Category: News

Danger Rolling Through Ireland’s Cities and Towns

Forced to take an indirect route to work or a night out because of “no-go” streets. Hurriedly crossing the road due to serial law-breaking and aggressive behaviour. Speeding up on your bicycle as a “single male” aggressively follows. Children unable to go to school on their own—even the shortest distance—without needing to be delivered to the school gate in the parental car.

Change clothes logo, Purple blob with black writing

Can we change our relationship with clothes?

We’ve written on this blog before about the environmental impact of the fashion industry and how it increases inequality, and the issue of garment worker exploitation has been explored in our journal Working Notes. Visit any shopping centre or high street and you’ll see bustling stores and people carrying multiple shopping bags from clothing retailers,… Read more »

Knife Offences: The Sharp End of Deterrence

“What is the moral basis for punishing someone, perhaps hard, in order to prevent entirely different people from committing equivalent acts, when those we punish to a large extent are poor and highly stigmatised people in need of assistance rather than punishment?”

News  

Ireland and the Sustainable Development Goals

The JCFJ is a member of Coalition 2030, an alliance of over 70 civil society and trade union organisations in Ireland who collaborate for the domestic and global achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 SDGs, which are all equally important and should be treated equally, were adopted by all UN member… Read more »

A fully loaded long-tail cargo-ebike

E-Bikes and a Thought Experiment in DeGrowth Thinking

There’s a common trope that we have a name for an entity that seeks to grow without limit (as our variety of capitalism demands) and it is cancer. There’s a deeper, fundamental critique that even anticipating the wonderful gains of efficiency that can come from market competition, infinite growth with finite resources is bound to… Read more »

Sowing Seeds of Hope in Communities

2025 marks ten years since the publication of the papal encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home and it is also a jubilee year with the theme ‘Pilgrims of Hope’. On the same day that a ten-hour international vigil was held online to mark the anniversary of Laudato Si’, approximately 170 people gathered… Read more »

The Uncomfortable Optics of Soup Kitchens

The question of how people ended up with “multiple and complex needs” is avoided to focus on regulation, form- filling and box-ticking; all wrapped in the language of concern.

Looking to Make a Difference While You Work? Two Positions Available

Apply by Friday November 29th at 5pm JCFJ exists to promote justice for all through theological reflection, social analysis and research, action, education, and advocacy. The Centre has focused on a range of issues in recent years, including penal policy, the housing and homelessness crisis, environmental justice, and the need for a more just and… Read more »

COP29

Biodiversity or Climate COP – Finance is always an issue

With the sudden proliferation of early decorations, you may think we have entered the season of Christmas festivities however we are firmly in the season of COPs. The Biodiversity conference, COP16, took place from 14th October to 2nd November in Cali, Colombia while its better known cousin the Climate conference, COP29, will take place in… Read more »

COP29, News  

Institutionalisation – No Place in Modern Ireland?

By vividly bringing to life the “bystander effect” and its attendant social forces, Keegan avoids these binaries of past and present and encourages us to ask whether we would say anything or, instead, turn a blind eye to pervasive institutionalisation in our own time.