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Events across the globe will celebrate the Feast of St. Francis while helping the Church help others help creation.

If you'd like to organize your own gathering, check out the Catholic Climate Covenant for excellent resources.

And check out my September column in the Rhode Island Catholic to see what's happening here in Providence. Perhaps you might wish to use it as a model. Events like this are relatively simple to put together and offer a nice blend of faith, reason, church, state, and the necessary information to build up the common good.

Sound good? If so, here's the opening of my column:

Dioceses and religious groups around the United States have increasingly been turning to solar energy, thanks to advances in technology and better financing. We’ve seen this just over the Massachusetts border where a sizeable solar farm is providing clean energy for the Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey in Wrentham.

More recently, a few pastors in the Diocese of Providence, like mine, are seeking solar solutions for their parish operations. And there is preliminary interest within other Catholic circles, too.

To begin explaining how solar energy can work at your parish or your home, the

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@Pontifex: “I pray every day for all who are suffering in Iraq. Please join me.”

Pope Francis sent this Tweet yesterday to engage the sins that we see with the power of prayer that we don’t. He did not demand that we march, sign petitions, or publish lengthy treatises. He simply asked that we turn to our Father for help.

There is nothing wrong with marches, petitions, or treatises. And certainly, the pontiff doesn't expect us to only pray passively in light of the violent sins of others. Activism is necessary for life in our fallen world. But marches, petitions, and what have you are not ends to themselves. Nor are they effective without the credentials of holiness and the grace of God.

With the coming this month of another United Nations conference on climate change and other international and local environmental activities, many in the environmental community—Catholics among them—are gearing up for a worldwide series of climate marches and other events that seek to slow the accelerating erosion of our planet’s ecosystems and its climate.

God bless all these activities and all who sacrifice to make them possible. But I must suggest that those of us...