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In a new pastoral letter on the environment, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops says that while scientific and technical developments can help in restoring the environment, “we will not succeed without a personal and collective conversion.” This conversion is aimed at healing “the ruptures we have created with nature, with our neighbor and with God” through humanity’s role in air, water and soil pollution, destruction of the ozone layer, deterioration of large ecosystems and reduced biodiversity. “We must re-establish the links with nature that we have damaged. We know that we are tied much more closely to the environment in which we live than we had imagined.”
The letter, titled “Our Relationship with the Environment: The Need for Conversion” stresses to “convert is also to regain a sense of limit. It means adjusting our lifestyle to available planetary resources. Many are not renewable, and those that are have a pace of regeneration too slow for our impatient natures.”
“Since over consumption and waste have become a way of life, conversion implies that we free ourselves collectively from our obsession to possess and consume. In the words of renowned ecologist Pierre Dansereau, ‘joyful austerity’ or voluntary simplicity will help us to reorient ourselves on being instead of having. Our humanity will gain in the process.”
“It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to squander available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of subsistence. Today, the massive threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness–both individual and collective–are contrary to the order of creation, an order which is characterized by mutual interdependence.”
But the bishops also noted some favorable developments: “Growing numbers of individuals are agreeing to make personal efforts in favor of the environment,” including using public transit, decreasing and recycling waste, purchasing local and regional products and produce, and lowering the thermostat at home. “Ecological awareness is emerging and becoming a fact of culture.”
Unfortunately, their otherwise excellent letter didn’t cite any examples of what is being done by individual bishops at their chancery or in their diocese. In their role as teachers, how do they encourage conservation and care for the environment in say, religious education and faith formation programs? Are they willing to chastise Catholic politicians who have poor environmental voting records?
“Pope John Paul II, who in a remarkably consistent series of statements on the environment, has passionately promoted ‘Ecological Conversion’ as the norm for all Catholics.”
“If such a conversion was to become a reality among the one billion Catholics of the world, think what a difference it would make to the well-being of the world, now and in the future…But passion for the environment will not be maintained unless we are plugged into Christ through scripture, prayer and the sacraments of the church.”
“As a Christian, concern about the environment must be linked to faith. We can express that concern as simply as by the careful use of power or water in our schools and homes, or as powerfully as by ensuring the magnificent Barrier Reef off our Queensland coastland is protected for the benefit of the entire planet.”
From An Ecological Vision for Catholic Education in Queensland, an address by Archbishop John Bathersby at the Queensland launch of Catholic Earthcare Australia at Marymount College, June 5, 2003.
“Long before the Sisters of St. Ann (SSA) had heard of creation spirituality or knew the names of Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Diarmuid O’Murchu, those serving in leadership in the late 1950s, early 1960s recognized the potential healing value of the natural environment,” writes Sheila Moss of the Sisters of Saint Ann.
The nuns purchased a piece of property in the wilds of East Sooke on Vancouver Island, British Columbia to provide the sisters a place of rest, renewal and recreation. Each summer they arrived in droves from the classroom, from wherever they had been serving in ministry to enjoy this haven of natural beauty.
As time went on, “Glenairley” became a place to be shared with others, as the Sisters invited different groups to share the benefits of the sea, the fields, the woods and the closeness of the Creator God. People from the inner city, from poetry and art groups, from social justice organizations, from the Contemplative Society and other groups found their way to east Sooke. 
“Promoting ecological responsibility is always a priority for a Sister of Saint Ann. We strive to live in Right Relationship with God, with self, with one another, with others and the cosmos…”
In 2001 the Sisters of St. Ann began to discern a more sustainable and long-term plan for Glenairley. They recognized the need to work in partnership with another group. This process culminated in the decision to enter into a lease partnership with the Centre for Earth and Spirit Society. The SSA saw this project as “daring and creative, and coming out of a spirituality that is pivotal to the well being of the earth and its inhabitants.” Glenairley became “Glenairley – Centre for Earth and Spirit” on January 1, 2004.
