Care for Creation

We show  our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care for the earth  is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith. We are  called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with  all of God’s creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental moral and  ethical dimensions that cannot be ignored.

Scripture

• Genesis 1:1-31  
          God made the heavens and the earth and it was  good.

• Genesis 2:15  
          Humans are commanded to care for God’s  creation.

• Leviticus 25:1-7  
          The land itself must be given  a rest and not abused.

• Deuteronomy 10:14  
          All of heaven and earth belong  to the Lord.

• Psalm 24:1-2
        All the earth is the Lord’s.

• Daniel 3:56-82  
          Creation proclaims the glory of God.

• Matthew 6:25-34  
          God loves and cares for all of creation.

• Romans 1:20  
          Creation reveals the nature of God.

• 1 Corinthians 10:26  
          Creation and all  created things are inherently good because they are of the Lord.

Tradition 

The  environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a  responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards  humanity as a whole. . . Our duties towards the environment are linked to our  duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to  others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the  other. Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate), #48, 51
 
Equally worrying is the  ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which  is closely connected to it. In his desire to have and to enjoy rather than to  be and to grow, man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an  excessive and disordered way. . . . Man, who discovers his capacity to  transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets  that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that  are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it  without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and  a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray.  Instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of  creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a  rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him.  On the Hundredth Year (Centesimus Annus), #37