Are you an expert on tax? Passionate about the environment? Catholic parishes, like St Mark's in Pakuranga, need you to help fight for justice and peace. Rowena Orejana reports.
Inside St Mark's Catholic Church in Pakuranga a handful of people are on their knees. The chilly air is suffused with prayer, second nature to Catholics. But they are now being called upon to do more by aligning themselves with the poor and the marginalised.
Bishop Patrick Dunn has recently expanded the Auckland Diocese Justice and Peace Commission, calling on members to "motivate and animate people in the parishes to be involved in justice and peace work".
Peter Garrick, a mathematics teacher at Howick College, chairs the commission.
"The commission's task is to provide advocacy for people who are sometimes forgotten by administrators and politicians in the race for efficiency and the bottom line," he says. "It is really important to put a Christian focus on the issues of the day."
The commission is pushing for a significant tax-free income threshold set at $14,000. It notes the latest Government promises will cut income tax levels for those earning this much by 2.5 percentage points to 10 per cent. Meanwhile, those earning $70,000 a year will get a cut of double that percentage.
"If the first $14,000 of income had been made tax-free, the same across-the-board tax cut could have been delivered for everyone for about the same cost as the present package," says Mr Garrick. "This is a much fairer system."
The suggestion, to the commission's disappointment, was not adopted in the Budget, even though the Australian Government has recently adopted a similar threshold at A$16,000.
"You win some, you lose some. You move things along a bit and work on them in a different way. You keep trying. And you pray," he says.
Mr Garrick says the other task at hand is to engage the talents and interests of people in the parishes. "How do we raise the level of consciousness which is already in the Catholic psyche but needs activating?"
The commission has invited all the parishes and is happy with the response it has received.
Three new committees will work on the issues of environment and sustainability, restorative justice and prisoner rehabilitation, and the affordability of housing.
"We needed more resources and more expertise. We also needed people who can speak with authority and integrity on particular issues."
Mr Garrick knows not all suggestions will be heeded. "We just have to keep on trying. We've only got the power of persuasion. But we know that, deep down, people have a sense of decency and fairness we can appeal to."
Catholic concerns
- Environment and sustainability: The need to protect and enhance the life of our planet is a central moral point of reference in the Christian tradition.
- Restorative justice and rehabilitation: The commission wants rehabilitation programmes for all prisoners. To this end, it intends lodging a submission on the new men's prison planned to open in Wiri in 2014.
- Affordability of housing: The commission adopted this issue because of the Government's shock decision in the Budget not to provide money to build state houses - for the first time since World War II - plus Housing New Zealand's plan to sell a third of its state houses when 10,000 families are on the waiting list, including 4000 in immediate need for whom there is "no room in the inn".