Human Concerns Social Justice
Community Solar Information Session June 10 at 3pm
On May 25, 2023, Pope Francis renewed his call to “institute a rapid and equitable transition to end the era of fossil fuel”, in his Message for the World Day Of Prayer for the Care of Creation. How can we answer this call?
Everyone who pays a utility bill - renters and homeowners - in NJ can transition to using renewable electricity in their homes through community solar, a program from the Board of Public Utilities’ Office of Clean Energy. With no cost or maintenance, and without installing solar panels, we can switch to solar-generated electricity by subscribing to a local solar farm, with a guaranteed discount on the electricity we use.
Fossil fuel burning for energy accounted for 73% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Community solar offers one way for us to reduce that percentage - and save money.
The Creation Care team invites you to an information session on June 10th at 3:00. You can attend in-person in the Learning Center or online.
To attend online, you must sign up in advance at: https://bit.ly/6-10-community-solar.
Pope Francis adds, “Let us raise our voices to halt this injustice towards the poor and towards our children, who will bear the worst effects of climate change. I appeal to all people of good will to act in conformity with these perspectives on society and nature… We can and we must prevent the worst from happening. … So let us join hands and take bold steps to “Let Justice and Peace Flow” throughout our world.”
Questions can be sent to [email protected].
Learn more at: njcleanenergy.com/renewable-energy/programs/community-solar
Find a community solar project near you at: sustainablejersey.com/communitysolar
Ideas for Celebrating Earth Day 2023
Interfaith Power & Light is offering 'Current Revolution' for free through April 23rd only (Faith Climate Action Week). Three short films present a thoughtful and thought-provoking view of our country's transition to renewable energy. Click the link below, then SIGN UP TO VIEW AT HOME to access these films.
Catholic Climate Covenant is offering their Simple Living program for our use this Earth Month to help us consider ways to live sustainably for the benefit of all creation. The entire program can be found here, and we adapted their materials for a shortened reflection exercise here.
Join Interfaith Power and Light for prayer for creation at noon on Earth Day April 22nd.
https://interfaithpowerandlight.org/faithclimateactionweek/join-the-nationwide-climate-prayer/
Environmental Stewardship Awareness Weekend March 25-26
Please plan to join us March 25th and 26th in the St. Anselm Learning Center for an Environmental Stewardship Awareness Weekend to learn about many ways we can care for God's creation, our common home, the earth. We have lots of great information to share, giveaways, refreshments, and a drawing, so we hope to see you. The event will be held after each Mass that weekend.
This event is sponsored by the St. Anselm’s Creation Care Team with our partners at St. George Greek Orthodox Church’s Caring for God’s Creation Ministry.
LENT 2023
The Creation Care Team at St. Anselm Church wishes to offer you ways to engage in activities to care for our common home, the earth, during Lent.
Click here to view three resources we selected from a collection from Catholic Climate Covenant, or here to view the entire collection.
April 1st Clean Ocean Action Beach Sweep registration is now open!
This time, we'll meet at 10am at Seven Presidents Park.
When registering, please specify:
- location: Long Branch - Seven Presidents Oceanfront Park, Beach Entrance at Joline Ave (1 Joline Ave, Long Branch, NJ 07740).
- group/organization: Ecumenical Creation Care Ministries of St. George and St. Anselm parishes
See https://cleanoceanaction.org/beach-sweeps for more information or email [email protected]
Mark your calendar for the second 2023 beach cleanup: Saturday October 21st.
Stay in Touch with Us!
Stay in touch with what your St. Anselm’s Creation Care Team is doing, planning, thinking and learning about with our partners at St. George Greek Orthodox Church’s Caring for God’s Creation ministry by following our newly created facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/EcumenicalCreationCareMinistry
We’ll be posting there regularly and you can message us there also.
We’ve got on-going plans for 2023, so follow us to see all the details and join us!
If you don’t “do” facebook, you can email us at [email protected] to be added to our email list.
We can make a difference May 22-29 as the world commemorates the seventh anniversary of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking papal letter on the environment, Laudato Sí.
