​                      From the OFM JPIC Office - a reminder of what Franciscan JPIC is about:
                                    Get Ready for Laudato Si’ Revolution

Pope Francis, building upon the teachings of St. John Paul II and his call to ecological conversion, calls us to respond to “the urgent need for a bold cultural revolution.” (Contact, January-March 2020) [quoting Laudato Si’, n 114]

“OUR FOUR PILLARS

• To promote the JPIC values intrinsic to the Franciscan charism among our Franciscan brothers and sisters throughout the world
• To foster the lived spirituality of St. Francis through solidarity with the marginalized, and with all of Creation
• To live out and intensify the ecological conversion expressed in Laudato Si’
• To assist and cooperate with local and national JPIC coordinators, and with different social movements.”

 
We OFS JPIC and Global Catholic Climate Movement Laudato Si’ animators try to do this and hope you will read what we pass on to you, our secular sisters and brothers! We are all called in our local fraternities to be collaborative, creative, and courageous in Living out Laudato Si’ in most impactful actions. If we are not part of the solution are we part of the problem?                           

​German botanist Ernst Haeckel first used the term ecology in 1866. The first wave of environmentalism grew out of moves to conserve and protect nature especially birds and the formation of natural history societies (and promotion of public health) from the 1880s until 1914 in Europe. The second wave began in the 1950s and picked up in the 1960s & 70s. However, the stage was set for change by the World Wildlife Fund (now The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which was founded in 1961 with an initial focus on the protection of endangered species. As more resources became available, its operations expanded into other areas such as the preservation of ​biological diversity, sustainable use of natural resources, the reduction of pollution, and ​climate change.  Jumping ahead but while on terminology: 'Biological Diversity', a term introduced by Lovejoy (1980) to express the number of species present in the community has an offshoot: 'Biodiversity', coined by Walter G. Rosen in the year 1985 (Wilson, 1988). 

It was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 which had a huge and widespread impact. The book represented a watershed moment, selling more than 500,000 copies in 24 countries as it raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment and the inextricable links between pollution and public health. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in US pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides.

Other events having great impact were other oil tanker spills e.g. Torrey Canyon (1967). The Flemish Catholic movement (Anders Gaan Leven Live Differently) was an example of Catholic youth involvement.

The Trimates- (English, American and Canadian)  Jane Goodall, ​Dian Fossey,[4] and Birutė Galdikas — chosen by anthropologist Louis Leakey also helped raise awareness as did the National Geographic and David Attenborough’s natural history unit of the BBC. I remember the existence of The Society Promoting Environmental Conservation in Burnaby/ Vancouver, BC and Greenpeace in Vancouver, BC both founded in 1969. As the name suggests, Greenpeace was closely associated/grew out of the anti-war and anti-nuclear movement. As someone said “Peace” as a greeting/goodbye Bill Darnell said: “Better make it a green peace”.

Peace activist John McConnell first proposed the idea of Earth Day in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. US Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day one month later on 22 April 1970, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill from an offshore oil platform 10 km off Santa Barbara, California. By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first of their kind environmental laws. Realizing that solutions would only be effective through common effort, countries convened the ​first global conference on the environment in Stockholm from 5-16 June 1972.  
                    
Largely because of U.S. leadership, industrialized nations agreed to establish and provide initial funding for what is arguably the world’s premier global environmental institution: the United Nations Environment Programme. UNEP catalyzed negotiation of the 1985 Vienna Convention and its follow-on, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a treaty to restrict production and use of substances that deplete Earth’s protective ozone layer. Today the agency continues to drive international efforts on issues including pollution control, biodiversity conservation and climate change.

In 1990 Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries. Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behaviour and create global, national and local policy changes.

Unfortunately under the current President, US leadership in the environmental movement has wilted and reversed!

What did Pope Francis say about Earth Day 2020?
In his weekly address, Pope Francis honoured the Earth Day movement. He said, “As the tragic coronavirus pandemic has taught us, we can overcome global challenges only by showing solidarity with one another and embracing the most vulnerable in our midst."

More from the Holy Father, who in an Easter Sunday letter to popular movements wrote, “In these days of great anxiety and hardship, many have used war-like metaphors to refer to the pandemic we are experiencing. If the struggle against COVID-19 is a war, then you are truly an invisible army, an army whose only weapons are solidarity, hope, and community spirit, all revitalizing at a time when no one can save themselves alone.” 

