The Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is of the same view.

Faith in God comes with two "inseparable" elements, Bartholomew said on Sunday which was the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

He said these two elements are the God-given dignity of the human person and the integrity of God's creation.

Religious groups must help

Francis says religious groups must help fight climate change because true progress will require conversion.

Bartholomew agrees.

"Genuine religious faith dissolves the arrogance and titanism of humankind" by helping people realise they are not God.

A person has no right to abolish "all standards, boundaries and values, while declaring himself ‘the measure of all things' and instrumentalising his fellow human beings and nature for the satisfaction of his unquenchable needs and arbitrary pursuits.

"Respect for the sacredness of the human person and the protection of the integrity of the ‘very good' creation are inseparable."

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

Bartholomew's predecessor, Patriarch Demetrios, instituted the annual day of prayer for creation in 1989.

In 2015, Francis added the day to the Catholic Church's annual observances.

His message for the 2024 day of prayer also speaks of the conversion necessary to leave behind "the arrogance of those who want to exercise dominion over others and nature itself, reducing the latter to an object to be manipulated".

Instead, it asks for people to embrace "the humility of those who care for others and for all of creation".

He said that "With God as the loving Father, his Son as the friend and redeemer of every person, and the Holy Spirit who guides our steps on the path of charity and obedience to the Spirit of love - this radically changes the way we think: from ‘predators' we become 'tillers' of the garden".

A shared message

Like Francis, Bartholomew's statement emphasised the connection between care for creation and love for one another, especially the poor.

"There is a close and indissoluble bond between our care of creation and our service to the body of Christ, just as there is between the economic conditions of the poor and the ecological conditions of the planet" he said.

"Scientists tell us that those most egregiously harmed by the current ecological crisis will continue to be those who have the least."

Source

• Our Sunday Visitor

The solemn setting of people seated or kneeling in a confession line waiting to confess their sins is typically marked by quiet reflection.

Peering out of the confession booth one day, Fr Joseph Krupp saw that his broad-chested, 32 kg boxer was in a chair, and when the line moved, the dog took the next chair.

A rescue dog with a penchant for mischief. Everyone knew this hound, Marius Arelius Spartanicus had sins to confess after raiding wedding receptions, opening church fridges and, on one occasion, scoffing down a 1.5 kg roast, writes Terry Mattingly.

Krupp has many responsibilities, including serving as the Michigan State University football team chaplain and overseeing the Northeastern Deanery's 12 parishes and four schools.

Rescue dog - healing for priest too

Yet, his commitment to rescuing older dogs reveals a tender aspect of his character.

He views his role as giving these animals a few joyful years but, in a poignant turn, he acknowledges their healing impact on him.

The story of Krupp's bond with his current boxer is both touching and dramatic.

It began eight years ago when he visited the Hillsdale Humane Society to donate supplies after losing his previous dog.

There, he found a boxer "broken-hearted", a dog that no one wanted and desperately needed care and affection.

I walked in just as they were walking a dog out, wrote Krupp.

"He lifted his head, saw me and ran at me so hard and fast that the leash came out of the volunteer's hand. I sat on the floor and he jumped on me, licking me and pushing me to the ground. I just couldn't quit laughing.

"He was found tied to a tree along with another dog. The other dog had died of starvation, and he was close to it. He had been shot with numerous pellets, his tail was broken and a lot of his teeth were missing" wrote Krupp to his many @JoeInBlack readers on X.

Recently Marius Arelius Spartanicus' account @ThePriestsDog recorded the dog's passing.

"I've arrived in Heaven. It's a little neat and orderly here. I've got my work cut out for me" writes Marius Arelius Spartanicus on X.

Sources

• Religion Unplugged
• @joeinblack
• @ThePriestsDog

The modernisation seeks to fill a twenty-six-year gap and reflect some of the modern challenges.

Dr John Kleinsman, director of the NZ Catholic bishops' Nathaniel Centre for Bioethics, is delighted with the bishops' update.

Kleinsman describes the new document as a "succinct overview of eight key moral areas, including a new section on information technology and artificial intelligence."

Among the modern challenges the bishops consider

• Information technology and artificial intelligence
• Justice and correction systems
• War and peace
• Poverty
• Discrimination and abuse
• End-of-life issues
• Beginning of life issues
• Integrity of Creation

Kleinsman says that people generally know what the Chucrh teaches but are unsure of why.

