A message from Fr John

Dear Friends

Good morning - special prayers today please for a colleague who has a very difficult job to do.

Dis you get chance to watch Greta Thunberg on BBC on Monday evening? It was a remarkable programme about a young woman with a mission, her commitment to creation and to justice is extraordinary. I think she speaks for so many of our young people who are rightly concerned about the world they will inherit.
Our schools are doing a tremendous job in educating and animating their pupils; we adults must learn to do our part and adapt our way of life. As Christians we have a God-given duty to care for the world which we have been to care for as co-stewards.

Our own parish Eco-team, although hindered by the current restrictions was very pro-active in alerting us to new ways of relating to consumerism and waste. Hopefully, we can re-boot it soon.

I have attached a further three paragraphs for Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si.
IV. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMMON GOOD

156. An integral ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good, a central and unifying principle of social ethics. The common good is “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfilment”.[122]

157. Underlying the principle of the common good is respect for the human person as such, endowed with basic and inalienable rights ordered to his or her integral development. It has also to do with the overall welfare of society and the development of a variety of intermediate groups, applying the principle of subsidiarity. Outstanding among those groups is the family, as the basic cell of society. Finally, the common good calls for social peace, the stability and security provided by a certain order which cannot be achieved without particular concern for distributive justice; whenever this is violated, violence always ensues. Society as a whole, and the state in particular, are obliged to defend and promote the common good.

158. In the present condition of global society, where injustices abound and growing numbers of people are deprived of basic human rights and considered expendable, the principle of the common good immediately becomes, logically and inevitably, a summons to solidarity and a preferential option for the poorest of our brothers and sisters. This option entails recognizing the implications of the universal destination of the world’s goods, but, as I mentioned in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium,[123] it demands before all else an appreciation of the immense dignity of the poor in the light of our deepest convictions as believers. We need only look around us to see that, today, this option is in fact an ethical imperative essential for effectively attaining the common good.

St Joseph, pray for us

Every blessing

Fr John

Please pray for the family of Doreen whose funeral we will celebrate today