It means creating the social, economic and ecological conditions which enable all members of society - according to their capacity - to reach their human fulfilment and to contribute to the good of society.

Majority rule, and claims to be acting on the mandate of a majority, do not guarantee the common good. Majority rule can even lead to disadvantaged groups and indigenous peoples being under the domination of majority cultures, indefinitely.

Electoral systems are only a means to higher end. That higher end is the fundamental right of people to participate, and contribute to decisions that affect them.

As ancient wisdom put it: "if it's about us, then not without us". "One person one vote" can need to be supplemented by other measures, especially at local level, to enhance people's ability to participate.

Same Treatment Is Not Always Equality

To safeguard this right, fair-minded people recognise the need to level the playing field for disadvantaged groups. Opposition to this is based on the simplistic view that equality requires everyone to be treated "the same."

In fact, sameness of treatment can prevent equality of opportunity.

Worse still, sometimes that is the agenda: to treat "everybody the same" is convenient for those who want to reinforce the political and economic advantages they already have.

They will call different treatment "divisive." What can look like advocating different treatment based on culture or ethnicity can be, in fact, advocating supplementary measures based on need. Failure to meet those needs is divisive.

Cultural Diversity Matters

However, self-interest is not the only reason for opposing efforts to level the playing field. Opposition can emerge from poor understanding of why cultural diversity matters so much.

One thinks of the decision of Australians to vote down a proposal that would have given First Australians a way of making their needs better understood by the nation's parliament.

In our own country, there has been opposition to extra provision for Maori participation on local body boards, and slowness to allow Maori to manage vaccination roll-outs among their own people when the Ministry of Health's lack of success was evident.

These matters raise an interesting question: why do we readily accept the need to level the playing field for some disadvantaged groups, but resist doing so when the disadvantage relates to cultural or ethnic diversity?

Is this just the typical failure of some within a dominant culture to understand the deep needs of people whose culture is different?

Does it reflect an individualistic culture's tendency to identify need only in individuals, failing to recognise the shared needs of communities?

Or does this zeal for dominance by the majority culture come from something more sinister?

After all, to eliminate te reo from public signage is a gratuitous, needless and mean-spirited thing to do. The more bizarre because it is an official language.

A dominant culture's failure to recognise the needs of other cultural groups can only heighten a tangata whenua's felt need for full self-determination.

Civil Society

Of course, a people's right to self-determination includes their right to enter treaties and agreed forms of partnership. But treaties, legislation and contractual agreements, though important, are not sufficient.

Achieving the common good depends more on those forms of association that bring people together based on goodwill, friendship, loyalty, generosity, shared values and responsibilities.

It is through these relationships that we become our true selves by being there for one another - civil society.

The markets and the state are meant to support that kind of society.

But neo-liberalism has subverted these relationships: society's subjugation to polarising market forces, and the state's subservience to the market's most powerful sectors, are deemed to be normal, acceptable and inevitable; it's even called ‘progress'.

Society has itself to blame for this to the extent that we have farmed out to the state and the markets the consequences of our poor choices.

In discussions on social and economic problems, the glaring absence of any reference to personal virtue, moral formation or social responsibility is commonplace.

We expect the state and the markets to fix what we have broken. They can't.

Pursuing the common good also needs freedom of speech and of association, including religious freedom.

Faith-based values, and respectful faith-based dialogue, have a unique contribution to make to the common good, but can be obstructed by polarising religious fundamentalism at one extreme, and secularism disguised as ‘neutrality" at the other.

The "Logic of Gift"

In some remarkable documents, recent Popes have taught the need for giving what isn't owed.

Lack of compassion was a feature of the pre-Christian cultures of Rome and Greece, and is a feature of post-Christian society today.

In the early Church, compassion made Christians conspicuously different.

Compassion, like God's love for us, isn't owed. That makes it a circuit breaker where otherwise tit-for-tat and getting even would be about as far as the common good could go.

Pope Francis has asked those with institutional and political responsibility, and those charged with forming public opinion, to remain especially attentive to the way they speak of those who think or act differently or those who may have made mistakes.

Courage is needed to guide towards processes of reconciliation. It is precisely such positive and creative boldness which offers real solutions to ancient conflicts and the opportunity to build lasting peace.

Some feel that a society rooted in mercy is hopelessly idealistic.

I would encourage everyone to see society not as a forum where strangers compete and try to come out on top, but above all as a home or a family, where the door is always open and where everyone feels welcome… (World Communications Day 2016)

Similarly, Pope Benedict XVI dared to hope that compassion, gratuitous giving and forgiving could be brought into economic relationships - the very antithesis of neo-liberal economics.

