Consumption by Rich Costs the Poor: “Many people in the industrialized world are at least vaguely aware that their hyperconsumptive, carbon-spewing ways aren’t so good for all the countries that are barely scraping by. In fact, Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environmental Institute, claims that the planet’s richest 700 million people – a mere 7 percent of the world’s population – are responsible for half the global greenhouse-gas emissions produced by fossil fuels.

“Now an analysis of the ecological damage caused by rich countries puts a price tag on the previously unacknowledged cost of our consumption. According to a group of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, the cost of the damage wrought by the world’s rich countries on poor ones works out to be some $2.3 trillion – enough to dwarf the total Third World debt of $1.8 trillion. The researchers assessed greenhouse-gas emissions, ozone depletion, deforestation, overfishing, the impacts of agricultural expansion, and the conversion of mangrove swamps into shrimp farms.”

(From Sierra, May/June 2008)

Farm Subsidies Support Wealthy Farmers: “Although net farm income reached a record level of $88.7 billion last year due to high market prices for major crops, Washington still sent out over $5 billion of taxpayer’s money in direct payment farm subsidies to over 1.4 million recipients. Over 60 percent of the subsidy was pocketed by just 10 percent of the recipients. The names of individuals and businesses that collected the money, and the amount they received in 2007” are published on the website of Environmental Working Group (EWG).

“EWG is publishing the direct payment subsidy information to inform public consideration of the 2008 Farm Bill. … Direct payment subsidies are provided without regard to the economic need of the recipients or the financial condition of the farm economy. Established in 1996, direct payments were originally meant to wean farmers off traditional subsidies that are triggered during periods of low prices for corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice and other crops. The farm subsidy lobby has insisted the payments continue even when crop prices and farm income are soaring.

“Farm income exceeded $84,000 per household on average in 2007, compared to a 2006 average for all U.S. households of $66,000. … ‘This Congress has done almost nothing to help ordinary Americans cope with record gasoline prices, skyrocketing electricity bills, rising food costs, widespread job lay-offs, and an epidemic of home foreclosures,’ said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group. …But when the farm subsidy lobby comes calling on Capitol Hill, it’s a different story,’ Cook added. ‘Even when farmers are making record amounts of money, Congress gives them even more instead of giving taxpayers a break or redirecting the money to pressing needs like food assistance, healthier school lunches and conservation. …Cook said negotiations over a new farm bill are likely to yield five more years of windfall payments to the largest, wealthiest farmers in the country because congressional leaders have been unwilling to stand up to special interest farm groups.”

(From AScribe Newswire, April 25, 2008)

Guilt-Free Gadgetry: “Backed by NRDC, and thanks to the help of industry giants like Apple and GE, the New York City Council has passed groundbreaking legislation that would institute a citywide recycling program for some 25,000 tons of used electronics that New Yorkers accumulate annually. Under the measure, which is expected to be signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg [was actually vetoed by the Mayor but veto was overridden by City Council], manufacturers would be responsible for collecting and recycling their own used and obsolete TV’s, computers, iPods and other electronics – creating a big incentive to design less toxic and easier-to-recycle products. We [NRDC] are now urging the mayor to approve a separate Council-passed bill that would establish mandatory collection standards for the program.”

(From Nature’s Voice, Natural Resources Defense Council, May/June 2008)

Oppose New Coal-fired Power Plants: “In 2007, James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute and a leading climate scientist, told the U.S. Congress that ‘the most effective action that people can take to stem global warming …is to help prevent construction of coal-fired power plants until sequestration technology is ready.’ …Coal-fired power plants, used to generate electricity, account for more than one-third of all U.S. carbon emissions. Electrical utility companies plan to build more than 100 new coal-fired plants in the coming decades. These should not be built. New coal plants are a threat both to our health and to our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions….

“The health message against coal is critically important. Coal plants emit tons of toxic sulfur and nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds each day. These chemicals, and the smog and ozone they produce, are leading contributors to cardiovascular and respiratory disease….Coal-fired power plants are also the source of mercury in our food. …Any strategy that employs the burning of the vast supplies of coal in the United States must require carbon capture and storage, as well as more stringent controls on the pollutants that we are forced to breathe. Otherwise, we are combusting ourselves toward disease and early graves….”