Te Kahu o te Ora - A Consistent Ethic of Life summarises key points which can give people greater insights into Catholic thinking, comments Kleinsman.

"It is a great source for open and informed discussions", says Kleinsman who, as well as being a theologian, is a married man, father and grandfather.

The original Te Kahu o te Ora was inspired by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's A Consistent Ethic of Life.

Bernardin's work grew from his observation that we must act consistently because all human life is sacred.

It was Bernadin's view that it was inconsistent to protect life in some situations but not in others.

In the years following Roe v. Wade, Bernardin argued that human life is always valuable and must be respected consistently from conception to natural death.

Being pro-life is not only about abortion or euthanasia.

Being pro-life must encompass war, poverty, access to health care, education and anything that threatens human life or human wellbeing, he argued.

Stephen Lowe, the Bishop of Auckland, the Apostolic Administrator of Hamilton and President of the NZ Catholic Bishops Conference, describes the update as "Opportune".

Lowe says human life and emerging challenges are interconnected.

"The essence of Te Kahu o te Ora is the interconnectedness of all life, from the womb to the Earth," he said.

Lowe says Pope Benedict put it well some years ago:

"There are so many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast."

"While traditional human life issues continue to need our attention, we are now facing many new problems, all interlinked.

"The key message of Te Kahu o te Ora is that everything is connected, whether it is life in the womb or the life of the Earth," Lowe repeated.

Sources

• Supplied
• Catholic Sun

I am sure many people around the world have had a similar experience to me as they look at the amazing photos that NASA and its partners have been releasing in the last few days.

I have only a secondary-school pupil's grasp of physics, but one does not need to be an astrophysicist to know that these photos show a level of information about the cosmos that is greater than humans have ever had before.

For the whole of human history, we have stared up into the night sky and wondered - but our wonder just grows as we look at these images.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) once opined that one reason humans stood up-right was so that we could turn our heads upwards to look at the wonders of the night sky!

Looking upwards reminded us of the complexity of the creation.

But to just appreciate the technical brilliance of the scientists that developed, built, and then deployed - successfully - the James Webb telescope is stretching my head to its limits.

When just before Christmas, and then with its launch on Christmas Day last year, we heard from the NASA and ESA teams that this was the greatest scientific instrument ever built, there were probably many - myself included - who thought that this was just the usual researchers' hype to promote their project.

Now, when we see its first images, I for one stand in awe of the skills of those who conceived such a project and then got it into space - a marvel of human ingenuity.

Beyond our thinking

The images show light that has been travelling for BILLIONS of years - thousands of millions of years - and so over an extent that is, literally, beyond comprehension.

It looks back into an earlier ‘moment' in the evolution of the universe than we can imagine - yet we see a simple fact: these photographs.

I can imagine a year, a decade, a lifetime.

The historian tries to train his or her imagination to appreciate that distance back to the time of Jesus, or the builders of the pyramids, or the first cultural marks made by Neanderthals.

Going back hundreds of thousands of years in tracing evolution to the time of Australopithecus and the early hominins is actually just an abstraction - we cannot really grasp such time spans.

To make comparisons such as we make in class - and I have done it myself - such as if they are thought of in terms of 24-hours, then those hominins lived in Africa yesterday morning, the pyramids were built around ‘ten minutes to midnight' … and so on … only serve to show we cannot get our minds around such spans of time.

But if coping with the time spans of biological evolution on this planet is so hard - at the edge of imagination - how do we even begin to grasp the time spans in these new photographs?

Southern Ring Nebula (click image to enlarge)

The universe is ever more complex. Ever more wonderful.

But - for me as one who worships God - it serves as a further reminder that though I use the word " g - o - d " every day in prayer, and we hear it used often enough, it refers to a reality beyond reality, beyond all imagining.

It is but a sound, a stutter that there is that which is greater than all that I can imagine. We do not know what God is. To imagine we can ‘define' - set limits in our mind upon - God is itself the greatest blasphemy.

For Augustine looking ever deeper into the cosmos and its complexity, there came back but the reflection in his mind: ‘I, the universe, am not God, but he made me!'

I am awed by these photographs of the cosmos, but that is still less than religious awe: the creator is still greater and ever greater. Beyond images, beyond words, beyond imagining.

Human continuity

Looking at these pictures I am also struck by the continuity in human nature and what interests us and inspires us.

