Creation Care

On Saturday, November 18, five of our group planted trees as part of the Nashville Tree Foundation's annual Re-Leafing event.  Our Creation Care group and its predecessor, the Laudato Si committee, have participated in this annual event for several years.  This year's planting was at Fall-Hamilton Elementary School on Wedgewood Avenue.  Our group of five planted several trees and along with the large group of volunteers for the event we finished the planting of 55 trees at Fall-Hamilton in a very short time.  A few photos of our crew are below.  

We will plant a pollinator garden at the Villa on Saturday, December 9, at 10:00.  The planting will probably take about two hours.  Please join us if you can. 

Our next meeting will be Sunday, December 10, after the 11:00 Mass.  We'll meet in the Council Room down the hall from the Parish Center. 

15 people participated in our tour of the CTK Arboretum after the 11:00 Mass on October 29.  The tour was led by Tony Emmanuel, who developed the arboretum in 2013 and has continued to maintain and nurture it.  Tony led a walk around the CTK campus talking about the history of the arboretum, the annual Graduation Tree planting by each year's eighth grade class, and some plans for the future.  Tony talked about some of the many species of trees in the arboretum -- the brilliant fall color of the Black Gum, the symmetry of the Bur Oak, the very hard wood of the Osage Orange, Native American use of the Soapberry Tree, the golden leaf drop of the Gingko, and many others.  Tony also answered many questions from the group about the trees, the CTK campus, and the involvement of Christ the King School in the arboretum.  The arboretum is a treasure of our parish, hidden in plain sight.  

Here are the minutes from the last Creation Care meeting on October 6, 2023.

CREATION CARE MEETING MINUTES 10-6-2023 

Please note a couple of upcoming dates:

Oct 29 - Tour of the CTK Arboretum after 11:00 Mass
Dec 2  - Planting of a new pollinator garden at the Villa (10:00 a.m.)

We talked briefly about Pope Francis's new apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum. You can read the document at: 

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20231004-laudate-deum.html

If you haven't read Laudato Sí, Pope Francis's 2015 encyclical, the foundation of what we are working on, it is at:

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

Here are the minutes from the last Creation Care meeting on September 10, 2023.

Creation Care Meeting Minutes 9-10-2023 

Our next meeting will be October 8 after the 11:00 Mass.

In June 2015, Pope Francis published the  encyclical "Laudato Si – On the Care of Our Common Home," which describes how Christians ought to interact with each other and the environment. The parish has implemented this vision through various projects in the past - including in the Haitian Coffee Project - and is re-forming a Creation Care Ministry to meet regularly and help further bring Christ the King into harmony with our neighbors and our planet. 

If you would like to join our monthly meetings, please email Joe McLoughlin at fjosephmclaughlin@gmail.com or talk to Jon Stotts. We also plan to regularly include information in the bulletin. Our winter projects include an expanded church garden, tree planting, and reducing styrofoam use at the parish. We'd love to have you join us and share your ideas!

Like-minded organizations:

• The Catholic Climate Covenant, a US-based lay organization
• The Laudato Si' Movement, a Global lay organization
• The US Catholic Bishops' page on environmental justice and development
• The Vatican's Laudato Si' Action Platform

Read the Encylical:
The encyclical itself is not very long and is written for a lay audience. Give it a shot! (pdf link or website link)   

Kevin Glauber Ahern, Religion Professor at Manhattan Catholic College, provides a summarized version of the encyclical below. 

• See: The Earth and the Poor Cry Out to God
  • Chapter 1: What is Happening to Our Common Home
    • An Environmental, Economic, and Political Crisis
• Judge: This Reality, Caused by Human Action, is not the Will of God
  • Chapter 2: The Gospel of Creation
  • Chapter 3: The Human Roots of the Ecological Crisis
  • Chapter 4: Integral Ecology
• Act: A Call to a "Bold Cultural Revolution"
  • Chapter 5: Lines of Approach and Action
  • Chapter 6: Ecological Education and Spirituality

SEE: THE EARTH AND THE POOR CRY OUT TO GOD  
After a brief Introduction (1-16) where he roots this text in the teachings of his 
predecessors, Pope Francis begins by taking stock of the problem, “its human roots,” an
his conviction that “things can change.”  
 
Chapter One: What is Happening to Our Common Home [17-61] 
Identifies problems including including pollution, climate change, water issues, loss of 
biodiversity, links between ecological degradation and economic inequality, 
urbanization, and the failure of leadership to effectively respond. He identifies the 
interconnection between various elements of the present crisis.  
 
An Environmental Crisis: We are destroying our common home, sister earth 
“The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. A 
very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a 
disturbing warming of the climatic system...Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this 
warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.” (23) 
 
“Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, 
especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths”…The earth, our 
home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” (19 -20) 
 
“Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very 
existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.” (33) 
 
An Economic Crisis: The poor and excluded cry out to God 
“The deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable 
people on the planet: “Both everyday experience and scientific research show that 
the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest”…It 
needs to be said that, generally speaking, there is little in the way of clear awareness 
of problems which especially affect the excluded. Yet they are the majority of the 
planet’s population, billions of people…Today, however, we have to realize that a 
true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate 
questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the 
cry of the poor.” (48 – 49)                                                                   

A Political Crisis: We have failed to respond  
“These situations have caused sister earth, along with all the abandoned of our 
world, to cry out, pleading that we take another course. Never have we so hurt 
and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. Yet we 
are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he 
desired when he created it and correspond with his plan for peace, beauty and 
fullness. The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. 
We lack leadership capable of striking out on new paths and meeting the needs of 
the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations” (53) 
 
JUDGE: THIS REALITY, CAUSED BY HUMAN ACTION, IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD 
In the judge stage, the Pope looks at the deeper reality in three parts.  
 