(From PSR Reports, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Spring 2008)

Netherlands Reforms Executive Pay: “The Netherlands now seems to have a new claim to fame. The land of dikes, tulips, and Vermeer may now host the world’s unhappiest corporate CEO’s…These captains of industry run some of the world’s biggest companies. Yet they’re taking home just a quarter of what their counterparts in the United States are making. The worst part of it all: The Dutch people think Dutch executives are making too much. And the Dutch people aren’t just complaining about executive pay. They’re pressing lawmakers to do something….The Dutch parliament, observers believe, will shortly enact into law legislation that will heavily tax American-style executive windfalls – and maybe set some global precedents. …

“The legislation that Bos [the Dutch finance minister] is pushing in the Netherlands will impose a 30 percent tax on all executive severance packages that run over 500,000 euros, the equivalent of almost $800,000. Last year, the CEO of the top Dutch baby food maker exited his executive suite with $124 million, a windfall that outraged the Dutch public….The executive pay reforms now pending in the Netherlands include, beside the hefty new tax on severance windfalls, one proposal that would limit bonuses and stock options to 100 percent of an executive’s pay and another that would raise the required employer contribution to company pension funds by 15 percent wherever companies hand executives over $800,000 in annual pension benefits.

Other European countries are also looking at reform. “This upsurge in tax-the-rich action …reflects a widespread public apprehension about concentrated wealth and income. In five European countries, at least 76 percent of the public feel that the gap between the rich and everyone else has grown too wide….Europeans have become too accustomed to living in relatively equal societies to tolerate American-style executive pay. …”

(From AlterNet, May 27, 2008)

Mexican Farmers Protest NAFTA: “‘Without corn there is no country’ is the slogan tens of thousands of small farmers in Mexico are using to protest the full implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which went into effect in January. The U.K. – based Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) is supporting Mexican Catholic bishops in calling Mexican President Felipe Calderon to renegotiate NAFTA.

“‘Trade liberalization has filled Mexico with cheap alternatives,’ CAFOD’s Roisin O’Hara said in a press release, ‘leaving small producers unable to compete. Every hour the country imports an estimated $1.5 million worth of agricultural food products, almost all from the United States. During the same hour, 30 people leave their homes in the Mexican countryside to seek work in the U.S.’ Full implementation of NAFTA repealed the remaining tariffs on corn, dry beans, dry milk, and high fructose corn syrup imported from the U.S. and Canada, severely undercutting the economic livelihood of Mexico’s small producers. Since NAFTA began in 1994, millions of Mexican families have been forced to abandon their farms and find work elsewhere.”

(From Sojourners, June 2008)

Staples Severs Relationship with Indonesian Company: “Office supply giant Staples has cut ties with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) over its poor environmental practices. Staples sourced over 9 percent of its total paper supply from APP and is the latest of large paper sellers worldwide – including Office Depot -- to stop buying from APP. A recent WWF [World Wildlife Fund] investigation found that, despite portraying themselves as environmentally friendly, APP and its affiliates are in the process of building a logging road that cuts an enormous swath through one of Sumatra’s last remaining large forest blocks. The place is home to indigenous tribes, endangered elephants, tigers and orangutans. Indonesia is the third-largest contributor worldwide of carbon dioxide emissions due to illegal and unsustainable forest management practices.”

(From focus, World Wildlife Fund, May/June 2008)

Benedict XVI: UN Must Uphold Human Rights: “Forty-five years ago…Pope John XXIII published his groundbreaking encyclical Pacem in Terris, arguing that world peace depended on respect for and promotion of human rights. On Friday, April 18, just a week after the Pacem in Terris anniversary, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the United Nations General Assembly and made the same argument, but gave added emphasis to the responsibility of the UN to uphold human rights even if it means overriding national sovereignty. …the ‘duty to protect,’ Benedict told the assembly, ‘was implicit in the founding of the United Nations, and in fact, it increasingly characterizes its activity.’ Drawing on John XXIII’s teaching that a government that fails to protect its people against violation of their rights or which itself violates them is illegitimate, Benedict proposed that intervention by the international community to re-establish the rights of a population is neither ‘an unjustified imposition’ nor ‘a limitation on sovereignty.’ …

“In linking the ‘duty to protect’ so closely with the purpose of the United Nations and other international organizations, Pope Benedict made the most explicit statement yet of any pope in favor of strengthening the capacities of the United Nations, and he offered a very strong challenge to all governments to protect the rights of the victims of war, predatory government, economic inequality and natural disaster. Such action, he added, should not be unilateral….”

