Join Catholic Climate Covenant for a webinar to explore international security issues and climate change on Thursday, June 22 at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Key questions that will be addressed include:
How are food and water scarcity, extreme weather events, poverty, political instability, and social tensions, exacerbated by climate change, particularly upon the most vulnerable peoples around the world?
How do these impacts affect international security?
How is the Catholic Church seeking to address them?
Catholic college and university presidents have signed an open letter to the international community noting that they will continue to support climate action to meet the Paris agreement. The letter has been signed by leaders from state and local governments, higher education, and businesses. As of June 13, 20 Catholic higher education leaders had signed the letter.
The statement notes: “It is imperative that the world know that in the U.S., the actors that will provide the leadership necessary to meet our Paris commitment are found in city halls, state capitals, colleges and universities, investors and businesses. Together, we will remain actively engaged with the international community as part of the global effort to hold warming to well below 2℃ and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy that will benefit our security, prosperity, and health.”
University of Dayton President Eric Spina is one of the Catholic higher education presidents who signed the statement, noting the connection to Catholic teaching on the environment. “We share the goals of the Paris Agreement to fight climate change with science, innovation and leadership,” Spina said. “Furthermore, in alignment with Pope Francis and our Catholic, Marianist commitment to the common good, we recognize that environmental stewardship is a social justice issue, and that failure to act on climate change disproportionately affects the poor and disadvantaged throughout the world.”
Read more about the statement, including how to sign, here.
Today, June 8, is World Oceans Day, founded in 2002 to celebrate, honor, help protect and conserve the oceans. Events in honor of World Oceans Day will occur across the globe. For some, this holiday prompts reflection on the issues related to oceans, such as sustainability and human trafficking practices in the seafood industry.
Over the past two years, the Coalition of Catholic Organizations Against Human Trafficking has coordinated advocacy efforts to encourage seafood companies to eradicate human trafficking practices. In 2016, the Coalition sponsored a postcard campaign, while in 2017 they focused on encouraging seafood companies who are cleaning up their supply chains to label their products. Read more about this year’s project on their website.
In honor of World Oceans Day, Fair Trade USA has launched a campaign encouraging consumers to purchase seafood that is produced in an environmentally and socially responsible way. Launched in 2014, their certification of seafood products allows consumers to make purchases that have been shown to meet rigorous standards for workers in the fishing industry. Learn more about their work on their website.
How will your campus celebrate and reflect on World Oceans Day? Let us know!
Inspired by their mission, Catholic colleges and universities serve their local communities in many ways, including building partnerships to work for the common good. Since 2010, ACCU member institutions have partnered with community organizations funded by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) to collaborate on initiatives that help people in their local communities who are living in poverty. These organizations are dedicated to empowering people to create change in their local community through solidarity and education. Saint Joseph’s University, the University of Dallas, and Marquette University are just a few of the institutions addressing local issues of poverty through these partnerships, providing a concrete way for students to live out the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.
At Saint Joseph’s University, students have the opportunity to work with Urban Tree Connection, a non-profit organization funded by CCHD that works with people living in Philadelphia’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods to develop community-based greening and gardening projects. Urban Tree Connection (UTC) empowers members of the local community by training people in farming and other agricultural skills and making fresh produce more widely available. Their projects are created on vacant land to create safe and functional spaces that promote positive human interactions. Saint Joseph’s University’s Sustainability Committee and Institute for Environmental Stewardship work with UTC to provide access to the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program at UTC to faculty, staff, administrators, and students at the university. Subscribers to the CSA receive vegetables from UTC’s urban farms, supporting their efforts to transform abandoned lots into community gardens.
In addition to promoting the CSA program, students at SJU are also encouraged to work with UTC in their community gardens through the Philadelphia Service Immersion Program and the Magis Program. The Philadelphia Service Immersion Program is an optional early move-in experience for first-year students. This four-day program introduces incoming freshmen to the Jesuit values of social justice, service to those on the margin, moral discernment, and intellectual inquiry through community service learning. This past fall, six students volunteered with UTC through the program. Each evening, the students reflected on what they learned and experienced that day in a small group discussion led by incoming sophomores. Another opportunity available to connect students to UTC is the Magis Program, a semester-long service and social justice program for first-year students. Students meet weekly in small groups for community service, social justice education, and reflection. UTC is one of the sites where students can serve for the semester as part of the Magis Program.
Like St. Joseph’s, other Catholic campuses are finding that partnerships with CCHD-funded groups provide mutual benefits for all the partners. For example, the University of Dallas partnered with the local diocesan CCHD staff to educate students about the reality of poverty in the United States. Working with students and staff, together they created the Journey to Justice Retreat (J2J) to teach students about the issue of poverty in the local area and throughout the country. Using resources from CCHD such as Poverty USA, participants learned about the effects of poverty on people all over the country.
The J2J Retreat featured a focus on the CCHD-funded group Texas Tenant Union (TTU). TTU is a community organizing group dedicated to securing more and higher quality low-income housing by advocating for legislation, providing free legal counsel for low-income tenants, and offering rights education and counseling for tenants. Former diocesan CCHD intern Colleen McInerney, an alumna of the University of Dallas, says the retreat showed students the importance of CCHD in that TTU “wouldn’t have been able to do nearly as much without the CCHD resources” available to it, which inspired many students to get involved with anti-poverty organizations. The retreat was well-received and students hope that the university will be able to host the retreat again in the future.