The first human builders looked upwards and were amazed by the night sky and aligned their structures with it.

The ancient scholars in Babylonia looked up and sought to use mathematics - whose inherent beauty seems to resemble both the beauty of the cosmos and our own logicality - to understand and appreciate it.

That same maths - that we still divide a circle into 360 degrees is a legacy of the Babylonians - helped scientists today to build not a pyramid in Egypt or Newgrange in Ireland but the James Webb telescope.

Yet we still wonder at what we see in the cosmos around us!

The instinct to wonder, to question, to seek beyond our imagining is at the heart of our humanity - when we look upwards.

But we also look downwards!

On the same day that James Webb was launched (25 Dec 2021) there were also grim rumblings of manoeuvres and exercises by Russian troops on the borders of Ukraine.

Little room there for wonder, awe or human aspiration.

Here was the dark side of humanity seeking domination, promoting destruction, and advancing falsity in the form of nationalist mythology. The realism of theists is that we neither decry wonder not deny wickedness. Here is where we are called in faith to make a difference.

Stephan's Quintet (click image to enlarge)

Belief in creation

Similarly, human understanding is not just limited - imagining 13.5 billion years is beyond me; knowing ‘what is' God is impossible - it can be perverse.

For some - that these pictures challenge neat, well-boxed ideas about ‘Made by God' are taken to mean that God, faith and religion are all just bunkum.

For others - that there is a difference between these images and their simplistic reading of the Book of Genesis sets up a challenge of ‘science versus faith.'

To believe in creation is not to accept any story as a factual account, but to embrace all the wonder and complexity around us - and then appreciate that there is still the Mystery and that the Mystery is loving.

I heard a physicist say recently that she was ‘still a Catholic' and a believer in God ‘even though I know I should believe in the Book of Genesis.' She is not alone. For many - both those who claim belief and those who reject belief - it seems to be an either/or. This is a failure of our preaching and our teaching - and of understanding.

One believes in God, one listens to books.

One tries to love the Creator, one tries to appreciate our myths.

The truth is one - and it is our conviction that whenever we grasp even the smallest little bit of truth that it is a little bit of the work of the Creator and eventually will fit with all the other little bits. But we will only come to ‘the truth' at the end of time. For now, both in our scientific work and in our human journey we move forward in darkness. Truth is our desire, our destination - not our possession.

As I look at these wonderful photographs I am driven back to those lines in Genesis:

Then God said, "Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. And let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. (1:14-9).

What a witness to continuity: the wonder of those theologians and astronomers is still the wonder of theologians and astronomers today. They had but their naked eyes, we have the lenses of James Webb.

The concern of the Priestly-author (who created this part of the Genesis account) was to remind his fellow Jews in Babylon that the sun, moon, and stars were not divine, not gods - as those around them imagined - but the handiwork of God. The wonder of the Big Bang, the swirling galaxies beyond our counting, and the billions of ‘years' (what does a ‘year' mean before there was our planet, our sun or our galaxy!) is not ‘all there is.' To believe in the Creator is to assert that the whole we see stands in dependence on that which is beyond.

All in these pics depends for its existence upon that which is beyond it, but that Source of Being does not depend upon it.

We believe in God - Creator beyond all that is seen and unseen - and we read Genesis as a memento of our desire to seek truth and to worship. We look at these photographs as still more evidence of our human quest for truth - even in our darkness and our wickedness. And we try - through theological reflection - to reduce our confusion.

Carina Nebula (click image to enlarge)

The response of wonder, thanks, and praise

As a human being my response to these images is one of wonder. It is ever more amazing.

It is also one of thanks.

I could not even hold a screwdriver for the brilliant scientists and technicians who built the James Webb, but I am thankful to them. I am also a bit sad: what if all the technical skill used to make and fire munitions in warfare had been turned to work similar to launching the James Webb into space?

So the James Webb produces wonder at the scientists' results, thanks to the scientists for their research dedication, and praise to encourage them.

As a theist, I am driven to even deeper wonder at the cosmos - and challenged never to slip into the blasphemy that ‘I have it figured out.'

The universe revealed in these photographs challenges how we think and speak of the creation - and its Creator. But I am also a little sad: human confusion - that ‘creator' is imagined mechanically or that ‘revelation' is reduced to a book - is a stumbling block on our human journey. But most of all, I am driven to thankfulness for the beauty of God's handiwork:

When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place, what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?