(From America, May 12, 2008)

Church Responds to Iowa Immigration Raid: “The arrest of more than 300 employees at an Iowa meatpacking plant has left countless families in a ‘state of terror’ and once again shows the need for comprehensive immigration reform, according to Archbishop Jerome G. Hanus of Dubuque. ‘Some of the weakest members among us are bearing the brunt of the suffering, while legislators and other leaders, as well as many of us in the general public, have failed to give this issue the priority that it deserves,’ the archbishop said in a statement following the largest immigration raid in the state’s history.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents executed a criminal search warrant May 12 at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville for evidence relating to aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of Social Security numbers and other crimes, as well as a civil search warrant for people illegally in the United States. The plant is located in the Archdiocese of Dubuque. Scrambling to assist the many people affected by the raids is the newly formed Immigrant Safety Network, which aims to improve services and communications in response to such a raid.”

(From America, May 26-June 2, 2008)

Global Food Crisis: “When prices at the supermarket rise – and they have been rising – many of us cut out the expensive extras. But for 840 million people around the world who are already hungry, there are no extras to forego. For them, rising food prices mean only one thing: deeper suffering. And when people in Burkina Faso and Mauritania, Haiti and Cameroon are hungry enough to riot, the developed world finally takes notice….Oil prices are climbing, hiking the cost of fertilizer and fuel. In the rapidly expanding economies of India and China, the demand for cereals to feed people and livestock is growing. Erratic weather – a consequence of climate change – is leading to crop failures in some key grain-producing countries and exposing small-scale subsistence farmers to uncertain harvests. The production of biofuels is adding to the inflation of food prices….

“The Asian Development Bank has predicted that rising cereal prices could put 300 million people in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh at risk of starvation. In Senegal, Oxfam and local partners are reporting worrying trends as families reduce their consumption of fish – a key local protein – and cut out whole meals. Some families are taking their children out of school to help earn money to meet spiraling food costs. … In Mauritania, the price of fertilizer has increased more than 200 percent since last year, spiking the cost of future plantings.

“Urgent global action is needed to avert the widespread food crises. The poorest consumers need protection from high and volatile food prices – and the international community needs to support governments to ensure that happens.”

(From Oxfam Exchange, Spring 2008)

Chaldean Catholics Criticize Death Penalty: “Chaldean Catholic leaders in Iraq have criticized a death sentence for the man convicted of killing Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul, Iraq. ‘Violence must not call for more violence. We are in favor of justice but not of capital punishment,’ Chaldean Archbishhop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, Iraq, told the Rome-based missionary news agency AsiaNews. An Iraqi government spokesman said Ahmed was an Al Qaeda leader who was involved in a number of ‘terror crimes against the people of Iraq.’

“Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad told the Italian Catholic agency SIR May 19 that Archbishop Rahho ‘would not have accepted such a sentence. Christian principles uphold that a death sentence is not permissible against anyone.’”

(From America, June 9-16, 2008)

Interreligious Dialogue Group Calls for Tolerance: “Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders holding an interreligious dialogue meeting in Qatar said all religions and all schools must teach tolerance for religious diversity and respect for human life. At the end of the meeting, participants issued a declaration saying they had discussed not only the value and ideals of their faiths, but also ‘some of the difficult and tragic issues which disfigure our world and create violence and injustice in so many contexts.’

“The statement reported, ‘In particular, we examined the ethical dimensions of issues such as suicide, abortion, euthanasia, human trafficking, sale of organs, violence in the media and desecration of religious symbols.’ The gathering, the sixth annual Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue, was held in mid-May and included participation by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The theme of the gathering was ‘Religious Values: Perspectives on Peace and Respect for Life.’”

(From America, June 9-16, 2008)

Vatican Astronomer: Faith Extends to Space: “Believing the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican’s chief astronomer said in an interview. The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones. ‘Just as we consider earthly creatures as a ‘brother,’ and ‘sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother?’’ he said in the interview by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano…. ‘It would still be part of creation.’ Ruling out the existence of aliens would be ‘putting limits’ on God’s creative freedom, he said.

“Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion. His view touched on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.”

(From The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 14, 2008)

Christians, Buddhists Should Work Together: “Christians and Buddhists should work together to promote respect for the earth and a safe, clean environment, said the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. In a message for the Buddhist feast of Vesakh on May 12 to 18, a commemoration of the major events in the life of Buddha, the Vatican agency urged Christians and Buddhists to work together to contribute to the public debate concerning climate change and sustainable development.

