Care for Our Common Home

Sunday 22nd April 2018

Today is Earth Day, a worldwide initiative to bring awareness and to educate on the damage being inflicted on the world by our own actions; and there is no doubt that we are doing great damage to our planet, our common home. The positive response to the recent BBC programme, Blue Planet II, has seen what can be achieved by raising awareness of these issues. Large organisations, small business and individuals have all joined together to pledge to stop using single used plastics.

Pope Francis has called for this type of joint response on these issues by our communities and our families for the sake of future generations.  He wrote about the environment in a document subtitled ‘Care for Our Common Home’.  He writes that we have one planet earth and we are all part of the damage that has been done, but also the answer to the problem.

It is time to for us all to act. Climate change, deforestation, plastic pollution – it can seem like someone else’s problem and one that governments should be solving, and they should! But we can all do our bit.  We are facing a world problem but world solutions are made up of tiny actions. The apparently insignificant actions of millions of people can make that difference. There are simple steps we can all do every day – Pay attention to how much water we are using, leave our car at home, recycle or install a bird box. Little things that help us care for our common home and for the next generation.

Are we prepared for the next generation to judge us on our actions? You can in a way excuse previous generations, they thought that the world had all these goods and inexhaustible riches. We didn’t understand anything about sustainability. But now we know so much more. We know what we are doing to this planet.

So are we now prepared to say: No, I can play my part locally and take action. There is no doubt that the voice concerning care for our common home gets stronger by the minute. People are concerned, people are getting much more organised about the way in which they respond. And we can respond with a sense of faith. We show the goodness of our faith by our actions. That action is to make our world a better place by caring for our common home.

For more information look here: http://catholicclimatemovement.global/earth-day-2018/

In the Diocese Caritas has been coordinating the Northern Diocese Justice and Peace Environmental network with the next meeting in Salford at the end of this month.

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