This nonprofit ecological centre is “committed to the protection and healing of Earth through fostering a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.” Glenairley offers a mix of programs and resources linking the earth and spirituality.
Earth Hour started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change? The answer: Ask the people of Sydney, Australia to turn off their lights for one hour.
On March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 businesses in Sydney turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in Sydney during Earth Hour was sustained for one year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
Earth Hour founder, Andy Ridley, said 371 cities and towns from Australia to Canada–35 countries in all–had signed up for the 60-minute shutdown at 8 pm on March 29, 2008.
Ridley, who began Earth Hour last year while working with WWF Australia, said the initiative was about individuals and global communities joining together to own a shared problem – climate change.
Cities officially signed on include Chicago, San Francisco, Dublin, Manila, Bangkok, Copenhagen and Toronto, all of which will switch off lights on major landmarks and encourage businesses and homeowners to follow suit.
“Switching off the lights for an hour is not going to make a dent in global emissions,” said WWF organizer, Charles Stevens. “But what it does do is it is a great catalyst for much bigger changes. It engages people in the processes of becoming more energy efficient.”
Catholics in Toronto who wish to express their love of Earth liturgically will have a chance on March 29th when St. Basil’s Church holds “Earth Hour” vespers.
St. Basil’s, located at Bay and St. Joseph Streets, will mark the occasion with candlelight vespers from 8 to 9 pm. The prayers and readings for the service will focus on creation and the Christian responsibility to be good stewards.
Last night I attended a private screening of “They Killed Sister Dorothy,” a documentary about Sister Dorothy Stang, S.N.D., an environmental activist who was murdered in Brazil in 2005. She began her ministry there in 1966.
A citizen of Brazil and the United States, Sr. Dorothy worked with the Pastoral Land Commission, an organization of the Catholic Church that fights for the rights of rural workers and peasants, and defends land reforms in Brazil. Her death came less than a week after meeting with the country’s human rights officials about threats to local farmers from loggers and ranchers.
After receiving several death threats, Sr. Dorothy commented, “I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.”
The film’s producers are outreaching to Catholic groups, environmentalists like the Rainforest Alliance, and other socially-minded people and organizations who want to support the poor in finding sustainable livelihoods.
I found the film very timely, with a growing interest by Catholics around the world in environmental protection, and the ways its abuses fall disproportionally hard on the poor and marginalized.
Three senior Roman Catholic bishops stepped up their campaign against the mining industry saying it destroyed both the environment and the local communities.
“Mining in the Philippines not only destroys the environment but has become the vehicle for the violation of human rights, enthnocide of indigenous communities, and even deaths,” said Bishop Sergio Utleg as they launched “Anti-Mining Solidarity week.” 
Utleg, chairman of a special commission on tribal communities on the influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, charged that encouraging mining investment in this impoverished country was a violation of human rights.
Bishop Ramon Villena also said only foreign and local investors were benefiting from the resurgence of the mining industry which President Arroyo has been promoting.
Fellow Bishop Deogracis Iniguez said he hoped the anti-mining week would drum up support for opposition to the industry.
The mining industry, which employs about 140,000 people, has enjoyed a revival in recent months, thanks to the opening of the sector to foreign investment, a measure promoted by Mrs. Arroyo.
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Michael Heller, 72, a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest, has won the 2008 Templeton Prize. Reverend Professor Heller serves on the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow. 
In his acceptance statement he said, “Things thought through by God should be identified with mathematical structures interpreted as structures of the world.” In a word, Professor Heller sees mathematics as the language of God.
Much of Professor Heller’s career has been dedicated to reconciling the known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God.
In doing so, he has argued against a “God of the gaps” strategy for relating science and religion, a view that uses God to explain what science cannot.