As our relationship with our divine Creator has been neglected, human relationships have faltered, and our world has grown hotter, less stable, and more lifeless. As a result, we all suffer, and the poorest and most vulnerable suffer above all. We face a “complex crisis that is both social and environmental.”
Individually and together, we can reverse the damage to Creation.
About Laudato Sí
The Laudato Sí Action Platform empowers the universal Church and all people of goodwill to respond to Laudato Sí, Pope Francis’ encyclical on caring for our common home.
Exploring the ancient teachings of our faith in the light of today’s ecological crisis, Laudato Sí teaches us that “everything is connected.”
There is hope. Pope Francis calls us to develop a “loving awareness” of this home we share and to act on the values we hold dear.
Standing on the firm ground of “three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor, and with the Earth itself,” we commit to setting out “on the long path of renewal.” (LS 66, 202) We embrace our rightful place in the “order and dynamism” that our Creator ordained, and we urgently embark on new ways of living with “creativity and enthusiasm.”
“Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.”
Here are two suggested responses to the call to action.
- Senators are considering substantive climate provisions in budget legislation. Catholic Climate Covenant and our partners have launched “Encounter for Our Common Home,” a coalition-wide advocacy campaign. You can send a letter to your senators, inviting them to support climate solutions from a place of faith and reason.
For more information and a sample letter, go to this link https://bit.ly/3i6P3eC
We need senators from both political parties to support legislation that reduces dependence on fossil fuels, addresses the climate crisis, and improves prospects for a thriving and peaceful future. Some of the necessary solutions already exist in the $555 billion in climate provisions included in what was once known as the Build Back Better Act. Senators can still make these critical investments and bring these solutions to life now. - Make a Personal Sustainability Commitment
Use this link https://catholicclimatecovenant.org/resource/earth-day-2022-participant-program-guide
Look at the sustainability actions on the Sustainability Ideas Template (Appendix B). Pick one of the sustainability actions and make a personal commitment to act upon it. On Appendix C, write in the boxes 2-4 things that you care about that relate to hear the cry of the Earth and the Cry of the poor (hunger, poverty, deforestation, climate change, biodiversity, etc.) then write your one personal sustainability commitment.
Creation Care offers some ideas for Lenten practices.
Bottlecaps can be recycled by putting them on clean emptied bottles and placing them in your curbside recycling containers.
We are offering you the following excerpt to show how much the recycling we all practice can be one significant way we can be part of the solution to reducing global warming.
How recycling can be a weapon against global warming By Anthony Pratt
BY NOW, almost everyone acknowledges global warming and climate change are real, from the world's most eminent scientists to political leaders on both sides of the aisle.
But what is not so widely known is that recycling can be an important weapon in the fight against global warming — and how easy it is for all of us to play a role in that fight.
Recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, can reduce deforestation, saves energy and produces more energy-efficient products.
Why is recycling such a key weapon? According to many studies, such as the Stern report released by the British Government, deforestation and landfill account for about 25 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions every year.
Recycling has multiple tools in its arsenal to greatly reduce that figure. It reduces deforestation and emissions from landfills and it captures embodied energy.
Globally, landfill accounts for double the carbon dioxide emissions of the worldwide aviation sector. Surely it makes sense for us to focus at least as much on reducing the negative impact of landfill as we do on curtailing the effects of air travel.
Every US ton of paper diverted from landfills prevents 1.2 US tons of greenhouse gas emissions. So every two tons we prevent going to landfill is equivalent to taking one car off the road for a year.
For other materials, such as glass, aluminum, steel and plastics, the greenhouse effects are in capturing embodied energy. For example, making aluminum from used drink cans uses 95 per cent less energy than making 100 per cent virgin aluminum.
In greenhouse terms, that means every ton of aluminum recycled saves about 18 tons of carbon dioxide (equivalent).
Thank you from the St. Anselm Creation Care Team.
September 1 is the World Day of Prayer for Creation and the start of the Season of Creation.
