From the Pastor’s Desk::

So many times, I hear, “Why is the Church involved in this topic or that topic? Why doesn’t the Church just stay with the religious stuff?” To be a true follower of Jesus Christ means that we are to live our faith, to live our belief in Jesus Christ out in the daily world, not just in church, or on Sundays, but every day. Since the Second Vatican Council, the “Church” has been pushing, teaching us to try to live a better life in all that we do. One of those areas is in the taking care of our world.

Whether it is solar panels, better gas mileage, recycling plastics or paper, you name it, it is in the news. That is good since we only have one earth and when we have used it up, or polluted it enough, the human race will cease to exist. As early as 1971, Pope Paul VI in his teaching, Octogesima Adveniens, he speaks about the threats to our environment. In 1979, Redemptor Hominis contains references to the environment. In 1990 Pope John Paul II wrote The Ecological Crisis: A common responsibility which discusses the emergence of a new ecological awareness and views the ecological crisis as a moral crisis. Another teaching coming from Pope John Paul II in 1990 was Peace with God the Creator, Peace with all Creation. It is devoted exclusively to environmental concerns. In 2002, Pope John II and Patriarch Bartholomew issued a call to First World people to turn away from unjust and destructive consumer culture. Pope Francis has been pushing for the human race to take care of our planet or the earth will not be able to recover. The Catholic Church has issued in a relatively short time a large group of encyclicals as well as other documents concerning environmental problems.

In 1960 according to a governmental statistic the average American created 2.7 pounds of garbage per day. In 2001 that figure had grown to 4.4 pounds. Today according to a study by Columbia University each person in the US sends 7 lbs of waste to the landfill. We are filling our landfills and pullulating our earth. The question each of us need to ask ourselves, what am I doing to help the growing mound of garbage? The three major items going into the landfills or is being incinerated is paper and cardboard which makes up 23 %, food is at 21.5% and plastic comes in third at 12.2 %. Americans over all are the worse offenders in the western world. Did you know that recycling aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy needed to produce new cans and aluminum is a non-renewable resource that will one day run out? All of those water bottles, milk jugs and soft drink bottles accounts for much of municipal solid waste. Do you know what plastic is made from? Think about it the next time you fill your gas tank.

All of us can and need to do more to help our earth. We have been entrusted with so much and we have become careless and wasteful. Look around and see the difference you as a family can make. Change your light bulbs, recycle tin, paper, plastic and aluminum. If all 700 households of our parish would do those things, we would be making a difference. There is no reason other than we do not care or we do not want to be bothered. Help make our world a better place today and for our children and grandchildren.