A time to demand action against injustices of the world
Published in The Universe
(March 16, 2003)
WHEN I was growing up my mother insisted that during Lent I get up early every morning and serve as an altar boy at the 7am Mass that she attended every day her life when she was able.
It was her personal sacrifice offered up for the ‘sins of the world’. What a simple faith but how necessary today when we need to sacrifice our desires of wealth and consumerism in order to end the world poverty – the true ‘sin of the world’.
I remember Lent as a time of giving up the simple pleasures of life as a sacrifice for starving babies in Africa. With every penny we dropped into the mission box with the African child kneeling with joined hands, the little head bowed in thanks. It was so patronizing an image that we can’t accept it today. Yet when we see the TV images of overflowing refugee camps and starving children begging for food I wonder why nt. It is reality.
Far is it from the youth of today to fast and sacrifice. Adults see no point in practicing or teaching personal frugality or self-sacrifice and so young people overindulge in all things sweet and sugary. The result clearly stated in World Health Organization reports is obesity and diabetes among today’s youth.
It is a strange contradiction that wealthy populations are dying from over-consumption of unhealthy food while the vast majority of the world’s poor dying from the want of any kind of food.
It is the inequality that has to be addressed by each of us by calling for action by governments today. Lent is a time of injustice in the world and the consequences for all of us.
Such excess by some nations at the expense of the poor produces anger, jealousy and a sense of global injustice which sparks the hatred and anger that is behind the acts of terrorism that has rocked the western world. Instead of addressing the root causes of this greedy of nations retaliates by launching a war to control the wealth of another.
Patricia Hewitt, the British Trade and Industry Secretary, made a powerful admission a few weeks ago when she called for the opening up of global markets to the products of the developing world.
She said that protectionism by western nations was behind poverty and terrorism in the world today.
In an interview in the magazine New Statesman she said; “of course there is a connection between peace and prosperity, there is a connection between destitution and war, conflict and terrorism.” She went on, “if we in the West don’t create a system of world trade that is fair as well as free, then the developing countries, above all, will pay a price. But we will also pay a price in even greater pressure on our migration and asylum systems, in increased terrorism and increased insecurity all around the world.”
What more do we need to hear? We are called to do our share in bring this to an end.