This day of prayer was established by Patriarch Dimitrios I for the Orthodox in 1989, and was then embraced by major Christian European churches in 2001 and by Pope Francis for the Roman Catholic Church in 2015.
Pope Francis has issued a new statement for the day of prayer, calling for a “renewed and sound relationship between humanity and creation” and asking us to pay special attention to the issue of water.
Today, Christians around the world unite to pray as one. We invite you to pray this prayer from Laudato Si’.
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.
Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united
with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle
for justice, love and peace.
Plastic Be Gone!!
Some ideas (or reminders) from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Northwestern Pennsylvania:
- Tell your friends and family you are trying to go Plastic-Free. Who knows, it might encourage them and it will help keep you on track.
- Get your reusable items ready such as coffee cups, water bottles, straws, shopping bags, etc. Keep them in a handy place so you will have them when needed.
- Now that summer is here, try purchasing your produce at a Farmer’s Market near you where items are not wrapped in plastic and you can select what you like.
- Try planting your own vegetable and herb garden. There’s nothing like picking something fresh out your garden for dinner!
- While you are at it, start a compost bin to help that garden grow.
- Check where you live for regulations to make sure you are recycling correctly.
- Use alternatives to plastic cling wrap such as beeswax covered cloth which can be composted when it is no longer useful.
The Dominican Sisters-Grand Rapids’ Care of Creation Committee have a great online resource with tips to help you reduce your use of single-use plastics.
Want more information? Check the Covenant’s past Earth Day program, Reducing Plastic Waste and Moving Beyond a Throwaway Culture.
Technology and Electronics Recycling
Are you surrounded by outdated technology items loaded with plastic? Don’t send them to a landfill! You can recycle CDs, DVDs, video and audio tapes, hard drives, zip and floppy discs, pagers, digital cameras, slides, Super 8s, 35 mm film, mice, modems, headphones, and such through GreenDisk’s TechnoTrash Pack-IT Service. Check out greendisk.com. Continue to look for opportunities to recycle or to donate for reuse.
Recommended Parish Resource and Online Dialogue
On Thursday, July 29th, from 11 a.m.–12 p.m. Eastern join an online dialogue in celebration of the Ecumenical and Interreligious Guidebook: Care for Our Common Home hosted and facilitated by Fr. Walter F. Kedjierski, USCCB, Executive Director, Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, with: Rev Dr. Karen Georgia A. Thompson, Associate General Minister for Wider Church Ministries and Operations in the United Church of Christ; Dr. Jessica Moerman, climate and environmental scientist, church planter, educator, and advocate; Michael Terrien, OBL. OSB, chair of the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers Care for Creation Committee; and Rev. Dennis Testerman, who currently serves as national moderator and member of Presbyterians for Earth Care steering committee.
The guidebook is jointly published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers, and Catholic Climate Covenant. It offers diocesan ecumenical and interreligious officers, pastors, parish groups and the faithful at large a number of theological and practical resources to put the ecological and creation care counsels of Pope Francis and Catholic magisterial voices, along with selected interfaith voices, into practical action.
Register and obtain link here for the dialogue.
A revolution is needed. Join it!
https://www.ncronline.org/news/column/where-i-stand/theres-revolution-needed-join-it
ST. ANSELM’S CREATION CARE TEAM INVITES YOU JOIN POPE FRANCIS IN CELBRATING LAUDATO SI’ WEEK MAY 16-24, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPpXQu-Ok-g
ONE OTHER ACTION YOU CAN TAKE IS TO SIGN THE ST. FRANCIS PLEDGE
St. Francis Pledge
Take the t. Francis/Laudato Si’ Pledge to care for creation and the poor
"I pledge to pray, live, and advocate Laudato Si'"
Take the St. Francis/Laudato Si' Pledge to follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home. By taking the pledge, you (re)commit to living out the vision of the encyclical and our Catholic faith through prayer, concrete action, and advocacy. Get started on your journey to care for creation and the poor.