For you have made us, mortals, but a little lower than the angels, and have crowned us with glory and honour (Ps 8:3-5).

So the James Webb produces wonder at the divine handiwork, thanks to the Creator for ‘his' sustaining love, and praise - knowing that the desire to praise ‘him' is itself his gift.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

Those who deny climate change and its accompanying global warming - from certain high government officials to countless ordinary users of social media - are in denial of the scientific facts.

Denying the reality of climate change is akin to denying that astronauts landed on the moon (see: https://bit.ly/3hKwlGN). And such denial is in company with beliefs of the Flat Earth Society.

If we, and especially governments, continue to drag our environmental feet, climate scientists predict that by 2030 far worse, and far more frequent catastrophic weather events - like hurricanes, floods, droughts and crop failures - will cause untold suffering to countless human beings and to our common earth home. In fact, doing too little, too late, could quite possibly put all of us, and future generations, at a catastrophic point of no return.

Let's not let that happen!

Get involved!

Pray, plant trees, research ways your house and parish can go green, urge your state and federal legislators to pass Green New Deal legislation. And participate in the current ecumenical Season of Creation which formally lasts until Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi - patron saint of ecology.

In his message for the Season of Creation beginning on Sept. 1 - World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation - Pope Francis writes, "Everything is interconnected, and that genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others".

He adds that this is a "time to return to God our loving Creator. We cannot live in harmony with creation if we are not at peace with the Creator who is the source and origin of all things."

Calling us to humility and attentiveness the Holy Father says "Today we hear the voice of creation admonishing us to return to our rightful place in the natural created order - to remember that we are part of this interconnected web of life, not its masters. The disintegration of biodiversity, spiralling climate disasters, and unjust impact of the current pandemic on the poor and vulnerable: all these are a wakeup call in the face of our rampant greed and consumption."

Continuing this line of thought, Pope Francis says that the pandemic has "led us to rediscover simpler and sustainable lifestyles … The pandemic has brought us to a crossroads."

In agreement with climate scientists, the Holy Father warns, "Climate restoration is of utmost importance, since we are in the midst of a climate emergency. We are running out of time, as our children and young people have reminded us. We need to do everything in our capacity to limit global average temperature rise under the threshold of 1.5°C enshrined in the Paris Climate Agreement, for going beyond that will prove catastrophic, especially for poor communities around the world".

In the spirit of St. Francis let us continue living the Season of Creation throughout all the seasons of our lives, forever discovering with joy, all that God has made!

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag6@comcast.net.

The Season of Creation is an annual month long ecumenical celebration of prayer and action to protect creation.

From worship services, to trash clean-ups, to tree plantings, to lobbying governments and corporations, many Christians are presently demonstrating their care for our common earth home.

On Sept. 1, Pope Francis kicked off this year's Season of Creation with his "World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation" message prophetically warning that the human response to the Creator's gift of creation "has been marked by sin, selfishness and a greedy desire to posses and exploit.

Egoism and self-interest have turned creation, a place of encounter and sharing, into an arena of completion and conflict".

The Holy Father notes that in recent decades humans through "constant pollution, the continued use of fossils fuels, intensive agricultural exploitation and deforestation are causing global temperatures to rise above safe levels."

And the poor, who have contributed the least to this environmental crisis, are unjustly most at risk.

Francis cautions that "Melting of glaciers, scarcity of water, neglect of water basins and the considerable presence of plastic and microplastics in the oceans are equally troubling and testify to the urgent need for interventions that can no longer be postponed."

And thus he alarmingly warns, "We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own."

Pope Francis is not Chicken Little crying that the sky is falling because an acorn hit his head. No, the pope is doing exactly what Jesus taught in the Gospel, and what the world's bishops at the Second Vatican Council called us to do: To read the signs of the times - to deeply reflect upon them and to respond with mature faith.

The environmental signs of the times are indeed gravely threatening.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns the world only has about 10 years to make comprehensive changes to bring increasing global warming under control - that is, by taking dramatic steps like completely moving away from the use of oil, gas and coal and fully adopting clean renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal.

Massive reforestation is also an essential component here.

But if we, and especially governments, continue to drag our environmental feet, climate scientists predict that by 2030 far worse, and far more frequent catastrophic weather events - like hurricanes, floods, droughts and crop failures - will cause untold suffering to countless human beings and to our common earth home.

