 Walk Against Warming
Address by Archbishop John Bathersby
4 November 2006
Friends and all concerned about the future of our
beautiful Planet. I’m
grateful and honoured to be asked today to address you. Although I have
loved Australia with its bushland, mountains, and trees with a passion
from my earliest days in Stanthorpe, it was only in more recent years when
I was elected to the Justice and Peace Commission of the Australian
Catholic Bishops Conference, that I realised the damage that our
carelessness, indifference, and blatant selfishness can cause to our
beautiful world that the book of Genesis rightly describes as “good.”
Nor did I imagine the suffering that such neglect would cause to
the people of the world especially the poorer people, and even in our own
backyard the threat that global warming is causing particularly to country
people and will cause to our brothers and sisters in Oceania.
From 1990 the recently deceased John Paul II called on
Catholics and all people of good will to be “ecologically converted.”
He was even more passionate about the environment than we are
ourselves, and he realised the dangers that might come from its neglect
better than we do. From many
points of view the love of our precious world and our rejection of
anything that could destroy it is demanded of all of us. From a Christian
point of view I don’t believe we can call ourselves “Christian” and
have any other option.
Care for the environment is demanded by our belief in
and our concern for the Kingdom of God that exists in our midst.
Without a love for the environment the world cannot become the
place of justice, peace and freedom for all that I believe God wants it to
be and all reasonable people desire.
This concern must be owned by our governments but it
must also be owned by each and every one of us.
We all have a role to play in safeguarding our planet Earth and
today when so much persuasive evidence exists about the destructive
effects of global warming, no one can any longer plead ignorance about the
matter.
I thank you all today for this gathering that I believe
will do much good to educate people about those very important issues we
face in today’s world.
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