Mary Mother of the Church

Catholic Parish Ivanhoe

 

Calendar, Special Notices, & Forthcoming Events

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Parish Climate Action Group

As you’ll know from today’s Mass, we’re starting Laudato Si’ week and you’ll receive a take-home handout about it at the end of mass. 

Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si in 2015.  He addressed it to “every person living on this planet”. At the start of it, he wrote: our “Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us ….  now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.  The violence present in our hearts …. is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.” 

He says our world and human life itself are God’s gifts to us and must be defended from the continuing harm.  He repeats the call of Popes before him for all of us to undergo an ecological conversion. “Every effort to protect and improve our world entails profound changes in our lifestyles, models of production and consumption and the established structures of power which today govern societies.” 

Please have a read of our Laudato Si week handout and reflect - and act -  on our shared journey of ecological conversion.  Please consider how to protect and defend God’s earth, our Mother Earth, her climate and ecology, when you vote in the election next week. And remember, there are links on the parish website right at the top of the homepage to Laudato Si Week resources and to Catholic Social Justice election statements. There’s also  useful  statements to help with voting for the good of the earth on The Climate Council’s website,  HERE

 and on the ARRCC (Australian Religious Response to Climate Change) website in their newsletter of 10 May HERE