There is hope and here is an example: Renewable energy and 50 million jobs! Read on...                                                  
The big question is: Will the world’s governments be willing to put their money where their mouths are? Beware the “widening gap between rhetoric and action” by governments regarding climate change. The unfortunate fact is that whereas governments everywhere have been paying lip service to climate change and clean energy, in reality, they are wont to go to much greater lengths to try and save the fossil fuel sector from collapse than invest in clean energy projects with much longer and unproven paybacks.
 
Laudato Si’ teaches us that “everything is connected.” From a recent report:  The scientists said the multi trillion-dollar economic recovery packages being rolled out by governments must be used to strengthen and enforce environmental protection: “It may be politically expedient to relax environmental standards and to prop up industries such as intensive agriculture, airlines, and fossil-fuel-dependent energy sectors, but doing so without requiring urgent and fundamental change essentially subsidises the emergence of future pandemics.” Read more... 
 
How do we make the governments listen? In our National JPIC Action Plan (2012) at n. 2.3 we call it parrhesia (to speak boldly)! Or as Acts 4:29 puts it: “thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word”; Laudato Si’ (38 & 179) also told us. 

...​to raise awareness to control powerful global warming chemicals - hydrofluorocarbons - HFCs. Reducing HFCs under the Montreal Protocol to avoid 0.5°C of global warming by 2000, while continuing to protect the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol to protect the Earth’s ozone layer is to date the only United Nations environmental agreement to be ratified by every country in the world. It is also one of the most successful. With the parties to the Protocol having phased out 98 per cent of their ozone-depleting substances, they saved an estimated two million people from skin cancer every year. So we can work together!

And got another minute? One is enough! Time to watch:

Our house is on fire: ignore it at our peril or react now. Good to pass on to young people? They will get the message!

TIME FOR A SONG! A new favourite:
...a song created by an affiliate of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, brought to us by JPIC Franciscans Africa and written by Steven Kezamutima, ofs, the founder and leader of Waka Waka Band that is behind the “Anti COVID-19” song. Founded in August 2016, the band is made up of ten Secular Franciscan youths studying at Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Kenya and drawn from various African countries, among them Kenya, Malawi, Burundi and DR Congo. Steven is a university student from Burundi pursuing a Masters degree in Justice, Peace and Social Cohesion at CUEA and referred to in the song as Baba Miti (Father of Trees in Swahili), a nickname his peers gave him due to the Birthday Tree Planting Campaign he runs across East Africa. Together with Lusungu Kumwenda from Malawi and the Waka Waka Band they sing it: African reggae!

The song called AntiCovid-19 is here to give hope to People and Planet that God is taking control. A call for a united sustainable global response: human need before corporate greed.   Read more about it here .

And more about JPIC FA here.
While Africa is in our thoughts perhaps we can reflect on this: As if covid19 is not enough, for more than two years the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have warned that sub-Saharan Africa stands on the verge of a debt crisis.                     
Does this call for charity or justice?
Inequality/injustice: Rethinking executive compensation in times of crisis?!
“As Tom Powdrill at the U.K. pension consultancy PIRC wrote recently, “Watching medical staff worldwide throw themselves into the battle against COVID-19, without any expectation that they will be paid a single penny extra as a ‘bonus’ for their efforts, but with the expectation that some of them will die, requires us to rethink things fundamentally.”  Read more... 

Another beautiful song in this time of trial: The Prayer (4.28 mins)

  
“From de facto interconnection to chosen solidarity …
Gospel faith put to the test … Everyone depends on everyone else”
                                                             ​So says the Pontifical Academy for Life: Global Pandemic And Universal Brotherhood

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As church closures will affect parish collections, we ask you to support Development and Peace’s work by donating by mail, over the phone or online:

Send a cheque to Development and Peace,
1425 René-Lévesque Blvd. West, 3rd Floor, Montreal (Quebec) H3G 1T7
Phone 1-888-664-3387 to donate.  

                          Donate online at  Development and Peace.
   
In this time of Covid 19 we would do well to remember that Solidarity is key to addressing both the climate crisis and the pandemic. "We require a new and universal solidarity," Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si’ (n 14), noting that "obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions."

Much of the world has overcome scepticism when it comes to the covid 19 pandemic emergency. But what will it take to accomplish for the climate emergency – and to instil the urgency required to cmbat both?

