Catholic Religious Australia yesterday released a resource to assist Australians to consider critical issues that have a bearing on Australia’s forthcoming federal election.
The “Artisans of Democracy” resource consists of a 10-page discussion in CRA’s Justice publication Just Now, which links to four position papers, each addressing a key justice issue: climate change and the environment, First Australians, cost of living, and refugees.
In commending the resource to voters, CRA President Br Gerard Brady CFC highlighted the importance of Catholics engaging conscientiously with the political process with informed, discerning minds and faithful hearts sensitised to the common good.
“We hope this resource assists to unpack key principles from the perspective of Catholic Social Teaching and models their application to four areas of contentious public debate, with a clear eye to the plight of vulnerable people,” Br Brady said.
“In the spirit of John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, which was written on the centenary of Leo XIII’s historic Rerum Novarum, Pope Francis reminds us that ‘a community that knows how to give a voice to the voiceless is what we all need’.”
CRA national executive director Anne Walker said Australian Catholics “must be able to engage wholeheartedly as thinkers, believers and actors in the society in which we live”.
“The CRA position papers present an example of such engagement and are offered as stimulus to the process of participation. How an individual discerns and ultimately votes, of course, is determined by the dictates of one’s conscience,” Ms Walker said.
The 2025 federal election comes at a time of obvious polarisation and volatility in the public square and globally.
The title of the CRA election resource is inspired by the words of Pope Francis, who has called the faithful to be “artisans of democracy and contagious witnesses of participation”.
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CRA urges informed, discerning participation in the Federal election (CRA)
