Australia’s Catholic bishops have called on Christians to respond to growing social division with a “culture of encounter”, warning that hatred, racism and hostile public debate are threatening the bonds holding communities together.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference released its second 2026 Social Justice Statement, Living the Gospel in Times of Social Division, in Brisbane on 7 August, ahead of Social Justice Sunday on 30 August.
In it, the bishops describe growing normalisation of “abusive behaviour, incendiary language and violence”.
Launching the statement, chair of the Bishops Commission for Social Justice, Mission and Service Bishop Tim Harris said the December 2025 Bondi massacre and abuse targeting Muslims, migrants and refugees, Indigenous Australians and other vulnerable groups demonstrated the human cost of polarisation.
“Our country needs a change of heart: one that offers hope, and healing and a way beyond fear,” he said.
Bishop Harris said the Christian response must begin with Christ’s command to love one’s neighbour, expressed through action rather than sentiment.
“Love is not only a word or a feeling. Love is action,” he said.
“It listens to others’ stories, fears and hopes. It builds bridges of understanding. It dispels ignorance. It offers forgiveness and extends grace, it helps heal communities.”
He recalled Mohammed Rahmat Pasha, a young Indian Muslim who helped the wounded during the Bondi attack despite the danger around him, and Jewish leader Rabbi Nochum Schapiro’s subsequent call for people to perform a mitzvah (an act of kindness) in memory of those killed.
ACBC president Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB said the current climate presented Christians with an opportunity for public witness.
“When we choose forgiveness over enmity, hospitality over isolation and solidarity over vilification, we help to create the conditions in which a more peaceful society can prosper,” he wrote in the statement’s preface.
The statement singles out social media as a significant driver of polarisation, warning that algorithms reinforce existing anxieties while artificial intelligence increasingly delivers personalised content designed to provoke indignation, fear or outrage.
The result, it says, is that two people sitting beside one another can consume “entirely different versions of reality”.
Economic pressures are also contributing to hostility. The bishops acknowledge the cost-of-living crisis and housing insecurity, particularly among younger Australians, while warning that migrants are increasingly being blamed and publicly abused over housing pressures.
Rather than simply diagnosing the problem, the statement proposes practical responses for dioceses, parishes, schools and Catholic agencies.
These include welcoming migrants and refugees, challenging racism, pursuing reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, promoting safer behaviour online and using “Conversations in the Spirit” to listen to people with different experiences and opinions.
It also encourages Catholics to participate in community-organising initiatives that bring churches, faith groups and other organisations together to address local problems.
Central to the statement is St Maximilian Kolbe, who volunteered to die in place of another prisoner at Auschwitz. His sacrificial love, the bishops say, demonstrates that social cohesion ultimately begins with conversion of the human heart and seeing others not as “threats or competitors or burdens”, but as neighbours possessing God-given dignity.
Bishop Harris also rejected suggestions that Christian advocacy for human dignity could be dismissed as “woke”.
“It actually can be used in a negative way to silence conversations like this,” he said.
“‘Oh no, that’s woke talk’. It’s the talk of Jesus Christ, the Gospel, and that’s what we’re trying to speak today.”
He urged Australians to recognise that changing the national culture did not depend solely on governments or institutions.
“All of us have spaces where we can have a positive impact. We all have a part to play in building that civilisation of love,” he said.
“The measure of our nation will never be how loudly we argue, but how deeply we care for one another, especially those on the margins and those whose voices are seldom heard.”