Catholic Climate Covenant has compiled a list of possible climate actions you might consider taking as an individual and/or as a community to get started on your journey to help heal God’s creation. These actions can help lower your carbon footprint or make yourself and others aware of climate vulnerabilities. To get more information (and links to resources) for each of these actions go here.
Earth Day - April 22, 2021
21-Day Journey
- Enter into the complex work of understanding the connections between environmental injustices that disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), as well as low-income communities
- Listen to and learn from the voices of environmental justice leaders from frontline communities
- Better understand the connections between current and historical environmental injustices
- Respond to the call to work toward a lived vision of a world in which all of God’s creation can flourish
To join, sign up for daily challenge emails or follow along on the website.
Fourth Installment (3/20/21 (sorry I'm late)) - Flower and Ocean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_OxI2JZex4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM6txLtoaoc
Third Installment (3/10/21) - Forest and Soil
(3/2/21) - The Creation Care Team invites you to view the second installment of Nature is Speaking.
We all want to breathe, drink clean water, bathe in clean water, revel In the beauty of the earth around us, right? So how can we all help preserve this earth we love and sustains us.
This series of NatureSpeaking will encourage us to do this. We will present 2 short videos each week. The represent aspects of our earth that we need to care for.
Mother Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48mxaQtbUdU
Sky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8d_JvMpoY4
(2/24/21) - Please click below for our next message about nature.
Nature is speaking. Are you listening?
Lenten Reflections
The Creation Care Team , here at St. Anselm's, invites parishioners to join with them in taking time during Lent to reflect on climate change to better understand this issue that is facing our world and to take action to confront it.
Presented by EarthBeat, Fr. Emmet Farrell will be reflecting on climate change in "Reflections on the Care of Creation" during Lent to help Catholics better understand what he sees as one of the most pressing moral issues facing the world.
50th Anniversary of Earth Day
As we all struggle with the on-going impact of Covid on our lives, as stories of outbreaks among school kids and churchgoers and families impacted by deaths of seniors in longterm care facilities have brought home the toll of the disease, we also look forward now with the vaccine and increased attention to the preventive measures of masks and social distancing to lessening the threat of the virus.
A similar threat to our lives is what the Creation Care Team here at St. Anselm’s continues to address as part of our ministry. The challenges of climate warming on our lives illustrated by accounts of ordinary people harmed by climate change disasters: fires, hurricanes, floods, and the loss of pollinators and other species, which have been exacerbated by increased environmental changes continue to plague us. There is no vaccine for this but there are many actions we can take. Just as scientists provided us with ways to attack the virus so they offer ways that we can attack climate change.
We offer you the following video, one in a series of videos we will share on this Facebook page. This one celebrated the 50th anniversary of EARTH DAY in 2020. It focuses our attention on changes we have already made in supporting a more hopeful future and ends with encouraging us all to be more active in helping this future to become reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrnnByieL4
St. Anselm’s Creation Care Team offers the 2nd video, EarthDay 2020 https://youtu.be/7I0sFyDKKBA, in a series of videos on climate change. This week’s video invites us to celebrate this wonderful earth that enthralls us with its beauty and supports us with its resources even while we are reminded how we plunder and misuse our common home. The video further invites us to connect more deeply with nature and to find other ways to undo what has been ravaged.
This video ends with a call to join in a time of prayer on Earth Day. And while the call in this video is for Earth Day 2020, Earth Day 2021 will issue the same call. Earth Day is always April 22.
Included here are a variety of suggested actions that Catholics might take to renew the face of the earth. They span a range from personal to more involved. These have been provided by Catholic Climate Covenant which is the organization that St. Anselm Creation Care Team belongs to. Our upcoming Lent time might be a time to focus on one.
We invite your comments.
What can Catholics do to address Climate Change
- Pray!
- These suggested prayers and reflection resources deepen our engagement with Catholic teaching on climate change and help transform our hearts and minds.
