FIRES, floods, droughts and disease are becoming less predictable and more intense, the Church’s 2021 Social Justice Statement says as it paints a stark image of Australia’s ecological crisis.
Despite – and perhaps because of – the leaps and bounds made by human invention in the last few decades, many communities, often vulnerable or poor communities, face the brunt of these worsening natural disasters.
This is why the Australian Church has made an historic commitment to sustainability in its 2021 Social Justice Statement in the lead-up to Social Justice Sunday on August 29.
The statement released today, “Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor” is a pledge to a seven-year plan for seven Laudato Si’ goals.
“We are facing an ecological crisis and Pope Francis wants the whole Church globally to act with a greater sense of urgency,” Parramatta Bishop Vincent Long, who is the chair of the Bishops Commission for Social Justice, Mission and Service, said.
“In Australia, passionate individuals, religious institutes, schools and organisations have been working on ecological issues for a long time.
“I want to affirm and thank them all, and to urge the whole Catholic community to join them.”
Bishop Long pointed out that “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been caring for country from time immemorial”.
“The rest of us need to listen, and to learn how we can walk together to care for the whole of creation – including one another,” he said.
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge said in the foreword that the statement drew from Scripture, from theological tradition, from Catholic social justice teachings and from the wisdom of the world, including insights of the First Nations peoples.
“All these are placed in dialogue with human experience,” he said.
“This year we offer some theological foundations for a genuinely Christian response to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor: creation in and through the Trinity; the sacramentality of all created things; the wonder and beauty available to the contemplative eye; and the need for conversion and change of life.
“Our hope is that these will ground and inspire comprehensive and effective responses not only from the Catholic community but from all who want to care for our common home in this time of great need.”
The statement explains the Laudato Si’ goals “aim to put Pope Francis’ encyclical (Laudato Si’) into practice, making communities around the world sustainable in the spirit of the integral ecology of Laudato Si’”.
The bishops invite Catholics to “uncover the sacramentality of creation” in recognising the divine presence in the world.
They call for a “profound conversion expressed in a new way of living, both personally and collectively”.
“We are being called to a new way of thinking, feeling, understanding and living,” the statement said.
“My hope is that Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor will encourage ever deeper and more effective Christian responses to the urgent cries of the earth and of the poor,” Bishop Long said, speaking during the online launch of the statement.
The statement urged families, schools, parishes, dioceses and organisations to join the bishops in signing up to the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.
The platform, an initiative of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, would gather ideas for action from around the globe to help participants in their journeys.
The Bishops Conference’s Office for Social Justice has been involved in developing the platform.
At the statement’s launch, Bishop Long also announced a new name for that agency – now known as the Office for Justice, Ecology and Peace – affirming “social justice, ecology and peace are inseparable”.
