Earth Day is celebrated April 22, but the topic of resource conservation is --- or should be --- a year-round concern. This week, two Catholics writers assess our responsibility to protect the environment in the face of climate change.
Even the Gospel is green
By Tom Sheridan
Politics and religion --- two topics you're not supposed to talk about at a friendly gathering. Now there's a third: climate change and its twin, environmentalism.
But wait. That's still only two. Environmental awareness is both religion and politics.
To some, that's surprising and even upsetting. Talk about climate change makes people, well, hot. It's disputed, maligned, proclaimed, challenged and defended.
It's also scriptural, faithful and an integral part of Catholicism. Even the Gospel is green.
Many Catholics may have been startled April 18 when Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the church's support for environmental action at the United Nations. But the Catholic Church has always had much to say about caring for the environment. It starts with the biblical invocation to be stewards of creation (Gn 1:28) and goes from there. Indeed, a Vatican official, Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, recently included ignoring the environment among a list of "new social sins" and injustices.
Humanity not only has the power to affect the environment --- it can destroy it. In August 2006 Pope Benedict warned that creation is "exposed to serious risks by life choices and lifestyles that can degrade it." In addition, he said ecological decay "makes the lives of the poor especially unbearable."
That's because it's the poor who initially suffer most from environmental disasters such as flooding, drought, sweltering climates and famine.
In his U.N. talk, the pope called for "international action to preserve the environment and to protect various forms of life on earth." He said this means using science and technology in a wise and ethical manner.
Even so, some Catholics continue to deny ecological danger, seeing it only in political terms --- Democrat against Republican.
The church, however, is careful not to fix blame, recognizing that it's up to humanity to keep the earth healthy.
In 2001, the U.S. bishops stated, "At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest-group pressures. It is about the future of God's creation and the one human family."
During his U.S. visit, Pope Benedict also told President George W. Bush that such religious values should guide nations as they consider ethical and moral questions.
He ended his jaunt, coincidentally, just before Earth Day, the annual April 22 celebration of environmental awareness.
In the 38 years since Earth Day began, we have learned much about protecting the environment, and the church has long been onboard, recognizing the Gospel's support for the earth. But as landfills dot the landscape, energy grows scarcer and more costly, and the climate changes around us, we understand how much more we have to learn and do.
When I was growing up, the environment, then considered limitless, wasn't really a concern. That's surely changed.
Today St. Monica Academy, an elementary school in the Archdiocese of Chicago, includes "garbology" in its curriculum. Students learn about waste, energy, recycling and more.
The project's environmental vision is far from complete, however. St. Monica's pastor, Father Ted Schmidt, told the Chicago Tribune that in the fall the school will begin integrating Catholic doctrine and social teaching into the ecology effort.
That's a good thing. In my generation, schools never taught about conserving anything, except that ubiquitous white school paste many of us boomers grew up with. "Don't eat it," we were warned. But even when we did, there always seemed more than enough to go around.
That may not always be true when it comes to the environment.
Tom Sheridan is former editor of The Catholic New World, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and a deacon ordained for the Diocese of Joliet, Ill. He writes from Ocala, Fla.
Water, water, everywhere
By Liz Quirin
"Water, water, everywhere."
You must have been in the Midwest in the last few months to see the water everywhere, out of rivers and creeks, inundating communities and causing damage to countless homes and businesses, causing families loss of property and, in some cases, loss of life.
However, that deluge of water belies problems facing communities across the nation as we look to summer and the potential for drought and possible conflicts over water use and water management as just one of the long list of issues on our ecological "plate."
What kind of stewards have we been and will we be when our thirst for clean, accessible water may not be easily quenched?
Conflict over water rights is unavoidable and has already occurred in some states in our nation as well as across state lines when water sources meander from one locale to another without regard to artificially imposed state boundaries.
Part of the problem stems from fresh water supplies that began dwindling years ago. Undoubtedly we will face this again in the not-too-distant future.
Add to the dwindling supplies what seems to be the nearly total lack of urban planning. New communities are being built in what could conceivably be called deserts or permitted to pop up in areas that can only sustain adequate fresh water for the present inhabitants.
How many of us in various parts of the country have been told to ration water during summer months, not to water lawns or wash cars because of a water shortage? Those warnings are likely to increase in the future.
We must learn to stop wasting this life-sustaining resource or suffer the consequences.
The Vatican has weighed in on the question of water and its importance not only in daily life but in our spiritual lives and religion.
The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said, "Two particular qualities of water underlie its central place in religions: Water is a primary building block of life, a creative force; water cleanses by washing away impurities, purifying objects for ritual use as well as making a person clean, externally and spiritually, ready to come into the presence of the focus of worship" (Third World Water Forum, Kyoto, Japan, March 2003).
Pope Benedict XVI has also spoken specifically about water as not only a need but a right: "Water, a common good of the human family, constitutes an essential element for life; the management of this precious resource must enable all to have access to it, especially those who live in conditions of poverty, and must guarantee the livability of the planet for both the present and future generations" (World Water Day 2007).
With so many issues on our proverbial plates, why should we be concerned, or in some cases consumed, with water? It may not always be available. Already people in many places in the world do not have access to this important resource for sustainable life.
Our only hope for ourselves and others on our planet is to concern ourselves with water --- its availability and its conservation, lest the lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem become true for us: "Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink" ("Rime of the Ancient Mariner").
Liz Quirin is editor of The Messenger, newspaper of the Diocese of Belleville, Ill. ---CNS |