“The Vatican message… said Christian and Buddhist traditions respect creation and ‘have a common concern to promote care for the environment which we all share.’ All people should be concerned with the future of the planet including ‘matters of grave concern,’ like climate change, environmental preservation and sustainable development, it said.”

(From America, May 12, 2008)

Catholics and Elections: Our Catholic faith calls us to evaluate political candidates based upon Catholic Social Teaching. Many resources are available to help us in this effort. The Catholic bishops of the United States have given us guidelines in their letter, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. Once we determine the values we must look for in candidates, resources are available to help us determine which candidates hold those same values.

You can find the positions of the major candidates in both parties relating to peace concerns at the Peace Action website. Guides on other pressing issues can be found at the websites of the New York Times  and Friends Committee on National Legislation. To see how your Congresspersons voted in the last Congress, go to the websites of NETWORK and Friends Committee on National Legislation (scroll down to pg. 6).

Vatican Expresses Concern for South Africa: “The Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers is expressing its solidarity with victims of xenophobic violence in South Africa. A telegram of solidarity and support was sent Monday to Archbishop Buti Joseph Tlhagale of Johannesburg, signed by Cardinal Renato Martino and Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, respectively president and secretary of the dicastery. The violence against immigrants began May 11 in Alexandra, a poor suburb near the commercial areas of Johannesburg; it soon spread to the surrounding areas. Over the past two weeks, at least 50 immigrants from countries such as Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique have been killed. The aggressors – gangs of poor South Africans, armed with machetes and firearms – accuse the immigrants of stealing jobs and raising the level of crime.

“Perhaps as many as 100,000 immigrants have fled their homes and are living in temporary camps to escape the violence. In the telegram, the pontifical council expressed the hope that ‘with the fraternal intervention of the Church and of all people of good will, a final solution will be found for this and other similar situations, and that the people of the region will once again be able to live in peace, solidarity and with prospects of integral development.’ The Fides news agency reported that the archbishop of Johannesburg expressed his ‘profound shame and concern’ about the events, warning that ‘an ‘apartheid’ mentality is killing the country.’”

(From Zenit, May 27, 2008)

U.S. Poll: Emphasize Diplomatic and Economic Solutions: “Opinion polls increasingly show that people in the United States believe that this country spends too much on the military and that the U.S. should put more emphasis on diplomatic and economic methods for securing the country….Among the findings of these polls are that a plurality and in many cases a majority of the public in the United States agree that: The U.S. spends too much on the military; The U.S. should play by the rules and respect international law; The U.S. spends less than it should on international assistance; The U.S. should set a timetable to end the war and occupation of Iraq.…”

“Public opinion has shifted substantially in the past three years. A December 2006 study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found that a majority of the people who identified with either major political party (61 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats) believe that military spending should either be capped at current levels or cut. The PIPA researchers presented individuals with a budget for U.S. foreign policy that included $550 billion for military spending and much smaller amounts for development assistance, the State Department, and international organizations. Asked about this spending, a majority of people across party lines said they would like to cut funding for the military. Republicans favored a $110 billion cut, while Democrats thought military spending should be reduced by $264 billion.…”

(From Washington Newsletter, Friends Committee on National Legislation, April 2008)

 

SJB Friars Commit to Refugees, Migrants and Victims of Human Trafficking: The Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist Province based in Cincinnati, Ohio, held their 2008 Chapter at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana May 19-23. Of the many proposals passed, the Chapter delegates affirmed a resolution to learn more about the issues of migrants, refugees and victims of human trafficking in order to better be able to respond to their needs. The resolution says:
 “We, the Franciscans of St. John the Baptist Province, commit ourselves to increase our awareness of issues surrounding refugees, migrants and victims of human trafficking in order to develop more proactive Franciscan responses on the provincial, friary and personal level.”

 

SJB Friars Commit to Non-violence: The Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist Province based in Cincinnati, Ohio, held their 2005 Chapter at the University of Dayton, May 23-27. Among the many proposals that were passed, the Chapter delegates affirmed a resolution introduced by their JPIC Office in which they committed themselves to “continued conversion to a life of Franciscan non-violence in support of a consistent ethic of life.” The complete resolution follows.

“As Franciscans, we affirm the sacredness of all human life and the inherent value of all creation. In a world where violence is rampant, we wish to be a sign of hope, actively promoting the preservation of life, peace among people and nations, justice for all and reconciliation. We commit ourselves to continued conversion to a life of Franciscan non-violence in support of a consistent ethic of life.”