Catholic Women’s League of Canada | BC and Yukon Council

Submitted by: Nancy Simms

Good afternoon ladies and clergy.

We must always remember that a solid foundation for both education and health begins within our homes. We cannot expect to change the world without first making changes within ourselves and in our own homes!

I have a copy of a pastoral letter produced by the CCCB entitled Our Relationship with the Environment: The Need for Conversion (PDF link). I recommend that every parish council throughout BC/Yukon order copies of it for their members. Within this letter it states “Humanity is accountable, not only for managing the domain entrusted to it, but also for the image of God humans reflect by means of their management.” I encourage all of you to order this letter through the CCCB, read it in its entirety, share it with others and if you haven’t already started, take steps to improve your relationship with the environment.

A few suggestions are; instead of using chemicals to kill those weeds in your lawn and garden pour boiling water on them, to make a safe all-purpose cleaner for your home mix one cup of baking soda to one gallon of water or as a degreaser mix vinegar and water. For your summer picnics, instead of Styrofoam dishes there is a new line of dishes called Natureware which are produced from left over materials of rice and corn after all food consumption benefits have been exhausted.  Once finished with these dishes they can be thrown into your compost with the rest of your products that can be turned into fertilizer. These are just a few simple ways that you can do your part, but let’s get creative and share our ideas with one another changing the world one person at a time!

As a means of sustaining a solid foundation of health you can log onto the website for the Centre for Science in the Public Interest where they have a Nutrition Action Healthletter which lists 10 super foods that aid in keeping the body rich in the vitamins and nutrients it needs. It is also important to find time for daily physical exercise and eight hours of sleep, which unfortunately for too many of us in our busy lives we forget to make time for these two very important components of healthy living.

We also need to reach outside our homes and look towards our communities on how we can encourage ethical medical research such as adult stem cell or skin cell research. We must write letters, call or email government urging them to stop embryonic stem cell research which has had no proven success and allocate our tax money towards ethical stem cell research which has had many proven successful results.
Thank you to everyone for all your amazing work in the health and education throughout BC and the Yukon.