In addition to hosting service opportunities and working together on educational programming, Catholic colleges and universities can partner with CCHD-funded organizations to learn more about advocacy within the nation’s political system. Marquette University offers students a way to become involved in advocacy through courses that incorporate service learning and through an internship. Project Return assists men and women who have experienced incarceration in making a positive reentry to the community. Each academic year, students work at Project Return for ten hours a week , helping clients find jobs and housing, work through personal issues, and celebrate accomplishments. They learn about the process of reentry by visiting a prison, meeting parole officers, and witnessing a reentry court run by a federal judge. In addition to learning more about the issue, students most recently advocated with community leaders, canvassed neighborhoods on issues surrounding criminal justice reform, and organized a community mental health day.
Students rehabbing a house for Project Return to use for transitional housing.
The project also enables Marquette student interns to work with a mentor on a variety of tasks and to incorporate their own academic interests into the internship. One student intern during the past year worked to launch a mental health initiative to accommodate clients in need of psychological services. Ed de St. Aubin, Ph.D., the director of the internship program, commented, “The social justice mission of our Jesuit university is completely aligned with the mission of Project Return.” De St. Aubin noticed how the experience opened students up to more growth than a classroom could have afforded, exposing them to numerous human factors connected to criminal justice reform, such as race relations, ethnic disparities, and faith development. Recently, de St. Aubin, as well as interns Max Hughes-Zahner and Alex Krouth, were guests on RiverWest Radio Milwaukee’s show, Expo: Ex-Prisoners Organizing. Hughes-Zahner, a junior at Marquette, noted on the show that this internship “was very important for me to experience it from that side because previous to that I had really only experienced classroom learning about incarceration and prison.”
Saint Joseph’s University, the University of Dallas, and Marquette University are working with local organizations to create community-based solutions to issues of poverty and inequality. Their partnerships with CCHD-funded groups enable them to live the values of Catholic Social Teaching and have a visible effect on the surrounding neighborhoods. Students are able to work alongside those living the issues they are working to resolve, giving them an experience of solidarity. Through a partnership with an organization funded by CCHD, Catholic universities make a difference in their communities and give students experience in what it means to have a faith that does justice.
Camilla MacKenzie is an undergraduate student at The Catholic University of America and the Peace and Justice Intern at the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
The event will feature a moderated conversation between Cardinal Peter Turkson, Prefect, Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development, and John Carr, Initiative Director, with responses from Arturo Chavez, President and CEO of Mexican-American Catholic College, and Amy Rauenhorst Goldman, CEO and Chair of GHR Foundation.
Pope Francis has chosen Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to lead the new Vatican Dicastery on Integral Human Development. As the Pope’s key ally, Cardinal Turkson leads the Vatican’s teaching and advocacy on issues of justice and peace, economic inequality, and global solidarity. As a priest, bishop and Cardinal from Africa, Peter Turkson brings unique experience, knowledge and urgency to promoting and applying Catholic teaching on human life and dignity, a priority for the poor, and the pursuit of peace. Join us for this unique conversation and opportunity to ask questions of Pope Francis’ key collaborator in sharing his social mission and message throughout the world.
For more information, please visit the event website.
The feast day of St. Francis of Assisi is celebrated on October 4. For this special occasion, Catholic Climate Covenant has created a 90 minute program guide focused on ways that we can help the environment as we try to emulate St. Francis’ care for the world that God created. The guide and other documents can be edited to better fit your community.
The theme for this year’s St. Francis feast day will be “Dial Down the Heat: Cultivate the Common Good for our Common Home.” The focus will be on creating common ground to have constructive dialogue on climate change. In the spirit of Pope Francis, this is an opportunity to have dialogue about the environmental impact on our poor communities.
The Catholic Climate Covenant is offering a program guide that includes:
Food for Thought Friday: Pope Francis’s latest apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia: On Love in the Family, focuses on Church teaching on morality and sexuality; however, as Catholic Ecology writes, Amoris Laetitia and Laudato Si’ are “united by the same truths”, for example, in criticizing the throwaway culture. For an interesting article on the link between Amoris Laetitia and Laudato Si’, read the Catholic Ecology post here!
Pope Francis has called for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation to take place on September 1, 2016. This day, established last year, gives us a opportunity to reflect on the world that God created for us. Pope Francis wrote: “The annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will offer individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.”
From food packaging and clothing, to pipes and hospital equipment, plastic is a part of our daily lives. To help counteract the negative effects of ubiquitous plastic use, it is helpful to reduce or eliminate our dependence on single-use plastic such as water bottles, grocery bags, and straws. As part of their commitment to care for our common home, Catholic Rural Life challenges us to make the month of July Plastic Free. Participants are challenged to avoid single-use plastic products, including shopping bags, cups, straws, and packaging.
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education invites all students interested in promoting and enacting sustainability efforts at their campuses to join them for their annual Student Summit. Taking place October 9-12, 2016, the Summit will give participants the opportunity to explore career options in sustainability and ways to enact concrete change on their campuses. Attendees will also be able to network and collaborate not only with peers, but also with professional leaders in sustainability, as well as sustainability activists.
Cosponsored by a host of organizations and initiatives such as The Campus Kitchens Project and Fair Trade Colleges and Universities, the Summit is sure to be a wonderful opportunity for students to learn and explore, and to grow in their leadership skills. Be sure to register by July 15, 2016!
How does your college or university promote sustainability? Let us know!
ACCU Peace and Justice 