The following comes from a November 21 Valley Catholic article:
The Saint Francis High School community is doing its part to curb its thirst for bottled water. Students, faculty and staff are taking part in a new school initiative to eliminate the use of plastic water bottles on campus.
As bottled water is no longer sold by the school’s food service, students and employees have been encouraged to bring their own reusable bottles. Water filling stations have been installed in the school cafeteria.
Campus Ministry and the science department worked jointly to roll out the initiative and make the school community aware of the significant environmental, economic and health costs that plastic bottles carry. Last year, 57,500 bottles of water were sold on campus, and champions behind the school-wide measure are confident that decreasing this amount of plastic waste is an important move toward helping the environment.
“We can’t change the world in one day, but we can change our own little corner of the world,” said Father Steve Kim, director of Campus Ministry.
The initiative is a direct response to the all-school summer reading book, “The Sixth Extinction,” in which humans are called “a weedy species,” and Pope Francis’ challenge for all citizens of the planet to be better stewards of the environment and to combat the throwaway mentality–as laid out in his encyclical Laudato Si’.
“Teachers were interested in a project that could keep the issue of environmentalism visible on campus throughout the year, and this is a step in helping us engage with the Pope’s call to be environmental stewards,” said science department chair Jen Thomas.
The attention to bottled water is in line with the many steps Saint Francis has already taken toward environmental sustainability. Recent actions include installing four electric car chargers and replacing grass fields with 200,000 square feet of artificial turf.
Perhaps a Gaea Mass with those evil water bottles now banished.
I teach in a Catholic grade school and I agree to a point that the plastic bottles are a nuisance. Not one day goes by that I don’t have to dump and recycle three or four still sitting around the room at three o’clock. Then there’s the kids who crunch and crinkle them in class until I reprimand them, and now a new game: toss a half-filled bottle to see if it lands on its end. In most of California, kids don’t need ANY bottled water at a school with water fountains. It’s just something else to take up space, spill or crash to the floor when tipped.
How about teaching the Holy Roman Catholic Faith and a return to the Traditional Latin Mass, well just a passing thought.
To see what else St. Francis High School is proud of, click on the link below and scroll down to the LGBT-themed art that the school is showcasing:
https://www.sfhs.com/cf_news/view.cfm?newsid=6831
Junior Hannah Estolano: Watching Love Grow
Watching Love Grow is a progressive piece that showcases the world’s social change towards LGBTQ rights. The depicted colors invoke a sense of both momentous social progression and societal conflicts; while also suggesting the gradual end of traditional mentality as the world progresses. Thus, this art piece is meant to showcase the hard-fought battle for multi-love and equality, and its uncertain and unforeseen aftermath.
Not a Catholic school!
And there’s this, LGBT-themed photography being showcased at SFHS:
https://www.sfhs.com/cf_news/view.cfm?newsid=6838
Senior Jack Sechler
My artwork displays a push for equality for homosexuals in the teenage community. Although laws have been passed and change has been accepted, some people still discriminate against the gay community. This couple represents an expression of individuality, which sets an example for other couples that are scared about societal prejudices. This social matter is even lived out on our campus and I really think it’s important for people to be accepting of each other.
Not a Catholic school!
Not a Catholic school because they allow free speech? Is that what you are saying?
Not a Catholic school, YFC, because it endorses the erroneous stance that homosexuality is normal rather than deviant and disordered, that same-sex sexual relationships can be morally good, and that those who advocate for the acceptance of such a stance are champions of justice, truth and courage.
I’m all for discussing the relevant issues in religion classes with students and having the teacher adroitly rebut LGBTQ advocates’ arguments while defending the truth of Catholic faith.
For a school to showcase art that champions a stance that completely contradicts the Catholic worldview is to showcase that it isn’t Catholic, for it is promoting that which Catholicism deems unacceptable and teaching students that it is acceptable.
Well said Sawyer:
“For a school to showcase art that champions a stance that completely contradicts the Catholic worldview is to showcase that it isn’t Catholic, for it is promoting that which Catholicism deems unacceptable and teaching students that it is acceptable…”
I myself have taken down school posters of gangsters with sawed off shotguns and the like, put on the walls as a symbol of ‘pride’ – to appease Radical Activist ‘teachers’ if not actually teach anything save Hate.
Error has no rights YFC……
SFHS hasn’t been Catholic for a long time. Nothing new here. Although the price tag to trade faith for feeling environmentally active is much higher than when I graduated.
Ceased being Catholic decades ago. It’s a school of Heresy and perversion!
Romulus, please give specific examples of heresy and perversion! Otherwise, your comments have no validity.
The cost of bottled water (depending on source / marketing) can be 5-10 times that of Gasoline. it is not needed as a convenience, although having portable water to last at least a day is a necessity in earthquake country.
So, for those who claim that this is no longer a “Catholic School”, I suggest going to their web site to review the mission of the school, the academic program, the service component and the immersion program. Students are required to complete 40 units of religious studies, that are about as deep a study of Christianity as you will find anywhere outside the seminaries; a whole semester of Old Testament, one of New Testament and then the hard courses on how this applies to the Catholic life well lived. Their program seems pretty rigorous to me.
Bob One, do you know — as I do from interaction with Catholic high school students at several area high schools — that students are pressured now to toe the LGBTXYZ line, and even threatened by students and teachers, were they to express views even moderately speaking the traditional Catholic moral teaching on sexual morality? Hmmm. Need to get out more, Bob.
Related to this, two students recently related how, at their school, a once-proud “mens sana in corpore sano” (that is an oxymoron worth pondering) institution, that, were they to speak out as secret Trump supporters, they would have their lockers broken into and vandalized (as were other students’). Also, several stridently pro-Hillary teachers were known to mark down…
…their papers and their course grades—classic socialist procedure. Marginalize ideological opponents.
Remember, Bob, repeat the progressive mantra, until the New Dawn of the Worker’s Paradise is here: “Consolidate power, suppress dissent.”
You may be right, Steve, that I need to get out more. I only have one grand-child left in high school. Others are in college. They make President Obama sound like a John Birch Conservative. I know that the public universities teach liberalism as a religion, but I thought the Catholic Schools toed the line a little more as fare as faith formation is concerned. My bad?
this is enough to make me take to the bottle