Archbishop: Inequalities endemic in our society
Michael Jackson ARCHBISHOP Michael Jackson yesterday blasted the “illusion of opportunity” that society creates.
The Church of Ireland cleric said in his Christmas sermon the inequalities across basic services is the opposite of the “glib agenda” that talks about equality and opportunity for everyone.
Speaking yesterday in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, he said: “There have always been inequalities but the institutionalization of inequalities around the basics of food and shelter, of housing and human dignity runs counter to a modern and glib agenda of equality and opportunity for all.
“Many are not able to access these opportunities nor will they ever because inequalities have become endemic in our society.
“The gap between those who have more and those who have nothing grows deeper and wider and becomes institutionalized.
EXPERIENCE
“Our public understanding of the needs of The Other grows more shallow and superficial. This is the point at which rhetoric itself drives wedges deep into the heart of reality.
“What people hear increasingly bears no relation to what they experience in their own life.
“Belief and faith, as ways of being and of living, whether religious or otherwise, are fundamental to the imagination. Imagination is life-giving to community itself.
“A change-driven approach to society asks a lot more of a contemporary generation in self-sufficiency and self-motivation, self-help and self-care than we have worked out.
“But it deprives us of specific types of relationship. More and more of life you and I have to do on our own especially if we do not work within listening distance of a spiritual community.
“Christmas introduces us to human exclusion – we continue to see exclusion at work in our society, despite the pleading and the advocacy of so many good people.”