People and industries who treat the world like
a garbage dump are not practicing Christian principles
and certainly not practicing Catholic Christian principles.
e.g. Waste dumping into lakes and streams.
A very real concern I have, as a Catholic though,
is when people, who may have good hearts and intents,
put the importance of the environment OVER the good
of the person themselves, from
a mother's womb to a person's natural death.
We can never work toward any environmental issue
that does not respect and protect all human rights,
from conception to natural death.
I've googled four links for you to get a "flavor" of
what our recent popes have thought on this issue
as well as a segment from the Catechism of the Catholic
Church.
P.S. Within the past few years the Pope Paul VI auditorium
has a new solar panel roof that allows for the generation
of electrical power and therefore the conservation
of energy. I believe this is where the Holy Father
gives his weekly Wednesday audience talk.
I heard this on "Rome
Reports ... News from the
Vatican's View" on EWTN.
Hope this helps,
Mike
II. THE VISIBLE WORLD
337 God himself created the visible world in all
its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents
the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession
of six days of divine "work", concluded
by the "rest" of the seventh day. On
the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches
the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting
us to "recognize the inner nature, the value
and the ordering of the whole of creation to the
praise of God."
338 Nothing exists that does not owe its existence
to God the Creator. The world began when God's
word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings,
all of nature, and all human history are rooted
in this primordial event, the very genesis by which
the world was constituted and time begun.
339 Each creature possesses its own particular
goodness and perfection. For each one of the works
of the "six days" it is said: "And
God saw that it was good." "By the very
nature of creation, material being is endowed with
its own stability, truth and excellence, its own
order and laws." Each of the various creatures,
willed in its own being, reflects in its own way
a ray of God's infinite wisdom and goodness. Man
must therefore respect the particular goodness
of every creature, to avoid any disordered use
of things which would be in contempt of the Creator
and would bring disastrous consequences for human
beings and their environment.
340 God wills the interdependence of creatures.
The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little
flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle
of their countless diversities and inequalities
tells us that no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures
exist only in dependence on each other, to complete
each other, in the service of each other.
341 The beauty of the universe: The order and
harmony of the created world results from the diversity
of beings and from the relationships which exist
among them. Man discovers them progressively as
the laws of nature. They call forth the admiration
of scholars. The beauty of creation reflects the
infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire
the respect and submission of man's intellect and
will.
2224 The home is the
natural environment for initiating
a human being into solidarity and communal
responsibilities. Parents should teach children
to avoid the compromising and degrading influences
which threaten human societies.
