On Care For Our Common Home

Today Pope Francis officially released his Encyclical that is concerned with the environment and how we are not taking care of the earth as requested.  The point of this post is to help you find a copy, not to argue the points.  Yes, I agree with most of what he has said, but we’ll leave that for another day.

All of the encyclicals are online.  They can be found here: www.papalencyclicals.net

This unique paper, I call it the “warning encyclical” can be located directly by clicking here

I pulled a PDF copy of the 184 page document from the above site (by clicking on the small PDF icon in the first page of the document) and emailed it to myself, and then opened it in my iPad which then allowed me to save it to my iBooks on the iPad so I can read it fully at my leisure. I also saved a copy here to make it easier for you to get a copy. Download the PDF by clicking here

Of course, I wouldn’t be me without tossing out a few zingers from the document:

43. Human beings too are creatures of this world, enjoying a right to life and happiness, and endowed with unique dignity. So we cannot fail to consider the effects on people’s lives of environmental deterioration, current models of development and the throwaway culture.

and

53. These situations have caused sister earth, along with all the abandoned of our world, to cry out, pleading that we take another course. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. Yet we are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it and correspond with his plan for peace, beauty and fullness. The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. We lack leadership capable of striking out on new paths and meeting the needs of the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations. The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable; otherwise, the new power structures based on the techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice.

Before you let the political pundits and the fossil fuel industry tell you what you should think about it, why not give it a chance and read it for yourself. A quick scan won’t hurt, and it might help us all.