Now is the time to start thinking about what your parish could do to celebrate the Season of Creation: Sep 1st through to Oct 4th.Our Climate Crisis is a shared concern and one which needs to be reflected in our prayers, liturgies and parish community actions. We need to reflect on our role as co-creators: […]
Climate Change
26 Jul – Action for Life on Earth NJPN Conference
By Matty Maslen – parish of St Blaise, Bradford whose attendance was sponsored by SPARK Social JusticeLast weekend, 23rd to 25th August, the National Justice and Peace Network met for their annual conference at the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick. The topic for 2021 was climate change, calling the network together to discuss ‘Action for […]
09 Jul – Lobbying about Climate Change
Meeting with the RT Hon Alec Shelbrooke MP on the Challenges of the Climate Crisis.By Trish Sandbach, Vice Chair J&P Leeds Previous lobbying in 2019 – You have to be in this for the long haul!At first a few of us felt daunted by the thought of meeting with our MP. Having […]
22 Jun – Season of Creation 2021
The Season of Creation in the Church’s year runs from 01 September (the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation) through to the feast of St Francis of Assisi on 04 October. This period is also celebrated in a similar style in several other denominations.This year the theme is ‘A home for all? […]
A Catholic Response to the Environmental Crisis
“We must not think that these efforts are not going to change the world.” Laudato Si paragraph 212 UK Climate and Ecological Emergency (CEE) Bill This Bill was tabled by Caroline Lucas, Green Party leader, and is supported by MPs of all parties, and by organisations like Green Christian and Operation Noah. You can write […]
12 Apr – Commission launches Sponsorship scheme for NJPN Conference
As part of our SPARK Social Justice project, aimed at 18–30-year-olds in the Leeds Diocese, we are launching a sponsorship scheme for people in this age group to attend the National Justice & Peace Network (NJPN) Conference in July of this year.John Battle, Chair of the Commission commented, “I know that younger generations are just […]
10 Feb – Global Healing
By David Jackson of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Shipley“Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience…Truly, much can be done!”(Laudato Si’, 217, 180)In 2015, Pope Francis published his ground-breaking letter on the environment […]
08 Dec – Living Laudato Si’: Your Planet and Your Parish.
Sr Margaret Atkins, Boarbank Hall. Around fifty people were involved in a recent Zoom weekend from Boarbank Hall on the theme Living Laudato Si’: Your Planet and Your Parish. It aimed to inspire, inform, connect and encourage anyone wanting to engage in practical and prayerful projects in response to the encyclical, especially through parish groups […]
A Reflection on Creation
ONIONHere is an onion – just come back from the Onion Catechism class. I asked if it could remember the questions and answers – It has a fantastic memory: ‘Who made you? God made me. How did God make me? God made me with earth, air, fire and water. Fire? Why did God make you? […]
18 Oct – The Age of Meditation & Praise?
By John Battle (Commission Chair) & Helen Hayden The American social justice activist Fr Daniel Berrigan once surprisingly recommended an instruction of the Buddha: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”. The impact of the Covid lock downs and enforced stoppages has apparently resulted in people watching more TV and films, reading more, clearing out cupboards […]
A walk in the Woods
(This article first appeared in the Tablet Blog in July)I tried to write about the shape of a post Virus Church and patterns of Eucharistic worship and failed. Rather than add to many such attempts, I could reflect how, aged over 80, the possibility of never returning to previous patterns of practice, represents, not a […]
09 Sep – Catholic Schools, the Pandemic and the Climate Emergency
By David Jackson, ShipleySeveral J&P members in the diocese have just finished an on-line programme presented by the Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM – based in Rome) to ‘graduate’ as LAUDATO SI ADVOCATES in October. As part of the course, Dr Lorna Gold (Trócaire and GCCM) presented a sobering assessment of the growing existential threat […]
21 Jul – J&P Diocesan Annual Gathering
By John Battle, Commission Chair On the 24th June 2020 we held the annual meeting of our Leeds Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission as an open “gathering” on ” Zoom” to announce the refocussing of our project work; responding as a Diocese to the climate crisis, developing our parish “Poverty in the UK” workshop pack […]
16 May – J&P Issue Action Group – Climate Crisis
On 28th March 2020 the Justice and Peace Leeds Climate Crisis Action Group met for the first time. The result was an ambitious plan to take the challenge of fighting Climate Change to parishes throughout the Diocese of Leeds. Keith Pitcher talked to us about the experience of Parish of St John Fisher & St […]
09 May – Can we still campaign in a time of lockdown?
By Carol Burns Of course, the answer is ‘yes’ and I am sure many of you are linked to Change.org and Avaaz as well as other campaigning organisations such as Church Action on Poverty or Sabeel Kairos, to name a few that come to mind. I wanted to share a small example of campaigning in […]
02 Mar – St Mary & St Michael, Settle, obtain Live Simply Award
Two years ago, it took just a couple of parishioners to introduce LiveSimply at a parish meeting and then speak about it at Mass to get the parish started. From the talks at Mass a group of 12 people volunteered interest and started by reflecting on all the things the parish were already doing. And […]