He thinks of what it would do to trading relationships, business and industrial practices… He sees this as a way of pre-empting the imbalances and inequities that otherwise need to be redressed afterwards. (see Caritas in Veritate, 6, 36-39):

On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice.

On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving.

The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion…" (Caritas in Veritate 6.)

• Peter Cullinane is the Bishop Emeritus of the Palmerston North diocese.

The Fale mo Aiga: Pacific Housing Strategy and Action Plan 2030 was launched on Monday by the Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio in south Auckland. Read more

"A chance to look at some of the ways we need to remember and be remembered.

"It is a line in the sand: This our baseline. The only way from here is up."

Elder says New Zealanders have a way to go with acceptance of other religions and cultures.

She points to the University of Auckland's NZ Attitudes and Values study; a 20-year longitudinal national study of social attitudes, personality and health outcomes.

"One of the salient things the study shows is that New Zealanders have low warmth to the Muslim community compared to other religious and ethnic groups."

Elder says the study suggests New Zealanders don't make a distinction between "Muslim" and "Arab".

"We are comparing a group identified by their religion with other groups who are not," she said.

"Chinese, for example, are not defined by their faith."

While some Muslims might identify as coming from the Arabian peninsula, roughly one quarter are from the Middle East or Africa, and another quarter are born in NZ. Almost 27 per cent are from Asia, and 21 per cent are Pasifika.

And people who identify with an Arab ethnicity might also be from a range of faiths including Christian, Jewish, or Baha'i.

Massey University sociologist professor Paul Spoonley thinks there has been a systemic failure in New Zealand to recognise minority ethnic and religious communities.

He said the use of "crude categorisations" like Asian and Pasifika by authorities hide important differences and the true diversity of the nation.

Spoonley said it was important for New Zealanders to care about diversity recognition because "recognition and respect are at the core of inclusiveness".

"It acknowledges an important identity for communities and it is part of our commitment as a society to making sure we reflect diversity in all its forms, not just the ones we want to recognise or feel most comfortable with," he said.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: nzherald.co.nz

Using Ministry of Education school roll data as of July, the New Zealand Catholic Education Office reported that students of European/Pakeha ethnicity made up 49.9 per cent of those attending Catholic schools in 2018.

The next largest group was Pasifika students (15.7 per cent), Asian (15.3 per cent) and Maori (14.5 per cent). Continue reading

The school's Kula Dance Co-ordinator and teacher Mafai Rudolph Mausio said they would enact this by including hip-hop, contemporary, Bollywood, Island and iTaukei dance styles.

Mausio said the different styles are being combined in one fusion dance to showcase a unity of cultures.

He said 30 students are part of their group and they were eager to show the public the importance of accepting other cultures.

"The dance is focused on the students from different cultures in the school trying to mix together with different talents and put up a dance within a time frame of 10 minutes," Mr Mausio said.

"We have been taking part every year and we won in 2008 and 2009 and we are planning to make it happen again this year."

The Kula Film Festival and the Artwork competition will be held at Damodar City on July 27 and the Kula Dance Festival will be held on July 28 at the FMF Gymnasium.

Since the inception of the awards in 2006, the number of schools participating has increased exponentially.

This year a record number of 41 schools will be taking part.

34 schools have registered for the Film competition, 20 in the dance competition and 34 schools in the art competition.

The Minister for Industry, Trade, Tourism, Land and Mineral Resources, Hon. Faiyaz Siddiq Koya, while launching the Kula Awards 2018 said the event helps young people to understand the world around them.

He said the Kula Awards, which is a major development programme for Film Fiji for the last 13 years, provides a great avenue for students to develop and express their creativity.

Source

• fijisun.com.fj
• fijivillage.com
• facebook.com
• Image: Screenshot fijisun.com Swashna Chand

The CQ Tick is a measure of an organisation's cultural capability as a critical competency for 21st Century leaders - and for their organisations to win diverse customers and to retain diverse staff - is the cultural capability to work with people who are not like them. Continue reading

"A harsh punishment for a bruised ego I thought, until this morning.," says journalist Mahvash Ali in an opinion piece published in Stuff.

"I am a Muslim woman, a pretty friendly one actually.

And I really don't want to offend you - friendly blokes of the world - but out of respect for the other gender, I don't shake hands.

And it works both ways, so Muslim men may also avoid shaking hands with women.".

Ali says people's choices need to be respected. To refuse to shake hands does is not necessarily a sign that the person dislikes you.

