About our Peace & Justice Ministry

The Roman Catholic communities of Holy Trinity and St. Helen’s in Westfield, New Jersey, regularly examine how we meet the challenges of our Catholic social teachings.  Our parishes play an important role in the life of Westfield and its surrounding communities. We respond to the Gospel message by feeding the hungry, comforting the afflicted and finding shelter for the homeless. We have vigorous social action programs that respond to these and other social needs. 

Our Catholic social action programs essentially have philanthropy at their core. They manifest themselves through financial donations, contributions of services and products or some combination of the two. These programs frequently include partnerships designed to intensify the impact of the parishes’ commitment to the social issues and the organizations involved. 

Our Catholic social justice programs also address many of the same issues as social action programs, such as homelessness, hunger, Fair Trade, the environment, and so forth.  However, using education and advocacy, social justice programs seek to change the root causes of social ills. You not only feed the hungry; you also seek ways to change the systems that contribute to hunger.

To encourage such change when needed, parishioners from Holy Trinity and St. Helen’s have organized a joint Ministry with the mission to help educate other parishioners about the social relevance of the Gospels and the social teachings of the Church and to provide them with opportunities to engage in social justice activities.

We hope to help parishioners engage in the public forum by advocating the principles of Catholic Social Teaching in the economic, political and social decisions made in our community, state, nation and world. These principles, drawn from the Gospels and explained by the Church, offer Catholics a way to live their faith to the fullest.

We are grateful for the tremendous time and effort given us by our past chairs, Holy Trinity parishioners Walter and Madeleine Korfmacher, and earlier chair, St. Helen parishioner Richard Trabert, and former Holy Trinity Deacon Tom Pluta. St. Helen parishioner Shane McDermott is our 2026 Coordinator. If you have questions or a parishioner of either of our two parishes who is interested in participating, please contact Shane at mcdermottsp@comcast.net