trip each Sunday. In the second, covering four bases, the Saturday/Sunday mileage is 146 miles. In the third, four parishes add up to around 114 miles. I didn’t deliver the fourth set of talks because of the lockdown. It would have involved a 46 minutes each way ferry crossing, as it does for the priest every Sunday. Pastoral care of parishioners scattered across wide geographical areas adds to each man’s travelling.

These parish priests are wonderful – but exhausted. Wouldn’t it be kind if the laity accepted that maybe one week in two or four we celebrated Mass in reality and the rest were a virtual experience? There’s a spiritual need (which more and more people are recognising in themselves), and as we come to terms with a new world order, could this be one of the important compromises we make? That and eschewing vast quantities of toilet rolls and pasta…

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