Peace-building and non-violence

What happens after the protests end? How do we build a more just and peaceful society?

The peacebuilding and nonviolence programme addresses these questions from the starting-point that justice is crucial to secure peace and that nonviolence is a way of life. This programme investigates how individuals and groups live out a commitment to nonviolence based upon the teachings of Jesus, and how they work for the justice necessary for a peaceful resolution to the conflicts that plague society. Academic research enables the creation of new social imaginaries, and develops resources that will help others to discern their vocation for justice and peace.

Projects

Catholic Social Teaching and Peacebuilding: A case study of housing policy in Northern Ireland

This project, funded by the Porticus Foundation, seeks to understand how marginalised communities engage in the policy-making process in Northern Ireland. Using housing as a case study, this project will use the prism of Catholic social teaching’s concepts of solidarity and subsidiarity to understand how local communities engage with issues relating to housing, how COVID has impacted upon their work, and how increased local agency can support the peace process. The result will be an academic monograph which explores the practice of Catholic social teaching, and a series of resources for use in local churches.

The Charisms of Social Justice

The project will enable Christians to advocate confidently for kingdom values within a secular society in a way that challenges ‘over production, consumerism, media manipulation, [and] denouncing the idols of power and money’ as your website so eloquently puts it.  Taking as its starting point the belief that each person has their own vocation or gift to be given to the world (1. Cor. 12. 4-7,11), the project will create a series of resources aimed at assisting lay Christians to discern their specific vocation in the field of justice and peace, what form of activism this vocation will take, and to understand how their activism is an intentional outworking of their faith in the public square.  These resources will be accompanied by an academic monograph exploring the forms of Christian activism that have taken place in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Women Religious as Activists for Peace in Northern Ireland

 Text not yet available.