In fact, doing too little, too late, could quite possibly put all of us, and future generations, at a catastrophic point of no return.

Let's not let that happen!

Get involved!

Pray, plant trees, research ways your house and parish can go green, urge your state and federal legislators to pass Green New Deal legislation. And participate in the Season of Creation.

The official Season of Creation appropriately ends on the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi - the patron saint of ecology (see: ) - who sang joyful praises to God for the gift of all creation.

In the spirit of St. Francis let us continue living the Season of Creation throughout all the seasons of our lives, forever discovering with joy, all that God has made!

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

At first, as we read in Genesis, "no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up - for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground" (2:5).

The earth was entrusted to us as a sublime gift and legacy, for which all of us share responsibility until, "in the end", all things in heaven and on earth will be restored in Christ (cf. Eph 1:10).

Our human dignity and welfare are deeply connected to our care for the whole of creation. However, "in the meantime", the history of the world presents a very different context.

It reveals a morally decaying scenario where our attitude and behaviour towards creation obscures our calling as God's co-operators.

Our propensity to interrupt the world's delicate and balanced ecosystems, our insatiable desire to manipulate and control the planet's limited resources, and our greed for limitless profit in markets - all these have alienated us from the original purpose of creation.

We no longer respect nature as a shared gift; instead, we regard it as a private possession.

We no longer associate with nature in order to sustain it; instead, we lord over it to support our own constructs. The consequences of this alternative worldview are tragic and lasting.

The human environment and the natural environment are deteriorating together, and this deterioration of the planet weighs upon the most vulnerable of its people.

The impact of climate change affects, first and foremost, those who live in poverty in every corner of the globe.

Our obligation to use the earth's goods responsibly implies the recognition of and respect for all people and all living creatures.

The urgent call and challenge to care for creation are an invitation for all of humanity to work towards sustainable and integral development. Continue reading

Sources

• Zenit
• Image: The Sacred Page

It "reminds us of the immense beauty in the universe that occurs outside of our own petty set of concerns," Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno says.

"It pulls us out of ourselves and makes us remember that we are part of a big and glorious and beautiful universe." Read more

It's interesting how we can become used to the old and soiled. I suspect there is a parable somewhere in that.

If we visit the Sistine chapel today, we'll see a ceiling of vivid scripture as Michelangelo painted it. With hundreds of other visitors, we'll walk with heads upturned in awe.

There is one place where everyone stops. It's under the picture of The Creation of Adam.

God is leaning towards Adam who appears to have fallen backwards, his arm extended as though he's trying to return to God. His finger is almost touching God's, but we get the feeling this won't happen. We notice that both Adam and God are strongly muscled, a reminder that Michelangelo was first and foremost a sculptor.

We stand still, gazing at the painting. There is much in the detail that is alive with expression. It claims our eyes and our hearts.

Why does this particular picture hold our attention? What did Michelangelo intend us to see?

Over the centuries there have been many theories about The Creation of Adam, people interpreting body language and background as they saw it. The cloak-like shape behind God, for example: does it represent an unfolding universe? Is it formed like a uterus to suggest the birthing of creation? Or does that shape resemble a brain and wisdom? All of these have been historical interpretations.

For some of us, though, the potent image is the gap between God's finger and Adam's finger. God is leaning forward as a father reaches for his child, but Adam is helpless and falling away.

We can see much pathos in that gap between the fingers. It is a space of loss and yearning, and we feel it deeply. It belongs to us, and no effort on our part is going to close it.

What then, fills the gap?

I believe Michelangelo tells us in another part of the painting. The answer is beneath God's left arm and hand. There is a young woman there, secure in the crook of God's elbow. Tradition says this is Eve waiting to evolve from Adam's side, but if we look closely, we see the woman has the same face as that of Michelangelo's sculpture of The Pieta. The woman is Mary.

Further along, God's left hand rests on a baby. Both the woman and the baby are in subdued colour, suggesting they have not yet come into incarnation.

The artist is telling us who closes the gap between us and our Creator.

It is the Beloved. It is Christ Jesus.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Then God revealed more. We saw the light of God in other people, glimpsed it in the song of a bird, the wings of a butterfly, the breaking of waves on a shore. We felt the

inter-connectedness of everything and believed that God had created this unity.