A newsletter from vice-chancellor Stuart McCutcheon to all university staff said the unnamed, male staff member intentionally set out to force the young student to shake his hand.

The employee acted knowing it was culturally and religiously inappropriate for Muslim women to have physical contact with a man who was not a close relative or husband, McCutcheon said.

But, "What if this wasn't a Muslim woman?" Ali asks.

"She is a female who did not want to physically interact with a man and he forced her to do it.

- It is a choice, the single most modern and liberal thing about our society.

Now please tell me you have struck 'sexual discrimination' off your list and replaced it with "I am a mature man and I don't mind because it's her choice".

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: Satyar Emani Fars news agency

Labour's Jo Luxton is the deputy chair of the Primary Production select committee, which held a meeting with the Iranians last month.

She says as a woman it made her uncomfortable, but she understands that in her role as an MP she'll deal with situations of cultural difference. Continue reading

In her opening remarks, International Union of Superiors General (UISG), President Sr. Carmen Sammut spoke about how Religious congregations are changing.

Communities in Europe, America and Australia are shrinking, with more younger members coming from Africa and Asia. Cultural differences with resultant misunderstandings often arise, she said.

At the meeting, a series of speakers addressed some of the issues that these changes are giving rise to.

Some of the key points discussed

• Respecting differences.
• Communicating clearly.
• Adjusting formation programmes to create connection among novices and postulants from various cultures.
• Extending such awareness training to older members of the community.
• Remembering that Christianity and the Catholic Church are rooted theologically in international mission.

Fr Anthony Pernia, the dean of studies at the Divine Word Institute of Mission Studies, said the goal is to move from being multicultural — people of different cultures in the same group — to intercultural, so the various communities enrich each other.

A panel of four young sisters shared their experiences living in multicultural communities in the Philippines.

Sr Eden Panganiban, who has held several leadership positions with the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit, gave an overview of the cultural changes within the congregation and an acculturation process that the Philippines North Province community uses in welcoming sisters from other countries.

Panganiban said there are four distinct parts to the process:

• The first two steps provide basic information about the community and sensitivity training to appreciate cultural differences through formal sessions or informal exchanges.
• A third step is guided immersion, or "learning by doing," which helps foster a sense of belonging and addresses culture shock.
• The final step is gaining proficiency in the local language, which facilitates adjustment and enhances social skills.

Source

• Global Sisters Report. A Project of the National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Global Sisters Report Gail DeGeorge

In a proposed change to the parliamentary prayer, which is said at the beginning of each session of Parliament, mention of Jesus and the Queen have been removed.

Although the consultation period for the new prayer isn't over, the Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, has already started using the new wording.

Friday's Panel on RNZ reported that the while Catholics and Anglicans had no objection to the change, Baptists had expressed concern about it.

In an interview with the Jim Mora, Ian Hudson, director of the Salvation Army's Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit, said while he hadn't had time to have a "straw vote" on the matter, he thought many Salvationists would wish the name of Jesus Christ to continue to be included.

He said to do so recognises the "connections to our values and all the things that underpin parliament."

Hudson said they would hate to see the spiritual element taken away from Parliament.

Senior Labour MP Damien O'Connor, a Catholic, has cautioned against change.

"They have to be careful that we don't move too far from processes that have kept this place in good stead in an ethical, moral and principled way," he told Radio NZ's Morning Report.

His colleague Aupito William Sio, a Mormon, had an open mind: "In this day and age, I think there's a strong feeling of people wanting the prayer to be more inclusive, recognising that many of my colleagues do not acknowledge the existence of Jesus Christ."

Stuff has reported that a more extreme change - including the removal of religious references and adding more Maori references - had been proposed but was rejected.

Listen to the Panel discussion

Source

• Stuff
• New Zealand Herald
• RNZ
• Image Mark Mitchell /New Zeland Herald

AUT's University Director of Diversity, Edwina Pio is bringing together AUT stakeholders for her third diversity summit, this year exploring ‘Ethnicity in the workspace'.

"In general people are a bit nervous about touching areas like this because they are delicate and they always create controversy, irrespective of which way you go," she says. Previous summits have tackled ‘Muslims at work in New Zealand' and the refugee experience. Continue reading

Cultural separation is remarkably high in super-diverse Auckland says Dr Toeolesulssulu Damon Salesa in an 11 minute interview with Newsroom.

Salesa is Associate Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland.

He says residential separation in Auckland is not far behind what you would find in South Africa or parts of the American South.

It is now not uncommon to find south Aucklanders who have never been into the city or crossed the Auckland Harbour Bridge he says.

And conversely, there are Pakeha residents of the North Shore and Remuera who have never been to Otara or Mangere.

