Noel Chambers highlights the need for ‘repair’
Dear Editor,
These past days have awakened an outcry for renewed attention and commitment to redress existing scandalising social situations.
The principle of Catholic Social Teaching recognises that the effectiveness of public policies must be assessed by the impact they have on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. Abuse, unaddressed needs, and neglect are threats to wholesome social existence.
For a society to function successfully varying institutions are assigned designated roles and responsibilities that are indispensable to ensure that the basic needs of people in the society are facilitated, and restoration is made for individuals who have been so deprived. Such institutions include the Government and affiliated agencies which have responsibility for socio-political organisation, and the Church through pastoral care, charity, and advocacy.
Giving primacy to respect for human life and human dignity must be the underlying motivation for those engaged in social organisation. This is fundamental in order to fulfil social responsibility.
The Church is impelled by the fact that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God and has an inviolable dignity, value, and worth — regardless of race, gender, class, or other human characteristics. Therefore, both a wounded victim and the most callous criminal retain their humanity, dignity, value, and worth, which are to be recognised, promoted, safeguarded, and defended.
For this reason, every system of penal justice must provide those necessities that enable inmates to live in dignity. They must have recourse to the protocols of justice through the legal framework and provision of food, clothing, shelter, personal safety, timely medical care, education, and meaningful work adequate to the conditions of human dignity. Thus, the revelation of what happened to Noel Chambers calls for investigation and repair of the social organisation related to our penal system.
Kenneth Richards
Archbishop of Kingston
(Roman Catholic)
bishopkdrichards@gmail.com
