In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for our common home, we are invited “to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness” and urged to engage in “a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet.”
In response to Laudato Si’ the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange have developed a Laudato Si’ Action Plan focused on water. It seeks to respond to the cries of the Earth and poor through prayer, education, action, and advocacy.
Great change begins with small steps. Let us each challenge ourselves to see how much plastic we can keep from landfills, oceans and waterways. For one week, we can stop buying drinks that come in single-use plastic bottles. This includes soda, juice, water, spirits, milk, smoothies and more. Challenge yourself to only consume drinks packaged in aluminum, glass or carton containers.
How can we raise our voices for collaborative action? While each of us can help keep plastic out of our water, a comprehensive effort to protect our waterways from plastic pollution requires change from major corporations.
We can urge corporations to take responsibility for their role in polluting our waters with plastic. Let us raise our voices and tell companies to be transparent about plastic use, reduce plastic products, and invest in recycling.
Full story at OC Catholic.
I’m sorry. This is not Catholicism. This is a pathetic distortion of Catholicism. I wouldn’t join any religion that espoused such silly activism. That’s why I’m not a member of the Democrat religion.
These women are all-in for that pseudo religion, however.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: those who opposed clean water, probably already have it.
Nobody is opposed to clean water. What I and other rational people are opposed to is environmental busybodies and politicians doing stupid things like banning plastic straws and grocery bags because it makes them feel good to do so. Look around large parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles and see the filth and waste and trash and environmental damage caused by homelessness and drug addiction. Oh, but plastic straws aren’t allowed in California. We’re saved!
Women religious doing things like this is one reason why the Church should never ordain women as priests. If women had power in the church, then it would become like this. It’s bad enough with the gay priests, who are kind of like women priests.
So it’s all in how you think about it.
plastic, where you been? Republicans are opposed to clean water. They’re also opposed to clean air, healthcare for grandma, housing, women and minorities. Read it for yourself. It’s in the Democrat Party platform and on MSLSD and in most social media. Are you one of those dangerous extremist Catholics? If so, I’ll call the FBI on you.
Did Reagan say anything about camels and gnats?
The truth claims of the Catholic faith are either true or false, independent of its members and their chosen errors. Risking leaving the fullness of truth revealed by God because of some that practice it poorly is a dumb reason to go to Hell….
Yes. You don’t let the people run you off from God.
Those I phones the sisters are using only work because of the lithium mined by breathtakingly destitute 3rd world humans. Plastic bottles? Meh….
This is something Episcopalian women would do. Or Unitarians.
It is really hard to understand why young women are not joining these religious orders. Why would they not want to spend their lives wearing mis-matched clothes advocating for the elimination of plastic bottles?
These are the kind of people who shriek about Tucker Carlson and Trump.
I believe women joined these Sisters with good (and Catholic) intentions. Yet, so many orders lost their way. I have a friend (a former Dominican Sister) who, before leaving, told me she wondered why any young women would join them. They no longer prayed together or wore distinctive religious garb. Any two Catholic young women who were teachers or nurses could share an apartment, but that’s not Religious life, she told me. Another friend, a Benedictine, chose to return to wearing a veil (only, not a full habit). At a gathering with her Sisters, she overheard one say about her, “Who does that b- think she is?!” May God bless these poorly formed and misled women.
Thirty-three years ago, the LA Times wrote about these Sisters, “with less than 200 nuns based in Orange County, the median age is 62.” I wonder what the median age is now?
Thanks be to God there are several growing communities of women Religious with many young members. They pray together, wear habits, and are orthodox. To name only a few: the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, the Franciscan Sisters TOR, and the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. May God bless these and other women Religious.
Taking care of the earth is Catholicism. Psalm 24 –
“The earth is the Lord’s and all it holds,
the world and those who live there.
For God founded it on the seas,
established it over the rivers.”
It is very Catholic to worry about the earth and the environment and to do what we can to return it to the way God gave it to us.
Wouldn’t it be a sin to destroy our earth and environment deliberately?
Great change begins with small steps. Let us each challenge ourselves to see how much plastic we can keep from landfills, oceans and waterways. For one week, we can stop buying drinks that come in single-use plastic bottles. This includes soda, juice, water, spirits, milk, smoothies and more. Challenge yourself to only consume drinks packaged in aluminum, glass or carton containers.
My initial reaction was: Do they not have tap water there? Then I realized: Oh yeah. They have a drought. Then I remembered: What about the storms and bomb cycles and snow and all that? Didn’t that help?
I also don’t think you should drink spirits from any container. Nothing good comes of that.
The Sisters of St. Francis who taught me were ramrods of English and Mathematics, Science and History, Latin and French, and of Fidelity to our Church. When we were led in prayer, it was prayer for the world, the poor, for our own souls and the souls of others, and prayer to live a moral and chaste life. Because of their noble lessons and by my own parents’ example, I instinctually knew God’s plan for how I should conduct my life. I didn’t need to be told to challenge myself to only consume drinks in glass or carton containers, as the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange so condescendingly espouse.
No Vow of Silence? Easier said than done.
All things have their good and bad points. As the book of Proverbs says, I avoid too much plastic and try to freeze in jars because of all the estrogen used in producing plastic and in the packaging itself. Yet we cannot avoid it entirely as most meat and many other things are enclosed in plastic, so our family recycle as much as possible or use plastic and other shopping bags again and again. All we can do is try to avoid addictions to anything as too much of anything is a misuse, and we should give to others from our surplus. That everyone can do.
“Waste not, want not”.
Correction to my last post: I meant to leave out the phrase about the “Book of Proverbs”, although “Proverbs” in the Old Testament says a whole lot about slothfulness and wastefulness. Conservation is not a Catholic or Protestant or Jewish thing. It is something we all have to do.
I learned something. I did not know what was meant by single use plastics.
Are progressives (formerly known as liberals) for reusable condoms or single-use condoms?