In Lent and especially in D&P/Caritas Canada’s Share Lent we would do well to reflect on what Pope Francis wrote in Querida Amazonia (2 Feb 2020):
  “14. The businesses, national or international, which harm the Amazon and fail to respect the right of       the original peoples to the land and its boundaries, and to self-determination and prior consent,               should be called for what they are: injustice and crime. 

To feel outrage and to beg forgiveness

   15. We need to feel outrage,[10] as Moses did (cf. Ex 11:8), as Jesus did (cf. Mk 3:5), as God does in     the face of injustice (cf. Am 2:4-8; 5:7-12; Ps 106:40). It is not good for us to become inured to evil; it     is not good when our social consciousness is dulled before “an exploitation that is leaving destruction     and even death throughout our region… jeopardizing the lives of millions of people and especially the     habitat of peasants and indigenous peoples”.[11]”

This fits in with our March the Common Good title Lent - Time for Reconciliation for Land and People and which leads from Laudato Si’ n 49 &146 quoted elsewhere to Aboriginal Land Title, the Rule of Law and the Wet’suet’en issue in BC. Most of us are probably unaware of the background to this issue and it is hoped this newsletter can help our understanding. It has many facets and can get complicated but like all things can also be simplified. If Teck Resources can withdraw a multi-billion-dollar oilsands project in northern Alberta it must be because they can see the majority of the people are ahead of the Governments in seeing we must transition to sustainable energy.

In a world moving away from fossil fuels, this project was only ever offering false promises to the workers of Alberta, and Canada, who are naturally concerned about their futures. Canada has a wealth of opportunities awaiting in wind, solar, geothermal and energy efficiency. Now is the time to invest in the clean energy sector and a real just transition for communities.

Surely all the fossil fuel subsidies would provide jobs in cleaner energy? Simple but not easy!

Trust in God!

The confusion:
Confrontations over Wet’suet’en and Coastal GasLink pipeline
                                                                   by Andrew Conradi, ofs (OFS JPIC and GCCM Laudato Si’Animator)
 
Are you confused? Not sure what’s going on? Fed up with blockades? Want to know a bit of background to better understand it all? Wonder what questions are raised by this conflict? Is this related to climate change and hearing the cry of the earth and cry of the poor? If there is a Canadian Catholic position on this, what is it?
  
          Franciscan Voice Canada & the Common Good will try to help clarify these issues!
 N.B. We are not experts but have done our best and do hope that in the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ: “Research is the highest form of Adoration” !

Starting in Dawson Creek, the pipeline's route crosses through the Canadian Rockies and other mountain ranges to Kitimat, where the fracked gas will be liquefied at a planned $18-bn gas liquefaction and storage plant to be exported to Asian customers. We know fracking is not environmentally sound although LNG is less environmentally damaging in carbon emissions than coal which it may replace. The pipelines’ route passes through several First Nations peoples' traditional lands, including some that are unceded. Although approved by 20 First Nations' elected Band councils, including five of the six Wet’suet’en elected Band Councils, approval has been withheld by the hereditary chiefs of the Wetʼsuwetʼen Nation on ecological grounds leading to a blockade of construction within the Wetʼsuwetʼen peoples' traditional lands. The hereditary chiefs had suggested an alternative route, passing over less ecologically and culturally sensitive lands, but the company found these proposals, among other difficulties, too expensive.
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The company and government point to support from elected chiefs and Band councils along the pipeline route, many of which have signed benefit-sharing agreements as a way to gain much-needed money for their communities through jobs.  The only elected Band council not to sign an agreement with Coastal GasLink is the Hagwilget which is 40% Wet’suwet’en and 60 % Gitxsan and a community within Gitxsan territory.
 
The elected Band councils, imposed under the Indian Act, have a limited role in governing six reserves totalling 35 square kilometres (click on link to see map). The Wet’suwet’en say their traditional territory is 22,000 square kilometres and the hereditary chiefs, who also have a limited role, are responsible for those territories. Coastal GasLink began negotiations with the hereditary chiefs but when the company did not get agreement switched to the Band councils; but the pipeline does not pass through any reserves. This relates to the question of who has jurisdiction and should be consulted and give consent to the pipeline. This can only be settled by the Wet’suwet’en themselves.
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There exist 13 hereditary chief positions but four are vacant so only six are named and they only represent three clans. They don't represent all the clans according to elected Chief Dan George of the Ts'il Kaz Koh First Nation.​

Protests, occupations and road & rail blockades later spread beyond Wet’suwet’en land e.g. to the BC Legislature in Victoria and to other First Nations e.g. Mohawk lands in Ontario and Québec. Old & young and Indigenous & settlers took part in sympathy protest demonstrations and blockades. A Franciscan friar told me he wondered if the Holy Spirit was at work bringing diverse people together because of this aboriginal and fossil fuel issue.
 
