Commentary
On a dusky fall evening, I take a walk down a familiar neighborhood street. Ahead of me, a small deer looks my way at the same moment I spot him. Freezing, I realize he’s being followed by seven companions. They dash across the street and disappear into a backyard.
I gaze into the yard, where I see a maze of fences. But I suppose deer can easily jump them.
The encounter brings thoughts of the juxtaposition of our natural environment and the challenges it faces. The news on climate change grows more dire. When I check the local weather, I note how often the day is above normal for warmth. Today, as I write this, it’s four degrees above the average daily high. We face melting glaciers, coastal flooding (even when it hasn’t been raining), landslides, fires, brutal heat waves.
My town, with walking trails through a beautiful park, is a lovely place. But a major freeway borders one side of town. To disguise this, an embankment was built and trees were planted. If you gaze down a dead-end street in that part of town, you see lovely homes, a bucolic setting of grasses, trees and, yes, deer. But listening, you hear the continual rumble of fast-moving traffic. It’s the sound of our dependence on fossil fuel, a nagging reminder of our environmental challenge.
We long for technological answers, and hopefully some will be forthcoming. But at heart, does not our fate rest on our personal commitment to living a more sustainable and simple lifestyle?
Addressing an environmental conference in 2021, Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago said, “I am convinced that it is useless to talk about advancing a culture of life absent a vigorous commitment — both by individuals and communities — to making the sacrifices required for improving the socioeconomic, ecological and political crises of our time.”
This includes a commitment by churches and church leadership. Cardinal Cupich announced in 2023 that the Chicago Archdiocese, including its nearly 400 parishes, schools and offices, is shifting its entire electricity purchase to 100% renewable in 2024.
In 2015, Pope Francis gave the world his first environmental encyclical, “Laudato Si’” (“On Care for Our Common Home”). It’s a beautiful, thought-provoking call to end the greed and consumerism that threaten our mother Earth. In it, he quotes from other popes — John XXIII, Paul VI, Benedict XVI — who also warned of the dangers to the earth, to the poor and to our children from our unbridled consumption.
The dangerous individualism that we Americans cultivate sometimes makes us forget the poor and the earth itself in our quest for economic growth, success and more “stuff.” Are we challenged on this issue from the pulpit?
“This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor,” writes Francis.
Pope Francis chose his name as pontiff from St. Francis of Assisi, and in the introduction to “Laudato Si’,” he quotes from the Canticle of the Creatures given us by this saint: “Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. ‘Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us …’”
Viewed in this light, our buying habits, our consumerism and our wastefulness become moral choices. May we pray to St. Francis for the freedom of simplicity and a renewed commitment to our mother Earth.
Effie Caldarola is a wife, mom and grandmother who received her master’s degree in pastoral studies from Seattle University.