Chapter Two: The Gospel of Creation [62-100] 
Offers and overview of Biblical accounts of creation. Humans, created in the image and 
likeness of God, are special but the rest of creation also has value. Earth and animals 
are not objects that we can own. “Jesus Christ lived in full harmony with creation” (98). 
 
 “We are not God. The earth was here before us and it has been given to us… 
Although it is true that we Christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the 
Scriptures, nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created 
in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures…. Clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism 
unconcerned for other creatures.” (67 - 68) 
 
 “It would also be mistaken to view other living beings as mere objects subjected to 
arbitrary human domination. When nature is viewed solely as a source of profit and 
gain, this has serious consequences for society. This vision of “might is right” has 
engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority 
of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most 
powerful: the winner takes all. Completely at odds with this model are the ideals of 
harmony, justice, fraternity and peace as proposed by Jesus.” (82) 
 
“Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us 
overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The 
entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, 
water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.” (84) 
 
 Chapter Three: The Human Roots of the Ecological Crisis [101-136] 
Examines several cultural trends in support of an anthropocentric worldview. These 
include faith in a technocratic paradigm where everything becomes an object to be 
used for the sake of profit and “progress.”  
 
“There is a tendency to believe that every increase in power means “an increase of 
‘progress’ itself”, an advance in “security, usefulness, welfare and vigour; …an 
assimilation of new values into the stream of culture”, as if reality, goodness and
 truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such. The fact is that 
“contemporary man has not been trained to use power well”, because our 
immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development 
in human responsibility, values and conscience. (105) 
 
“All of this shows the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural 
revolution. Science and technology are not neutral; from the beginning to the 
end of a process, various intentions and possibilities are in play and can take on 
distinct shapes. Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to 
slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and 
sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the 
great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur. (114) 
 
Chapter Four: Integral Ecology [137-162] 
Lays out an alterative vision with an integral ecology that affirms the 
interconnectedness of peoples, cultures, generations, and the planet.  
 
“In the present condition of global society, where injustices abound and growing 
numbers of people are deprived of basic human rights and considered expendable, 
the principle of the common good immediately becomes, logically and 
inevitably, a summons to solidarity and a preferential option for the poorest 
of our brothers and sisters. This option entails recognizing the implications of the 
universal destination of the world’s goods, but, as I mentioned in the Apostolic 
Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, it demands before all else an appreciation of the 
immense dignity of the poor in the light of our deepest convictions as believers. We 
need only look around us to see that, today, this option is in fact an ethical 
imperative essential for effectively attaining the common good.” (158) 
 
“We can no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational 
solidarity. Once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future 
generations, we look at things differently; we realize that the world is a gift which 
we have freely received and must share with others. Since the world has been 
given to us, we can no longer view reality in a purely utilitarian way, in which 
efficiency and productivity are entirely geared to our individual benefit. 
Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, 
since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us.” (159) 
 
ACT: A CALL TO A “BOLD CULTURAL REVOLUTION” (114) 
Francis identifies two levels of action. 
 
Chapter Five: Lines of Approach and Action [163-201] 
Speaks about the need for leadership and regulatory laws concerning the environment and our relationships with the poor. This calls for dialogue at multiple levels, 
including between religions and science.  
 
“Enforceable international agreements are urgently needed, since local 
authorities are not always capable of effective intervention…Global regulatory 
norms are needed to impose obligations and prevent unacceptable actions, for 
example, when powerful companies or countries dump contaminated waste or 
offshore polluting industries in other countries.” (173) 
 
“Today, in view of the common good, there is urgent need for politics and 
economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially human life. 
Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm 
commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system, only reaffirms the 
absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises after a slow, costly and only apparent recovery. The financial 
crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to develop a new economy, more 
attentive to ethical principles, and new ways of regulating speculative financial 
practices and virtual wealth. But the response to the crisis did not include 
rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world.” (189) 
 
Chapter Six: Ecological Education and Spirituality [202-246] 
Points to the need for a radical change of lifestyles, particularly for those of us in 
developed nations. Law and rules, while important, will never succeed unless we 
change people, their views of nature, their views of the economy, and their 
understanding of property. This calls for an “ecological conversion” (222) including small daily actions (like the Like the Little Way of St. Therese) and collective organizing.  
 
 “Education in environmental responsibility can encourage ways of acting which 
directly and significantly affect the world around us, such as avoiding the use of 
plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only 
what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using publictransport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any 
number of other practiceswhen done for the right reasons, can be an act of love which expresses 
our own dignity.” (211) 
 
 “Isolated individuals can lose their ability and freedom to escape the utilitarian 
mindset, and end up prey to an unethical consumerism bereft of social or ecological 
awareness. Social problems must be addressed by community networks and 
not simply by the sum of individual good deeds.” (219) 

DID YOU KNOW?

September 1 was proclaimed as the World Day of Prayer for Creation by the Orthodox Church in 1989 and many other Christian Church have joined since then with Pope Francis most recently in 2015.  It was then extended to be a month-long Season of Creation, ending on October 4, the Feast of St. Francis.  We are asked to make a special effort pray for and take practical steps to protect the environment during this season.  Following is Pope Francis's Prayer for Our Earth.