Three major questions come to mind:
    1. Sovereignty. Since these lands are unconquered and unceded by treaty who has sovereignty and whose law prevails?
   2. Delay in resolution of aboriginal title and rights. Why have these questions not been answered before? (N.B. The answers are complicated but have been simplified in the answers here)
    3. The church’s position - What is it?
 
1.  Sovereignty. A partial answer to the question on sovereignty was answered by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1997 Delgamuukw decision and the 2014 Tsilhqot'in decision, both of which recognized Aboriginal title over unceded territories. Aboriginal title is a sui generis, or inherent unique collective right to the use of and jurisdiction over a group’s ancestral territories. [Sui generis is a Latin phrase that here means "of its own kind, in a class by itself", therefore "unique".]
The two cases were partial answers because they failed to resolve details leaving them to negotiations between the parties. Incidentally it was the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, not the elected Bands, who brought the Delgamuukw action (Delgamuukw being a Gitxsan hereditary chief’s name).  Although First Nations aboriginal title bestows the right to prior consultation and consent over development on their land this does not grant a veto. Negotiations have sometimes been fast if it was in the interests of the Crown or settlers e.g. The Douglas Treaties (1849/50) or the Numbered Treaties (1871-1920). Or slow e.g. the Nisga’a Treaty (2000). Now with the civil disobedience and blockades the Wet’suet’en have upped the ante.
 
2. Delay in resolution of aboriginal title & rights. The answer to the length of time taken to answer the question leads to examination of the legal concepts going back to Roman times: terra nullius, doctrine of discovery, and history of British and Canadian treaty making with First Nations, cultural genocide and reconciliation, etc, etc.

See more: https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1380223988016/1544125243779

Another part of the answer is that governments have failed to resolve issues around Aboriginal rights and title, unless forced to after lengthy and expensive court battles or negotiations over treaties like the Nisga’a treaty (2000) marking the end of a 113-year journey — and the first steps in a new direction because on that date, the Indian Act ceased to apply to Nisga’a people northern coastal mainland BC (not shown on map above). The Nisga’a Treaty, reached outside the treaty commission process, showed the way. The Nisga’a created a constitution, ratified by the nation’s members.
 
The Wet’suwet’en remain one of 65 First Nations currently ensnared in the B.C. Treaty Process, negotiating a self-government agreement with the BC Treaty Commission established in 1993.  But after 27 years and around $1 billion there are just three treaties. Another 26 First Nations are still negotiating. And 31 nations that originally signed up — including the Wet’suwet’en, represented by the hereditary chiefs — are “not currently negotiating.” For the Wet’suwet’en that seems to be changing as I write (7 March) depending on acceptance by the Wet’suwet’en of an agreement announced 1 March 2020 after a meeting of the (Canada) Minister for Crown-Indigenous relations, Carolyn Bennett and (BC) Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Scott Fraser and Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs. In the words of Carolyn Bennett, “we have agreed as ministers that we will come back to sign [it] if it is agreed upon by the Nation." Details will not be revealed until then but it appears to be about Indigenous rights and land titles. Disagreement remains over the natural gas pipeline going through traditional territory which the hereditary chiefs continued to oppose. However presently as I write, protest rail blockades have been removed across Canada. Mohawks removed the Tyendinaga & Kahnawake rail blockades saying: 'It's a gesture of good faith.'
 
For the Wet’suet’en Nation the hereditary chiefs have forced the issue of their title and rights over the pipeline. Why did they have to wait 22 years after Delgamuukw? As one commentator, John Ivison, wrote in the National Post: “It looks very much like Ottawa has been shaken from its lassitude by the protests, which is poor reflection on this government and its immediate predecessors. It suggests that Indigenous Canadians only get noticed by their federal government when they take to the barricades.” (2 March 2020)
 
But we do not yet know if the 1 March 2020 agreement resolves the question of who speaks for the Wet’suet’en Nation when there are differences between the elected band councils and the hereditary chiefs and how these differences should be resolved.
Recognition of three of the hereditary chiefs is in dispute. Gloria George, Darlene Glaim and Theresa Tait-Day were stripped of their hereditary titles in recent years after creating the Wet'suwet'en Matrilineal Coalition. Those opposed to the stripping allege that customary law was not followed and the replacements are accused of “masquerading” as hereditary chiefs that have no right to speak as such. One of the hereditary chiefs works for Coastal GasLink and so can be presumed to be in favour of the pipeline.