- You can find special meditations, prayers and scripture here: https://catholicclimatecovenant.org/resources/?tid=15
- Talk about Climate Change
- Words matter, knowledge matters. Discuss not only the facts and effects of climate change, but also why you feel passionate about addressing it. Speak from the heart and from your faith. And equally important, listen with compassion and in a spirit of openness to those who disagree. Try and discover what is behind their resistance to addressing the climate crisis.
- Find resources here on how to have these conversations:
- Discover common ground: “I care about (name something your concerned with and see if your dialogue partner shares your view)…”
- Tell a story, personalize climate impacts: https://www.crs.org/climate-change
- Words matter, knowledge matters. Discuss not only the facts and effects of climate change, but also why you feel passionate about addressing it. Speak from the heart and from your faith. And equally important, listen with compassion and in a spirit of openness to those who disagree. Try and discover what is behind their resistance to addressing the climate crisis.
- Gather with others who share your concern
- Catholic Climate Covenant offers regular in-depth programs and resources to make it easy to gather with others and organize educational programs and collective actions – always free of charge.
- Find some resources to help facilitate gatherings (virtual or in-person when safe) here:
- Begin or Join a Creation Care Team
- Creation Care Teams enable committed Catholics to lead the charge to solve climate change—together. Whether it’s a group from your parish, workplace, or school, together you can make a difference to create more sustainable facilities, to explore how our common faith can provide inspiration to act, and to advocate for faith-informed climate policies.
- Learn more: https://catholicclimatecovenant.org/program/creation-care-teams
- Do something (anything!) and stick with it:
- Recycle, reduce energy use, drive smarter. There are many ways to reduce your and/or your family or group’s ecological footprint.
- Find some ideas here: https://catholicclimatecovenant.org/resources/?tid=16
- Advocate for policies that encourage climate mitigation (reducing our carbon footprint) and adaptation (dealing with climate impacts we already experience).
- Stay current on policies and how to join advocacy efforts by joining the Covenant’s mailing list, which includes a monthly newsletter with the latest news and efforts throughout the Catholic community: https://catholicclimatecovenant.org/newsletter
- Join a legislative network
- Most dioceses and state Catholic Conferences have legislative networks. Join those as well as the one promoted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development: https://www.usccb.org/take-action
Advent Simplicity Challenge
The Creation Care Team at St. Anselm Church wishes to offer you, our parishioners, ways to engage in activities to care for our common home, the EARTH, during this HOLY SEASON OF ADVENT. We are grateful for you to join us as we commit to preserving God's creation.
MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of our committee is two-fold: (1) to provide assistance and care for the needs of the more vulnerable people in our parish and local community and (2) to identify, publicize, and educate the parish on current social justice issues. In all of our activities we follow certain key principles of Catholic social justice.
CATHOLIC SOCIAL JUSTICE PRINCIPLES
- The dignity of Each Person
Belief in the inherent dignity of the human person is the foundation of all Catholic social teaching. We are made in the image and likeness of God and must be the starting point of a moral vision for society.
- The Common Good and Community
We have a responsibility to participate in organizing our society, in law, policy, economics and politics because of the direct effect on human dignity and the rights of individuals. We must protect human life and dignity and promote the common good.
- Rights and Responsibilities
We have not only the right but the responsibility to participate in politics out of concern and commitment to the good of the community. We have a duty to keep informed about issues of the day and to vote to protect the common good.
- Option for the Poor and Vulnerable
The Bible teaches us to put the needs of the poor first. Jesus showed us the way. This is the true test of our Christianity: how we treat those living in poverty.
- Stewardship of God’s Creation
God gave human beings the task of caring for and nurturing all of creation. All people have an equal right to breathe clean air and drink clean water. In his Encyclical, Laudato Si, On Care for our Common Home, Pope Francis calls all people of the world to take “swift and global action” to stop the environmental destruction of our planet which has a disproportionate effect on those living on the margins of society. Concern for creations is inseparable from concern for justice.
- Promotion of Peace
There is a close relationship in Catholic teaching between peace and justice. Peace is the “fruit of justice and is dependent on the right order among human beings.