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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Compost

Posted on April 12, 2017 by Vermont Catholic

(Cori Fugere Urban/Vermont Catholic)Bales of recycled cans and paper tower over Jackson Ferreira, 7 (left) and Kalyn Curtiss, 7, students in the first grade at St. Michael's School in Brattleboro.

Nineteen kindergarten and first-grade students from St. Michael’s School in Brattleboro donned green construction hats as they learned a lesson in the three R’s – not reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic – but reducing, reusing and recycling.

During an April 12 visit to the Windham Solid Waste Management District in Brattleboro they saw how recycled materials are sorted and bundled for sale and how compost is made.

It was part of the school’s observance of the Diocese of Burlington’s Year of Creation, and the children understood the importance of caring for what Pope Francis calls “our common home,” the Earth.

“Not reducing, reusing and recycling is bad for the Earth,” said Jackson Ferreira, 7, a first grader.

“The Earth is our home, and we should respect it because God gave it to us,” added classmate Kalyn Curtiss, 7.

Before taking a tour of the facility, the children and their chaperones listened to a presentation by Kristen Benoit, program coordinator for the management district. “Everyone makes trash, but we can make the trash smaller by making smarter decisions,” she said.

Reducing consumption, reusing items, recycling recyclables and composting food waste and other compostables are all smarter decisions.

Benoit said every Vermonter produces about four and a half pounds of trash a day; that equals 1,640 soccer balls per year per person. “Our job here is to help make it less,” she commented.

Seventy-five percent of all trash is recyclable; recycling 2,000 pounds of paper saves 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and 380 barrels of oil, she noted.

Paper, for example, can be recycled to make tissue paper, bathroom tissue and egg cartons. Soda cans can be recycled to make more soda cans, and milk jugs can be turned into carpet backing.

As for compost, Benoit said 30 percent of household trash is generally food and yard waste – items that could be composted “to make really good dirt for your plants.”

Putting food into landfills is not only unnecessary, it creates harmful methane gas.

Liz Martin, the kindergarten and first-grade teacher at St. Michael’s School, said during Lent the children made a special “sacrifice” to take better care of the Earth God has given them. “We’re going to try to do that for the entire year, not just Lent,” she added.

“Fashion Show of Ga-Baaa-Ge”

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Vermont Catholic

(Vermont Catholic/Cori Fugere Urban)Danny Kiniry, a student at St. Monica-St. Michael School in Barre, shows his recycled outfit at a school fashion show.

Twelve-year-old Danny Kiniry had a wardrobe malfunction before the St. Monica-St. Michael School “Fashion Show of Ga-Baaa-Ge,” an event that was supposed to sound fancy even though models were wearing outfits created from recycled materials.

The sixth grader’s stovepipe hat lost its bubble-wrap top, but he made do with the microwave dinner dish and recycled paper bottom that sufficed for a fedora. The hat complemented his bubble wrap suit jacket with straw fasteners, recycled construction paper satchel and yogurt-cup headphones.

He showed off the outfit as he walked down the “runway” lined with white plastic gallon jug “lights” and green sparkle toile cloth.

Classmates Cole Young and Alex Keane, both 12, helped created the recycled fashion statement.

“This was fun. You get to show off all the stuff you made,” Danny said.

But it was more than fun.

The fashion show was part of the Barre Catholic school’s celebration of the Year of Creation in the Diocese of Burlington.

“This is a way to show we care for the Earth,” said Mariah, 12, a seventh grader who declined to give her last name. She modeled a prom dress made of newspaper fans by her friend, Autumn Lewis, 13, another seventh grader.

“It came out pretty good,” Mariah said. “It was cool to watch her work on it. She’s very artistic.”

Autumn too reflected on the meaning of the fashion show highlighting creations made of recycled goods: “God wants us to take care of everything He created.”

Added Mariah, “The Earth a gift to us so we have to take care of it.”

Spanish teacher Edda Concessi coordinated the event for the students in preschool through grade eight. “Pope Francis asks, ‘What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?’ His answer? ‘It’s up to us.’”

She said at St. Monica-St. Michael School caring for the environment is a moral obligation and therefore part of the children’s education.

All of the children participated in the fashion show either by modeling fashions made of recyclables, designing the fashions or describing the fashions to the audience of students and family members in the school gym.

The fashion show included children wearing hats made of coffee filters and fruit cups and dresses and skirts made of newspapers and bedecked as princesses, pirates, knights, superheroes, a rapper and animals.

Other materials included cardboard, plastic grocery bags, bottle caps, fabric, old jeans and paper towel rolls.

St. Monica-St. Michael Principal Brenda Buzzell said the fashion show project was a way to show children how to look at what they discard in a different way. “We’re not just telling them to reuse, they are experiencing reuse.”