SIX REASONS CLIMATE SCIENTISTS ARE HOPEFUL, AND YOU SHOULD BE, TOO
Here are the six reasons from British university profs:

• Costa Rica offers us a viable climate future
• Financial investors are cooling on fossil fuels
• We are getting much better at forecasting disaster
• Local authorities across the world are declaring a 'climate emergency'
• Radical climate policy goes mainstream
• Young people are on the march!

        .....Read more

.....and what about the Church:
Pope Pius XII’s actions to help persecuted Jews 
Pope Pius XII’s actions to help persecuted Jews speak far louder than his alleged “silence,” experts say.
“Never again!” has become an everlasting cry in response to the mass killing of Jews in Europe during the Second World War, and remembrance has become a perennial action to honor the victims of the Holocaust.

But whether the Catholic Church did enough to fight this injustice, and whether Pope Pius XII remained silent in the face of the Nazi atrocities, have also become perennial questions.    ...Read more 

More about the background on the Church and the Holocaust: You might like to read more and become aware of what was nearly published.  Humani generis unitas (On the Unity of the Human Race) was a draft for an encyclical planned by Pope Pius XI before his death on February 10, 1939. The draft text condemned antisemitism, racism and the persecution of Jews. For much more background on this fascinating topic check here. Also see Summi_Pontificatus
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Summi Pontificatus is an encyclical of Pope Pius XII published on 20 October 1939. The encyclical is subtitled "on the unity of human society".[1] It was the first encyclical of Pius XII and was seen as setting "a tone" for his papacy. It critiques major errors at the time, such as ideologies of racism, cultural superiority and the totalitarian state. Some of it is apparently based on Humani generis unitas.
 
                    Peace & joy, Andrew Conradi, ofs

World Day of Peace
The 53rd World Day of Peace was observed on 1 January 2020. Pope Francis’ Message, published on 12 December 2019, is entitled "Peace as a journey of hope: dialogue, reconciliation and ecological conversion".
 
On Ecological Conversion he said: “Faced with the consequences of our hostility towards others, our lack of respect for our common home or our abusive exploitation of natural resources – seen only as a source of immediate profit, regardless of local communities, the common good and nature itself – we are in need of an ecological conversion.”
 
                        “If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation.”   Pope Benedict XVI, 2010
Because Christ was part of it as Dan Horan, OFM reminds us that St John Paul II wrote in Dominum et vivificantem:
 
“The "first-born of all creation," becoming incarnate in the individual humanity of Christ, unites himself in some way with the entire reality of man, which is also "flesh" and in this reality with all "flesh," with the whole of creation.” - Christmas is for all God's creatures.

Parrhesia i.e. Speaking Boldly 
(excerpt from Understanding JPIC, 3.2.86.b. follows)
 
“The case for political advocacy and parrhesía was re-stated by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ (2015, n.179): “Because the enforcement of laws is at times inadequate due to corruption, public pressure has to be exerted in order to bring about decisive political action. Society, through non-governmental organizations and intermediate groups, must put pressure on governments to develop more rigorous regulations, procedures and controls. Unless citizens control political power – national, regional and municipal – it will not be possible to control damage to the environment.” Or we can add, bring about social & economic justice.”
 
As Pope Francis in his letter to COP25 put it: “We must seriously ask ourselves if there is the political will to allocate with honesty, responsibility and courage, more human, financial and technological resources to mitigate the negative effects of climate change”.
 
And as Greta Thunberg said 3 Dec 2019: “If they want us to stop being angry, maybe they should stop making us angry” and three days later: “The hope is not within the walls of the COP25. The hope is out here with you” Shown below is to whom she was talking: see video

Léa Ilardo, second from right, speaks alongside youth activists from Switzerland, South Korea and Australia at COP25, demanding world leaders take action to fight climate change. (Submitted by Lea Ilardo)
​
Young climate strikers are sending a clear message to Canadian leaders who are attending the COP25 climate conference in Madrid, Spain, this week: Act now.
In an open letter from various branches of Climate Strike Canada, youth are urging leaders to commit to reducing emissions by 60 per cent (instead of 30 per cent) below 2005 levels by 2030.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you are the last people in a position of power to have the possibility to allow us to avoid an unprecedented global catastrophe,” the letter reads. “Please be bold.” (cbc.ca/kidsnews)
 
