Eco Catholic is an exploration of the green Catholic imagination and ecological spirituality. Contributors include Sharon Abercrombie, a journalist who has covered the environment, spirituality, women’s issues, animal rights and social justice for many newspapers, and Fr. Charles Morris, a priest of the archdiocese of Detroit who teaches courses in sustainability at Madonna University in Livonia, Mich.
"The future is here. It’s cheaper than I expected, and it’s so small that you could fit two in a single parking space," writes Adam Aston, blogger for the Natural Resources Defense Council's On Earth feature. He's referring to the new mainstream, all-battery electric cars that are about to hit U.S. Roads. He takes a test drive and reports on the experience in his Feb. 1 column.
For years, billionaires David and Charles Koch have given millions to Tea Party candidates and anyone else who fights efforts to promote clean energy and stop climate change.
Last weekend, this dangerous duo met behind closed doors with other big-money donors and political strategists to plot how to end the EPA's authority to protect our clean air and water. Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune blogged about why the Koch brothers threaten America's future -- and how we can stop them
I’m writing about hell because it is an unthinkable, horrible, destructive concept that can’t possibly be true. I frankly can’t even imagine how anyone came up with something so horrific. Could any wrong merit the terrible pain of burning in fire, while fully conscious, for a week or a year, much less eternity? What kind of a monster would inflict that on anyone? How could such cruelty and sadism be consistent with a God of love? I don’t buy it for a minute.
I don’t care if scripture mentions hell or Jesus talked about it, if saints had visions of it, or if it’s a time-honored Catholic teaching. It simply can’t be justified on any level. We have no proof of its existence. It doesn’t work as a preventative for wrong. Fear is the lowest form of motivation in moral development, and has probably been more the cause of the terrible crimes of humanity than any deterrent. People laugh and joke about burning in hell and draw cartoons about it, but almost no one takes it seriously.
Fourth-magnitude star Menkib (Arabic for "shoulder") in the constellation Perseus is one of the hottest stars visible to the unaided eye and one of the most massive. Located about 1,600 light years away, this blue-white giant's visible light is believed to be over 13,000 times as bright as our Sun. The star is also six times hotter with a temperature of 37,000 Kelvin. It is thought that this luminous giant is about 40 solar masses in size. Interstellar dust may dim its brightness, but Menkib itself illuminates the large California Nebula, a star forming region located in Perseus. The young star is only a few million years old, is unstable and may someday explode. It is also one of the rare "runaway" stars of our galaxy, rapidly accelerating with its dim companion away from its birthplace in Perseus.
Menkib and the constellation Perseus are visible overhead on February nights in North America.
Digging out is what we do after a major storm, and that’s what I did this morning in urban Kansas City, Mo. after a colossal storm that at one point was bringing a blizzard to Oklahoma City at the same time it was flinging snow in far eastern Illinois. The entire state of Missouri has been declared a disaster area.
A trucker, one of the”knights of the road,” reported that he couldn’t even find the highway he was traversing it was so obliterated by drifting snow yesterday. He crashed and spent the day contemplating weather from the truck cab.
They put their hand to the flinty rock and overturn mountains by the roots. They cut out channels in the rocks, and their eyes see every precious thing. The sources of the rivers they probe; hidden things they bring to light. But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Job 28:9-12
Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land. Isaiah 5:8
God will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Isaiah 58:11
These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. Psalm 104:27-28
You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart. Psalm 104:14-15
Tonight, at 5:00pm Pacific/8:00pm Eastern, Michael Dowd will be joined by Catholic evolutionary sacramentalist Linda Gibler, historian of science and former president of the American Scientific Affiliation Ted Davis, and evolutionary theologians, liturgists, and Progressive Christianity leaders Michael Morwood and Jim Burklo. The theme of the final roundtable discussion is: "Science and Religion in Fruitful Partnership".
Sign up and receive information on how to access the forum on the Advent of Evolutionary Christianity blog's home page.
We Catholics should be incorporating prayers for the Earth into more of our church life, so I am making it easy for you and providing some. I would encourage you to make up your own too. Feel free to use or adapt these with abandon, with or without the source.
General Prayer for the Earth
Our continued failure to prevent hunger for more than a billion people worldwide is one of our most fundamental moral challenges. By contrast, a billion people are harming their own health – and, along the way, the planet – through overeating. To quote Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate: “Hunger still reaps enormous numbers of victims among those who, like Lazarus, are not permitted to take their place at the rich man’s table.”
Tim Aldred in a feature article in the UK's The Tablet discusses food supplies and sustainability.
Use of compact fluorescent lighbulbs is somewhat controversial. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs contain a minuscule amount of mercury, and you can't safely ignore potential contact with it. An article in Scientific American discusses the pros and cons.
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