Now we know that God is the unity. God is the intelligence, the energy, the love that makes the whole beautiful design operate. God is not just up there, but moving in all directions at once, and we are a part of that flow.

Joseph Campbell once said, "The universe is not just a product made by God. It is a manifestation of God."

Remember Moses and the burning bush? Moses had killed an Egyptian and been forced into exile for several years. He was in the Sinai desert, tending a flock of sheep, when he came across a bush that was on fire but unburnt. Curious, Moses was drawing closer, when a voice from the flames told him to take off his shoes because he was on sacred ground.

I guess Moses must have wondered who owned the voice, because God then said to him, "I AM who I AM."

What kind of name is that? How does it resonate inside us? To me it sounded like "I AM and there is nothing else."

Thanks to a rabbi friend, I discovered there was more to God's statement than was in my understanding. Jewish scholars say that our translation is inadequate. The Hebrew word cannot be translated so simply into English. A sentence is needed to give some kind of sense that the proper noun is also a verb.

"I AM is the I AM that is always evolving.

God is continually making himself/herself manifest.

Isn't this true in our lives? If we look back at our faith journey, we see that God has been constantly shaping us and taking us to a larger place. The I AM is not only in a burning bush. It is everywhere we look and we are a part of it.

When we see this, we are overwhelmed by the knowledge of how much God loves creation. It is his favourite disguise and he is never separate from it. Our hearts take off their shoes in the presence of a love so big it chose to become one with us.

We live on a eucharistic planet.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

In a blog post on the New Zealand Catholic bishops' website, Dr John Kleinsman wrote of how the synod's working document made little mention of this goodness.

He told a bishop at the synod on the family of this and also mentioned that there had been little mention of the topic in the synod interventions thus far.

This bishop subsequently made a "free intervention" to the synod attendees on this topic.

Dr Kleinsman, who is director of the Nathaniel Centre, the Catholic bioethics agency in New Zealand, then prepared a 300-word statement on the goodness of sexuality within marriage.

He presented this "modus" to the small group at the synod of which he is a member.

The text noted that in the giving of a married couple to each other in sexual loving, their love is nourished and "they become open to the possibility and miracle of new life".

Dr Kleinsman painted a picture of married loving and life-giving which transcends the relationship of the couple, with implications for the wider community and the world.

The final two paragraphs read: "At a time when the rich Christian vision of sex and sexuality has increasingly been replaced by a much narrower and impoverished understanding for many, Christian couples are called to witness more than ever to the beauty, joy and richness of human sexuality and the proper place of sexual loving in a committed, exclusive and permanent relationship."

"The sexual expression of love within marriage thus has the potential to establish itself as a special expression of Christian evangelisation."

In the blog post, Dr Kleinsman wrote that this statement was discussed in his small group.

It was accepted by the group and it was sent "forward for consideration by the writing party working on the final synod document".

He said the final document of the synod "will be all the poorer if it does not in some way affirm the goodness of sexuality that goes back to the Creation story in Genesis - and God saw it was good".

Dr Kleinsman is married with three adult children.

Sources

• NZCBC
• Image: Marist Messenger

Pope Francis said he was instituting the prayer day for Catholics because he shares the concern of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who initiated a similar prayer day for the Orthodox Church in 1989.

The day of prayer, the Pope said, will give individuals and communities an opportunity to implore God's help in protecting creation and an opportunity to ask God's forgiveness "for sins committed against the world in which we live".

The suggestion to have Catholics and Orthodox praying for such a cause on the same day came from Metropolitan John of Pergamon

The Metropolitan represented Patriarch Bartholomew at the public presentation on June 18 of Pope Francis's encyclical, Laudato Si'.

Continue reading

According to a report in The Telegraph, the detection of miniature black holes by the LHC could show that the Big Bang did not happen.

It could also prove the existence of parallel universes.

If miniature black holes are found at a certain energy level, it could prove the controversial theory of "rainbow gravity".

This suggests that the universe stretches back into time infinitely with no singular point where it started, and no Big Bang.

The theory was postulated to reconcile Einstein's theory of general relativity - which deals with very large objects - and quantum mechanics, which looks at the tiniest building blocks of the universe.

It takes its name from a suggestion that gravity's effect on the cosmos is felt differently by varying wavelengths of light.

The huge amounts of energy needed to make "rainbow gravity" would mean that the early universe was very different.