Unfortunately COP25 did not rise to the challenge. This does not bode well for future generations. What must we do to bring about change?
“I am disappointed with the results of #COP25. The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation & finance to tackle the climate crisis. But we must not give up, and I will not give up.” So wrote UN Secretary General António Guterres, 15 Dec 2019
 
Not that this was unexpected: It was set up to fail according to Dr Peter Carter, now from Pender Island, BC. He is Director, Climate Emergency Institute, IPCC expert reviewer, Co-author 2018 Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival Watch him interviewed by Nick Breeze at COP25 in Madrid, December 2019 (23 minutes): Summarising the lack of "climate emergency" at #COP25
 
If you only have one minute to spare, watch from the 17min 30 sec mark for one minute as he refers to Pope Francis on climate crime and evil and at the 19:45 mark on the massive Arctic methane emissions.

Greta posted on Twitter 11 Dec 2019 on being named Time’s Person of the Year:
“Wow, this is unbelievable! I share this great honour with everyone in the ‪#FridaysForFuture movement and climate activists everywhere.”
 
Does this honour include you? Did you raise your voice &/or demonstrate?
Pope Francis certainly did raise his voice! We should follow his example!
You may remember the Pope and Greta’s meeting 16 April 2019, shown above, when, after being introduced by Tomás Insua, (Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Global Catholic Climate Movement), she said to Pope Francis: “Thank you for standing up for the climate, for speaking the truth. Really it means a lot. Thanks” to which he replied: “God bless you. Continue to work. Continue. Go on, go ahead.” Also see the whole interaction is from 55 secs to 1:44.
 
As Pope Francis said in Laudato Si': "Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain." (161) That did not stop Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro calling Greta Thunberg, a 'brat'. [No surprise coming from him] Thunburg, known for her climate change activism, was named 2019 person of the year by Time Magazine shortly after Bolsonaro questioned why the media pays attention to her. [I think we know why!] After Bolsonaro’s comment, Thunberg briefly changed her Twitter profile to read “pirralha,” the Portuguese word for brat.
 
Bolsonaro’s friend US President Donald Trump also attacked Greta Thunberg after she was named Time's Person of the Year, saying in a tweet that the award was "ridiculous." [Again, no surprise there]
 
Gabriela Baesse, a Brazilian activist attending the United Nations' COP25 climate conference in Madrid, told the Associated Press that her president's insulting comment about Thunberg shows he "doesn't understand the youth. ["That's not all he doesn't understand"].
 
Marina Silva, Brazil's former environment minister: "He should not worry about fighting Greta because she showed solidarity with the indigenous that were murdered," Silva said. "He should fight the criminals that murdered the indigenous instead of fighting Greta."
 
This Canadian climate activist demonstrated and paid the price Terry Christenson is 72 years old, a climate change activist, and in jail. He received his last sentence on Nov. 20. But it wasn’t his first. And that’s because he says he would rather face jail time than allow the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. 

Christenson’s tactic is to take a “last stand” approach to climate action. And for that he is currently serving the longest sentence given to any activist protesting the pipeline expansion in British Columbia, and one of the longest given to any activist ever in British Columbia. Could we pray for him and ask for courage like his?  ... Read more
 
Two American Celebrities and climate activism
Robert Redford met briefly with Pope Francis at General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, reported L’Osservatore Romano on December 5, 2019. They share in common warnings about the dangers our “Common Home” is facing. Both have raised their voices.

Jane Fonda, the 82 year old American actor and political activist is regarded as a pioneer denouncer in the field of the planet’s conservation.  Fonda has been protesting about inaction over the climate crisis at the US Capitol every Friday – and has been arrested four times and kept overnight once. She's vowed to protest outside the Capitol every Friday, rain or shine, and says she's been inspired by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg and her weekly climate strikes across the globe.
 [If we raise our voice but our governments do not listen & take action then does civil disobedience become the only way to pressure them? Does Jane inspire you?]
 
Mother Earth’s Legal Rights
The University of British Columbia Alumni Magazine Trek entitled its Fall 2019 issue Nature in Freefall. It starts out by reminding us about the Passenger pigeon which once numbered in the low billions in North America and was hunted to extinction by settlers for food, feathers, fertilizer, live trap shooting targets; and their nesting habitat was destroyed by human activity. Laws were passed to protect it, but it was too late; long after the last wild one died, the last captive one died in 1914. Will we be able to save elephants, orang-utans or most other species from extinction? What can we do to save them?
 