And in the Year of Creation, that is a particularly important lesson. “It’s really our job to leave the Earth better than we found it,” she said. “God gave us the Earth, and by taking care of it and making it better, we are honoring Him. It’s all about taking care of our gifts from God.”

Integral Development means being in Relationship, says Pope

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Vermont Catholic

(CNS/L’Osservatore Romano)Pope Francis speaks April 4 to participants at a Vatican conference marking the 50th anniversary of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical on development, “Populorum Progressio.” At left is Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

A Catholic approach to development aims at helping people achieve both physical and spiritual well-being and promotes both individual responsibility and community ties, Pope Francis said.

A development that is “fully human” recognizes that being a person means being in relationship; it affirms “inclusion and not exclusion,” upholds the dignity of the person against any form of exploitation, and struggles for freedom, the pope said April 4 at a Vatican conference marking the 50th anniversary of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical on integral human development, “Populorum Progressio.”

Holistic or integral development, Pope Francis said, involves “integrating” all people into one human family, integrating individuals into communities, integrating the individual and communal dimensions of life and integrating body and soul.

“The duty of solidarity obliges us to seek proper ways of sharing so that there is no longer that dramatic inequality between those who have too much and those who have nothing, between those who discard and those who are discarded,” he said.

Social integration recognizes that each individual has “a right and an obligation” to participate in the life of the community, bringing his or her gifts and talents to share for the good of all, the pope said. But it also recognizes that well-being is not something that can be improved or measured only with economic indicators; it includes “work, culture, family life and religion.”

“None of these can be absolutized and none can be excluded from the concept of integral human development,” he said, because “human life is like an orchestra that plays well if all the different instruments are in tune with each other and follow a score shared by all.”

One of the major challenges to integral development today, he said, is the tendency to focus either exclusively on the value of the individual or to ignore that value completely.

In the West, he said, culture “has exulted the individual to the point of making him an island, as if one could be happy alone.”

“On the other hand,” the pope said, “there is no lack of ideological visions and political powers who have squashed the person,” or treat people as a mass without individual dignity. The modern global economic system tends to do the same, he said.

Because human beings are both body and soul, working for their well-being must include respecting their faith and helping it grow.

The Catholic Church’s approach to development is modeled on Jesus’ approach to human flourishing, an approach that included spiritual and physical healing, liberating and reconciling people, the pope said.

Loving Families Bring Joy, Mercy to World, says Pope

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Vermont Catholic

(CNS illustration/World Meeting of Families)This is a promotional image for World Meeting of Families to be held Aug. 21-26, 2018, in Dublin. The theme of the meeting is "The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World."

Pope Francis urges families to discover God’s love and be generous, forgiving, patient, helpful and respectful.

Family life will be better if people use the words “please,” “thank you,” and “I’m sorry” every day, he said, and the world will be a better place if the church reaches out to the imperfect and the wounded.

The pope’s reflection was part of a letter to Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, which is helping plan the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, Aug. 21-26, 2018. The Vatican released the text of the pope’s letter March 30.

When asked about the pope’s plans to attend the event next year, Cardinal Farrell told reporters at a Vatican news conference, “We hope. I can’t say absolutely” since it depends on the pope’s schedule, but the pope has expressed his desire to go.

The letter was meant to help Catholic families and parishes around the world prepare for the gathering, which will focus on the theme, “The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World.” The pope said he hoped the event would help families reflect on and share his apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia.”

“Does the Gospel continue to be a joy for the world? And also, does the family continue to be good news for today’s world?” the pope asked.

The answer is, “yes,” he said, because God’s love is his “yes” to all of creation and a “‘yes’ to the union between man and woman, in openness and service to life in all its phases; it is God’s ‘yes’ and his commitment to a humanity that is often wounded, mistreated and dominated by a lack of love.”

“Only starting from love can the family manifest, spread and regenerate God’s love in the world. Without love, we cannot live as children of God, as couples, parents and brothers,” he said.

Making sure family life is “based on love, for love and in love” means “giving oneself, forgiving, not losing patience, anticipating the other, respecting. How much better family life would be if every day we lived according to the words, ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ and ‘I’m sorry.'”

Every day, people experience fragility and weakness, Pope Francis said. All families and pastors need humility so they will become better disciples and teachers, better at helping and being helped, and able to accompany and embrace all people of goodwill.

“I dream of an outbound church, not a self-referential one, a church that does not pass by far from man’s wounds, a merciful church that proclaims the heart of the revelation of God as love, which is mercy,” he said.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin told reporters that the pope’s letter shows the clear, central role families have in the pope’s great dream of renewal of the church and society.

“The family is called to be a place of encounter with that divine mercy which heals and liberates,” he said. The family is where spouses learn to love “not in vague romantic terms but in terms of their everyday realities and difficulties.”

“The pope’s vision of the mission of the family does not attempt to hide the fact that families experience challenges, weakness, fragility and even breakdown,” the archbishop said. “Families need a church which is with them, accompanying them in a process of discernment and integration though helping them to respond with a ‘yes’ to the divine love.”