One result would be that if time is retraced backward, the universe gets denser, approaching an infinite density but never quite reaching it.

The effect of rainbow gravity is small for objects like the Earth, but it is significant and measurable for black holes.

It could be detected by the Large Hadron Collider if it picks up or creates black holes within the particle accelerator.

Dr Mir Faizal told Phys.org: "We have calculated the energy at which we expect to detect these mini black holes in gravity's rainbow [a new theory]. If we do detect mini black holes at this energy, then we will know that both gravity's rainbow and extra dimensions are correct."

The LHC was to be restarted this week after a two year break.

But that could be delayed for weeks after a short circuit was detected in one of its electromagnets.

When the 27km long accelerator is fired up, it will smash protons together at nearly double the energy that was used to find the Higgs Boson.

Sources

• The Telegraph
• BBC
• Image: BBC

In an interview published in a book recently released in Italy, the Pope put gender theory in the same category as genetic manipulation and nuclear weapons.

These are all threats to creation, that disfigure the face of man and woman, the Pope warned, according to an article in the National Catholic Reporter.

Church leaders have used the term "gender theory" to refer to ideas that question the God-given nature of sex differences and the complementarity of man and women as the basis for the family.

Under some gender theories, "sex" may be what a person is biologically, but gender is what the person believes himself or herself to be.

The latter can be imposed by oppressive cultural stereotypes, some gender theorists believe.

They posit that people should be able to identify as male, female, neither or both.

In Pope Francis, This Economy Kills by Italian journalists Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, the Pope is asked about the importance for Christians of safeguarding creation.

Francis referred to the duty of all people to respect and care for the environment.

But he added that every historical period has "Herods" that "destroy, that plot designs of death, that disfigure the face of man and woman, destroying creation".

"Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings," he continued.

"Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognise the order of creation."

"With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator," the Pope said.

"The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate."

"God has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the Earth," Francis said.

"The design of the Creator is written in nature."

Last month, Francis referred to gender theory as an example of "ideological colonisation that tries to destroy the family".

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Catholic News Service
• Dale O'Leary
• New Zealand Herald
• Image: DesignTutsPlus

Speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Monday, Pope Francis said scientific explanations for the world did not exclude the role of God in creation.

"The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to something else, but it derives directly from a supreme principle that creates out of love," he said.

"The 'Big Bang', that today is considered to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the creative intervention of God, on the contrary it requires it," he said.

"Evolution in nature is not in contrast with the notion of (divine) creation because evolution requires the creation of the beings that evolve," the Pope said.

Pope Francis noted that God cannot be seen as a magician or conjurer, but rather as a creator who brings everything to life.

"When we read about creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so," Francis said.

"He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment."

The Pope did not discuss whether humans descended from apes.

An Associated Press article quoted a summary of the Catholic position, which it described as "theistic evolution".

"What the Church does insist upon is that the emergence of the human supposes a wilful act of God, and that man cannot be seen as only the product of evolutionary processes.

"The spiritual element of man is not something that could have developed from natural selection but required an ‘ontological leap'."

Media cited teachings by Popes Pius XII, St John Paul II, and Benedict XVI supporting this type of position.

Sources

• Reuters
• Associated Press
• The Tablet
• Image: Indian Express

Pope Francis has reportedly spent months drafting his new encyclical.

In March, during an audience with superiors from the Franciscan order, the Pope expressed how much this topic concerns him, and asked them for advice.

Order of Friars Minor minister general Fr Michael Anthony Perry said Pope Franics talked about his deep concern that the Church needs to find the way to respond, using the best of science.

"But also using the best of goodwill of all of humanity, to bring together a consensus on trying to respond to the crisis, the ecological crisis," Fr Perry said.

The Pope will be very busy in October and beforehand with the family synod and its preparations, so Fr Perry did not expect the encyclical before this.

He speculated that November is a possibility for its release.

Vatican sources have indicated early 2015 as the most likely time for the new encyclical.

Continue reading

At his general audience on May 21, the Pope said polluting or destroying the environment amounts to telling God one doesn't like his creation.

Safeguarding creation is safeguarding a gift from God, he continued.

"This must be our attitude toward creation - safeguarding it. If not, if we destroy creation, creation will destroy us. Don't forget that!"

Speaking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Pope said the gift of knowledge helps us see the environment with God's eyes.