Today we are changing the natural world in a cumulative and potentially disastrous way by cutting down forests, destroying topsoil, overfishing, overheating the atmosphere and polluting air, water and land. We need to act quickly and decisively. There is no simple technological fix for biodiversity loss. We need a cultural solution; reduce our impacts and live within our means.
 
Trek outlined how some countries have already passed laws giving nature Pachamama rights (remember Pachamama from a previous blog?). In 2008 Ecuador’s Constitution included the rights of Pachamama, or Mother Earth and has since amended 70 laws and policies to incorporate nature’s rights. In 2010 Bolivia passed a Law on the Rights of Mother Earth and sparked a global movement to establish a Universal Declaration for the Rights of Mother Earth. New Zealand is a world leader in recognizing the rights of nature, inspired by the efforts of the Maori. In 2017 a park and a river were given the status of a legal person with a variety of rights. Why not? If corporations can have the rights of a legal person surely Mother Earth should? Surely this fits with the Franciscan concept of the Universal Kinship of Creation! Many Indigenous in Canada share a similar worldview.
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To read more and hear the friars singing go to ‪@CathClimateMvmt.
Tomás Insua @tomasinsua
Pre-‪#ClimateStrike prayer in Assisi!
Denouncing ‪#BlackFriday & celebrating 40th anniversary of ‪#StFrancis declared patron saint of Ecology. By Franciscans & ‪@CathClimateMvmt.
1:36 AM - Nov 29, 2019

For the poor, every day is Black Friday
  because they seek deals just to survive – 
  for them it is about their needs not wants
Read more: Spanish cardinal denounces spread of Black Friday sales to Europe

You may be interested to know that in England, Catholics (and Anglican Franciscans like Br Finnian shown above) have been active in Christian Climate Action, the Christian arm of Extinction Rebellion.
Read more at the Tablet. 

About 1,000 climate strikers gathered in Victoria, BC stopping at BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources – blocking traffic for half an hour. Block Friday indeed!
 
Black Friday is bad for the planet say French politicians
“Black Friday is bad for the planet and should be banned, say French MPs” “France's parliament is to debate banning Black Friday on the grounds that it is bad for the planet, promotes "overconsumption" and flouts strict French rules on sales periods.” 

What is Synodality?  If you do not know you are not alone! I only had the vaguest idea until after the Amazon Synod and apparently we are not alone. “It is absolutely surprising how very little so many bishops know about synodality, a method Pope Francis has sought to develop throughout his pontificate and a concept Catholic theologians have been discussing for at least a couple of decades… In order to understand how the pope's ecclesiology is currently being received, we should look back at the concept of episcopal collegiality as it was introduced at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). … episcopal collegiality was not, in fact, some novelty, but part of the Church's deeper tradition.” [This concept is now under expansion to include ecclesial synodality i.e. collegiality not restricted just to bishops but including all the faithful, i.e. all the People of God]. See Massimo Faggioli’s: Pope Francis' struggle to bring forth a synodal Church: Synodality for Francis is not just a form of Church government but a way of being Church.
 
In fact synods predate the Constantinian shift to a monarchical church in the fourth century. The International Theological Commission’s March 2018 study “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church” acknowledged: “Although synodality is not explicitly found as a term or as a concept in the teaching of Vatican II, it is fair to say that synodality is at the heart of the work of renewal the Council was encouraging” (n 6).

The concept of a synodal church was outlined by Pope Francis on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Synod of Bishops, 17 Oct 2015.

     "synodality" means "walking together"
        with every member of the church,..." 

From The Catholic Register, a definition of synodality: “In simple terms, "synodality" means "walking together" with every member of the church, recognizing that the grace of baptism makes one part of the body of the church and, therefore, responsible for its life and mission.”
 
But this needs elaboration. So let me draw on The Tablet (2 Nov 2018): (emphasis added)
“the emerging theory of synodality – a favourite theme of Pope Francis – is about participation by the whole People of God and the sharing of responsibility at all levels. [My comment: does this sound a bit like the People of God’s “co-responsibility” that Benedict XVI mentioned. Also see CCCB
 
The days of confining church government only to bishops have to be over. Confidence in bishops acting alone has been severely undermined by their role in the scandal of child abuse by clergy, particularly by covering it up rather than straining every episcopal muscle to stamp it out. … [The Pope] can be expected to appeal to the world’s young Catholics to rediscover the excitement of the Gospel and fulfil their vocation to spread the Word, whatever their ecclesiastical status.
 