Heller said he believed, for example, that the religious objection to teaching evolution “is one of the greatest misunderstandings” because it “introduces a contradiction of opposition between God and chance.”
In a telephone interview, Professor Heller explained his affinity for the two fields: “I always wanted to do the most important things, and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”
Heller’s current work focuses on noncommutative geometry and groupoid theory in mathematics which attempts to remove the problem of an initial cosmological singularity at the origin of the universe. “If on the fundamental level of physics there is no space and no time, as many physicists think,” says Heller, “noncommutative geometry could be a suitable tool to deal with such a situation.”
His philosophical hero is 17th century German mathematician-philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. In the margin of his work Dialogus there is a short handwritten remarks in Latin that says, “When God calculates and thinks things through, the world is made.” “My philosophy is encapsulated in that,” said Heller.
Carbon taxes in the world’s richest countries should be used to offset the effects of global warming in the world’s poorest countries, said an Irish bishop.
“Climate change is undermining the fight against poverty,” said Bishop John Kirby of Clonfert, chairman of the Irish bishops’ overseas aid agency, Trocaire. “Developing countries haven’t caused global warming, but the world’s poorest people are left to cope with the consequences for three reasons: They live in areas that are seeing the biggest impact of global warming, the depend heavily on the weather for their livelihoods, and they are already living in poverty, therefore they are less able to cope with the impacts of climate changes.
Kirby said he wants a significant share of carbon-tax revenues to go to the newly developed U.N. Adaptation Fund, created to help poorer countries adapt to climate-change threats.
Africa, by far the lowest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, is projected to be among the regions hardest hit by climate change.
As a global problem, all countries have a common and shared responsibility to tackle climate change. Rich industrialized countries, however, bear particular responsibility for action,” he said. “Any action we take must take the rights of developing countries into consideration. Poorer countries with low carbon emissions must be allowed to continue their economic development and mustn’t be punished for the sins of the developed world.”
The British group Catholic Concern for Animals has enlisted British TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and another celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, to persuade the bishops of England and Wales to promote their dioceses as “free-range” users.
The animals rights group – whose members include Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham – wants all parish, rectory, school, convent and retreat centre dining halls to use only free-range poultry and eggs.
A talented writer, broadcaster and campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is widely known for his commitment to seasonal, ethically produced food. His books, journalism and television series have earned him a huge popular following. He is also a strong supporter of the rights of local farmers and principals of fair trade.
Determined to start growing and rearing some of his own food, in 1998 Hugh started living in the original River Cottage farm in rural Dorset. His steep learning curve was documented in the Escape to River Cottage series (1999) which won him a big audience.
Originally a collection of mucky cow sheds, the property was transformed into a rustic, welcoming venue with a professional kitchen, thriving vegetable garden and small collection of livestock. It became the location for a range of River Cottage events and courses designed to promote the “grown your own” philosophy and provide an environment where people could dicuss, eat and learn about really good, well-produced food.
There was a delightful article in the December 20, 2007 New York Times on labyrinths. Written by Ann Raver, it chronicles the experience of Pamela White, a garden designer, who built a labyrinth in the woods in Maryland.
This ancient form has been used for walking meditations in which those who enter shed their emotional burdens, fears, sorrow, and even evil spirits. According to Robert Ferre, a labyrinth builder and teacher in St. Louis, fishermen had a great belief in labyrinths. “They would walk the labyrinth before going to sea, to shed the evil spirits that sank their ships or made the weather bad.”
Labyrinths are easy to draw, find and research, as shown on the Labyrinth Society’s website, a good source of historical and practical information.
“The design of a labyrinth echoes spirals in nature, from a snail’s shell to the inner ear to the winding of a bean vine as it springs from the earth. Evidence of labyrinths has been found in Minoan Crete as well as Europe, India and the American Southwest, according toe Hermann Kern’s “Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings over 5,000 Years.”
A famous church labyrinth in the United States is Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