Happy, loving families should be recognized and be a resource for the renewal of the church and world, he said.

But the church, Archbishop Martin said, also must be “a place where those who have failed can experience not harsh judgment, but the strong embrace of the Lord which can lift them up to begin again to realize their own dream even if only imperfectly.”

Vatican Concerned about U.S. Politics

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Vermont Catholic

(CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)A train carries coal near Ravenna, Ky., in this 2014 file photo. Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Fla., chairman of the bishop's Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, said in a statement March 29 that President Donald Trump's executive order calling for a review of the Clean Power Plan jeopardizes environmental protections and moves the country away from a national carbon standard.

The Vatican hopes that U.S. bishops and others will continue to raise their voices in defense of the obligation to fight climate change and, in time, can persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to change his position, a top Vatican official said.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told a group of reporters March 30 that there is concern at the Vatican over Trump’s policies, including on the environment.

Trump’s position on immigration and his efforts to roll back U.S. commitments on environmental regulations are “a challenge for us,” said the cardinal, whose office works on both questions and is charged with assisting bishops around the world as they promote Catholic social teaching.

Still, he said, “we are full of hope that things can change.”

The first sign of hope, he said, is the growing number of “dissenting voices,” who are calling attention to the scientific facts surrounding climate change and the ethical obligation to act to protect the environment for current and future generations.

“This, for us, is a sign that little by little, other positions and political voices will emerge, and so we hope that Trump himself will reconsider some of his decisions,” the cardinal said.

“Various American bishops have already spoken about the president’s position, and this could have an influence,” he said. Perhaps, Trump will come to see that not all the promises he made in the campaign would be good for the country, he added.

A change in position is not impossible, Cardinal Turkson said. “There is another superpower — China — that is rethinking its position” and has allocated funds for programs to reduce dangerous emissions. “One hopes it is not only because it is a country with ever more smog and pollution.”

The cardinal’s remarks came a day after the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development said Trump’s executive order calling for a review of the Clean Power Plan jeopardizes environmental protections and moves the country away from a national carbon standard to help meet domestic and international goals to ease greenhouse gas emissions.

Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the committee, said in a statement March 29 the order fails to offer a “sufficient plan for ensuring proper care for people and creation.”

Bishop Dewane suggested that an integral approach involving various components of U.S. society can reduce power plant emissions and still encourage economic growth and protect the environment.

Pope: Lent Breathes Life into World

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Vermont Catholic

(CNS photo/Paul Haring)Pope Francis places ashes on a man's forehead during Ash Wednesday Mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome March 1.

Lent is a time to receive God’s breath of life, a breath that saves humanity from suffocating under the weight of selfishness, indifference and piety devoid of sincerity, Pope Francis said.

“Lent is the time to say no to the asphyxia born of relationships that exclude, that try to find God while avoiding the wounds of Christ present in the wounds of his brothers and sisters,” the pope said March 1 during an Ash Wednesday Mass.

Pope Francis celebrated the Mass after making the traditional Ash Wednesday procession from the Benedictine monastery of St. Anselm to the Dominican-run Basilica of Santa Sabina on Rome’s Aventine Hill.

After receiving ashes on top of his head from Cardinal Jozef Tomko, titular cardinal of the basilica, the pope distributed ashes to the cardinals, his closest aides, some Benedictines and Dominicans.

He also distributed ashes to a family and to two members of the Pontifical Academy for Martyrs, which promotes the traditional Lenten “station church” pilgrimage in Rome.

Lent, he said, is a time to say “no” to “all those forms of spirituality that reduce the faith to a ghetto culture, a culture of exclusion.”

The church’s Lenten journey toward the celebration of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is made on a road “leading from slavery to freedom” and “from suffering to joy,” he said. “Lent is a path: It leads to the triumph of mercy over all that would crush us or reduce us to something unworthy of our dignity as God’s children.”

The ashes, while a symbol of humanity’s origin from the earth, the pope said, is also a reminder that God breathes new life into people in order to save them from the suffocation of “petty ambition” and “silent indifference.”

“The breath of God’s life sets us free from the asphyxia that so often we fail to notice or become so used to that it seems normal, even when its effects are felt,” the pope said.

The Lenten season, he continued, is a “time for saying no” to the asphyxia caused by superficial and simplistic analyses that “fail to grasp the complexity of problems” of those who suffer most.

“Lent is the time to say no to the asphyxia of a prayer that soothes our conscience, of an almsgiving that leaves us self-satisfied, of a fasting that makes us feel good,” the pope said.

Instead, Pope Francis said, Lent is a time for Christians to remember God’s mercy and “not the time to rend our garments before evil but rather make room in our life for the good we are able to do.”

“Lent is the time to start breathing again. It is the time to open our hearts to the breath of the One capable of turning our dust into humanity,” the pope said.