Catholic Diocese of Broome

The reading of the history of the early Christian communities portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Letters of St Paul makes for a fascinating study. There were all manner of tensions emerging in these newly formed communities once the early euphoria of establishment had calmed down. The realities were somewhat more mundane than the founding visions of missionary endeavour and increasing numbers of members.

They eventually had to get down to asking questions about how they would live together. We read that in the early days of the Church in Jerusalem, for example, the people shared their goods willingly with each other, even to the point of selling their possessions so that they could donate funds to the common purse used to assist those in need. This idealism did not last all that long in many places, if Paul is to be believed.

Communities started to raise questions about who had a right to belong and who did not. They wanted to impose strict entry requirements on new members, placing barriers that were not there before in the way of these new applicants. There were people coming together for gatherings where sections of the community were clearly well supplied with food and drink while others were left to go hungry in another part of the room. These communities were in crisis; those who had been famous for the way ‘they love one another’ were in danger of disintegrating into faction-ridden exclusive enclaves.

Many of our towns in the Kimberley are in danger of moving in the same direction as the early Christian communities – fracturing into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. This is socially undesirable if not unsustainable. What sort of community do we aspire to be? How do we want to live with each other into the future? How can we preserve the good things we have, in many cases the unique things we enjoy? How can we continue to present an attractive ‘face’ to the rest of the world as a tourist destination?

Many of the problems of the early Church were resolved by the first Council of the Church held in Jerusalem. All the ‘stakeholders’ were brought together to make their case and argue their point of view. In the end, those who could have been classed as the ‘outsiders’ and the ‘underdogs’ won the day. Even the Pope at the time, St. Peter, had to admit that he was wrong and altered his stance on some crucial issues.

Real grass roots community action seems to be the way to go in the Kimberley as well. We cannot allow Governments of any persuasion, big business or any particular sector of the community to dictate to the rest how we are to live with one another. We need to claim our rights as equal partners in the enterprise of community building, to forge respectful partnerships and places of dialogue across interest groups and begin to become the change we wish to see, to start to live into the dreams we have for our children and the communities we would like to see them enjoy.

As Pope Benedict said in his World Day of Peace message for 2007: ‘ I am convinced that respect for the person promotes peace and that, in building peace, the foundations are laid for an authentic integral humanism. In this way a serene future is prepared for coming generations.’