Essay: Creation Care

The parish’s commitment to “Reverence God in the Wonder of Creation” is “a fundamental cornerstone to our mission.” With that vision in mind, our recently published Laudato Si’ Action Platform is a formal action related to our Vision Statement Implementation Plan. Part of that plan is to offer and spread the continuing awareness that our actions are joined to a worldwide, faith-based call to praise and honor God. Together, in gratitude, we can become good stewards of the Earth, God’s Creation.

Reverencing God in caring for all of creation is and has always been a central dimension of our faith, the importance of which has become paramount as we face the consequences of climate change. The evolving empirical evidence and information we receive on climate change offers both increased urgent alarm as well as evolving possibilities for solutions. Those solutions can be as far-reaching as using space-based lasers to gauge how much planet-warming carbon the trees are keeping out of the earth’s atmosphere to what we do in our homes by having a less wasteful holiday period by buying durable goods, minimizing food waste, and composting the leftovers.

The recently completed COP 28 global climate summit agreement includes aspects of transitioning away from fossil fuels, tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency measures by 2030, halting forest degradation, safeguarding marine ecosystems, and a commitment to a fund for loss and damage. The worldwide Laudato Si’ Movement and the US-based Catholic Climate Covenant, among other faith-based organizations, have unequivocally expressed continuing to be active in these efforts.

As worded in a message from the Catholic Climate Covenant, “How we—each of us, and together, with the Holy Spirit—make that happen, is where the hope and progress is and will be.”

— Nicholas Naccari