"People are going to make personal and political decisions based on a really slanted, and not accurate, experience. It is one of Auckland's great problems." he says.

The most segregated population is actually European New Zealanders in Auckland.

"These people have no window or vision on the rest of Auckland…. the city many European New Zealanders live in is not diverse at all," Salsa says.

Salesa was the first person of Pacific Island descent to become a Rhodes scholar to Oxford.

Earlier in 2012, his book Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire won the coveted international Ernest Scott prize.

Damon is the husband of Labour MP Jenny Salesa.

Source

• newsroom.co.nz
• auckland.ac.nz
• facebook.com
• Image: hrc.co.nz

The Auckland Regional Migrant Services (Arms) says it has taken the move so non-Christians and those who do not celebrate Christmas do not feel excluded.

To be multiculturally sensitive, instead of calling its year-end get-together a Christmas lunch, it's a "festive lunch".

Arms spokeswoman Chinwe Akomah said the agency recognised that not all migrants and ethnic communities celebrate Christmas.

"As an inclusive organisation that respects and welcomes people from all backgrounds and faiths, we use terms such as 'festive', 'happy holidays' and 'seasons greetings'," she said.

AUT Professor of Diversity Edwina Pio said expunging Christmas by New Zealand organisations "is a bridge too far".

"I would strongly urge organisations to display their respect, not by erasing the word Christmas, but by being more inclusive so that they keep Happy Christmas, but then also remember to wish individuals for Diwali, Eid Mubarak, Buddha Purnima, Happy Hanukkah and other faith-based festivals," she said.

"I think New Zealand often bends over backwards in their aim not to offend minorities in terms of terminology.

The agency has the backing of Human Rights Commissioner Susan Devoy.

Dame Susan, who is also the agency's patron, said references to Christmas were not banned at the agency but the terminology it used aimed at being inclusive.

"The lunch you refer to has always been called a festive lunch."

Dame Susan wouldn't say if she thought we should use generic terms and greetings rather than refer to Christmas by name.

"New Zealanders don't like being told what to do and we are mature enough to decide how to celebrate our special days in our own ways."

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: scrapbookoftruthdotnet.files.wordpress.com

The assessment will be conducted by a team of social scientists.

It will seek the participation of pastoral leaders such as bishops and diocesan directors, pastors and pastoral teams, volunteers and parishioners.

The study also will convene focus groups at large gatherings, such as the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress and the Mid-Atlantic Congress in Baltimore, and will conduct extensive interviews with influential leaders who minister to these communities.

"Participation in these efforts is essential to help the Catholic Church develop a better understanding of the contributions and needs of such a diverse community," said Bishop Randolph Calvo of Reno, Nevada, chairman of the Subcommittee for Asian and Pacific Islands Affairs.

"Today, the Church continues to be enriched by the presence and growth of people of Asian and Pacific Island descent who now constitute six percent of the overall United States population."

"Some are new immigrants, others are well-established, and an increasing number are U.S. born. Some come from distant lands and others, such as Hawaiians or Guamanians, are native to the U.S," Calvo said.

The project's findings will be summarized in a report and will inform the development of a National Pastoral Plan for Asian and Pasifika Catholics.

Source

• usccb.org
• Image: media.dma.mil

Many migrant populations have not been used to women and girls serving in this way, a statement from the liturgy centre to NZ Catholic noted. "This matter has to be handled with pastoral sensitivity, and catechesis provided, so that people understand the equal role of men and women in the Sunday assembly," the statement continued.

"While noting the historical practice of altar boys, and that it is ‘laudable' that this is retained [Redemptionis Sacramentum 47], it should be noted that this ministry has been renewed and developed since the Second Vatican Council, and that the norms and practices of the local Church where one chooses to live must also be respected," it added.

Source

• NZ Catholic
• Image: 4.bp.blogspot

The Stations of the Cross represent 14 different communities: Maori, Samoan, Rwandan, Goan, Croatian, Cook Island, Irish, Scottish, Filipino, Hungarian, Tokelauan, Polish, Kerala and Tongan.

Each of these communities donated fabric and has a story, and it is intended to capture these and publish them in a brochure so that they are not lost. The next part of the project is to install a plaque with an explanation of each Station in the country's language.

Parishioner Maria Rodgers came up with the idea of having a visual representation of the cultural richness of the parish community, as there was nothing in the church to represent this. "We decided to incorporate representations of the cultures into what was already there - we in effect ‘reframed' the existing Stations of the Cross." she said

Source

• Paenga Hihiko
• Image: Paenga Hihiko