We can recognise its beauty and see it as a sign of God's love for men and women, who are the crown of God's creation, he explained.

"Creation is not a property that we can dominate at our pleasure nor does it belong to only a few," the Pope said. "

One day before the Pope's comments, the National Catholic Reporter in the US issued an editorial under the heading "Climate Change is church's No. 1 pro-life issue".

"If there is a certain wisdom in the pro-life assertion that other rights become meaningless if the right to life is not upheld, then it is reasonable to assert that the right to life has little meaning if the earth is destroyed to the point where life becomes unsustainable," the editorial argued.

Noting the threat to humans from climate change reported in the third US National Climate Assessment, the NCR stated the problem is enormous.

"But so is the opportunity for the Church to use its resources, its access to some of the best experts in its academies and the attention of those in its parochial structures to begin to educate," the editorial continued.

"This is a human life issue of enormous proportions, and one in which the young should be fully engaged."

A five day sustainability summit was recently held at the Vatican.

Sources

• Catholic News Service
• National Catholic Reporter
• Huffington Post
• Image: Salon.com

This tradition persists in the Orthodox Churches where even today fasting is characterised by abstinence from all animal products.

But while abstaining from meat in the Roman tradition is mainly associated with the sacrifice of the Cross (the Friday penance), in the Orthodox tradition the fast is also a prefiguration of life in paradise, where ‘the wolf shall live with the lamb … and a little child shall lead them' (Isaiah 11:6).

In this way it becomes an act of reconciliation between humanity and the natural world, a restoration of a relationship which has suffered because of the sin of Adam and Eve.

I believe that the meaning of a Lenten fast can be deepened by reflecting on this ancient practice of meat abstinence in the light of reconciliation with creation.

Lent is a time to reflect on our habits, and to become free from habits that are harmful to ourselves and others in order to become healthier people, in body and in spirit.

However, Lent is not an end in itself. It prepares the Christian to become an Easter-person by instilling habits that make one free to live, by the grace of God, a life of charity and justice.

To fast to this effect, the physical fast of Lent must be accompanied by what Origen calls a ‘spiritual fasting', which is characterised by two dimensions: exercise in the virtue of temperance and the avoidance of sin. Continue reading.

Source: Thinking Faith

Image: vegetables.co.nz

Barbara Ward-Jackson was a consultant before and during the synod and undoubtedly had a considerable influence on its outcome.

This document emphasised the close link between ecology and justice; one could say that it linked an ‘option for the poor' with an ‘option for the earth' - though it did not use these terms.

It insisted that it is not possible for all parts of the world to have the kind of ‘development' which characterised the wealthy countries.

It therefore called on those who are rich ‘to accept a less material way of life, with less waste, in order to avoid the destruction of the heritage which they are obliged by absolute justice to share with all other members of the human race.' Continue reading.

Source: ThinkingFaith

Image: Stephen Davies

The "science puts God out of a job" trope has been championed by a number of scientists in recent times. "We have discovered," says Lawrence Krauss, "that all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing. In this sense ... science makes it possible not to believe in God."

Krauss is in Sydney to debate the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" - the traditional starting point for an ancient argument for the existence of God. Kraus, of course, is a cosmologist, known in the field for his work on the cosmological constant and dark matter, and to the wider public for books such as The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. Krauss's opponent is the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. He has built a career around the philosophical defence of theism, and is best known outside academia for his many public debates with atheists.

I am, like Krauss, a professional cosmologist and astrophysicist. I've also interacted with a philosopher or two, and I've read a lot of Craig's work. So I thought it might be opportune to offer a guide to the uninitiated.

Science versus God

There is a temptation among the opponents of God to defend the following argument: "Science, science, science, science, science, science. Therefore the universe is all there is." The assumption is that science will automatically push God out of reality.

What is science? Here's what I try to do in my day job. Physics uses a rather peculiar approach to studying the universe. We can translate physical (measured) facts about the universe into mathematical facts about a "model" of the universe. Mountains of data are neatly summarised in a few equations. Having made the leap into mathematical space, we look for mathematical facts corresponding to measurements we haven't made yet - in other words, predictions. We can then, for example, build a 27 km long, multi-billion dollar machine under France to smash protons together at ludicrous speeds to see if we were right about a type of particle predicted on paper in 1964. This actually works. Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion & Ethics
• Image: Wallpaper Search Engine