The Church is being reminded by Pope Francis of the insight of the Second Vatican Council, that the fundamental Christian sacrament is not ordination as priest or bishop, but baptism. All the baptised are responsible for the welfare of the household of the faith. So the Church’s missionary and pastoral priorities can no longer be imposed from above, but discerned by consultation with the faithful down to parish level. Nor can there be discrimination in those processes on the basis of gender, race, age, sexual orientation or any other grounds, for there is no discrimination in baptism itself.
Synodality, the word that describes all this, now has to be taken into the Church’s structures at national, diocesan and parish level. That is an immense challenge.”
 
Others have written that synodality incorporates: subsidiarity; decentralization; solidarity; and unity in diversity. Cardinal Marx has said. "The universal church can only exist in cooperation with the local churches – sub Petro et cum Petro –[under Peter and with Peter] as Pope Francis strongly worded it."
 
Why is synodality controversial?
Perhaps because as Dan Horan, OFM wrote, some are calling for “a broader embrace of … "the type of synodal pathway that the church in the Amazon has been undergoing.” ” 
 
Yes, indeed, but the controversy is not just restricted to the synodal way of governance (less clericalism; greater pastoral concern; consultation, listening, debate, discerning and final decision making by pastors & bishops (with the final say by the Bishop of Rome) but it is the results i.e. implementation of Laudato Si’s integral ecology; the possibility of a greater role for women & a married clergy & a new Amazonian liturgical rite that really excites the ire of the critics. They do not want all this i.e. what some call the “progressive agenda” to be an example and copied by the rest of the Catholic world.
 
But let us hear from Dan Horan, OFM: “A broader sense of synodality beyond that consultative body of bishops in Rome is about proper recognition of the place of all the baptized faithful in the prudential discernment about church decision-making and governance. It is not a call to do away with hierarchical leadership. No, the church is not a democracy. But neither is the church a monarchy wherein local bishops, bishops' conferences, or even the pope rules by fiat. The church is a "hierarchical communion," as Lumen Gentium explains, but one whose ministers arise from and are oriented to the service of all the baptized.” As the International Theological Commission in Synodality In The Life And Mission Of The Church, 2018  puts it:  
 “Communion, synodality, collegiality - 6. … In this ecclesiological context, synodality is the specific modus vivendi et operandi [way of life and operation] of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelising mission.”
None of this sounds heretical or off the wall to me; in fact it sounds very good and I would echo what Dan Horan, OFM says: “I would suggest that synodality is not merely an option to be recovered, but is in fact the only authentic way to be church.” [emphasis added]

 “I would suggest that synodality is not merely an option to be recovered, but is in fact the only authentic way to be church.”
 
George Weigel’s criticism.
I will offer only one short quote (always a dangerous thing!):
“Serious consultation and collaboration are essential to effective pastoral leadership, including the leadership of the Bishop of Rome. But over the 50-plus years of its existence, no one has figured out how to make the Synod of Bishops really work. Propaganda about “synodality” that functions as rhetorical cover for the imposition of the progressive Catholic agenda on the whole Church is not an improvement on that track record; it’s a masquerade, behind which is an agenda.”
 
As much as I respect George Wegel all I will say is I do not agree with his criticisms. Perhaps because from what I have heard I strongly approve the “progressive agenda” and its broadcasting of inconvenient truths. Those that do not approve generally also dislike Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ; Vatican II; Ilia Delio, OSF; Richard Rohr, OFM; Laudato Si’, and much of what Pope Francis espouses. Some do not like me, especially the one who verbally attacked me after mass one Sunday as I stood before my display about the Season of Creation for being a “radical,” which of course I am; radical being derived from the Latin radix meaning root i.e. treat root causes not just symptoms of problems.
 
Let us pray for Pope Francis:
Lord, give to Your shepherd, Francis, a spirit of courage, right judgement, knowledge & love. 
May he build Your church into a sacrament of unity, love, and peace for all the world. 
May he continue to lead us on new and challenging paths to walk together always guided by Your Holy Spirit to cherish, nurture, protect and sustain our Sister Mother Earth and work for the common good.
May the example of St Francis always inspire our Popes in new ways. Amen.
 
        Peace & joy, Andrew, ofs