Culture

Photo courtesy/Deacon Timothy Donohue

Social Justice Ministry

Honeybees are taking over for canaries

Friday, November 15, 2024Culture

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The climate is changing, and it is no longer a future threat in some distant country. It is real and impacting people and their environments worldwide -- even right here in Boston.

Are we all too busy to consider making changes in our daily priorities to think about Pope Francis' call to care for creation: Laudato Si'? The climate is changing, and it is no longer a future threat in some distant country. It is real and impacting people and their environments worldwide -- even right here in Boston. Our late summer drought in Eastern Massachusetts is having a severe impact on honeybees right now. The suffering bees are telling us that things are seriously out of order, as the canaries told the coal miners that the air in the mine was dangerous.
We can all watch the news coming from Azerbaijan in the next few weeks as 50,000 scientists and country leaders from around the world gather in Baku for the United Nations' COP 29, the 29th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, and the sixth meeting of the COP serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement. World leaders are struggling with the terrible reality that the climate crisis is worsening and making it harder for vulnerable communities, especially in developing countries, to adapt to climate extremes that are making survival harder, not just for the people, but for the ecosystems they depend on.

As a global fellow for Catholic Relief Services, I traveled to Kenya to see how Catholic Relief Services is helping farmers cope with the impact of changes to the local climate. In Nyaundho Village in the hills above Lake Victoria, CRS employees are teaching Pamela, a middle-aged widow raising four children, how to adapt to the near drought conditions by growing new crops like cassava and kale and how to use new watering techniques. She now also breeds goats to supplement her income. Without help from CRS, Pamela would not have been able to stay on her farm.
The climate crisis is not only in faraway countries. My own honeybees in Massachusetts are also struggling to adapt to disruptive weather conditions: drought conditions, periods of extended "rainy seasons," milder winters, unseasonable autumns, and above-average temperatures over the last two years. As the canaries helped warn coal miners of deadly conditions during the last century, honeybees are sounding the warning that the climate is out of balance. The tell-tale signs of low honey production -- failed queens, "dead outs" (hives full of dead bees) and robbing (stronger hives robbing weaker hives) -- signal that the hives are in trouble. Something is wrong!
Bees flourish in a climate with reasonable consistency, regular rain, and flowers with nectar. Once the flowers have passed, if the temperatures are over 50 degrees, the bees race around looking for non-existent nectar while working up an appetite that will deplete their winter rations.
The first step in any discussion of caring for creation begins with spending time carefully reading Pope Francis' encyclical. The Holy Father is calling on us to understand that making caring about creation a priority in our lives is a Catholic responsibility. This is our moral duty born out of our faith in God and solidarity with our brothers and sisters around the world. But these days, we are challenged just to keep up with what we have on our schedule! Pope Francis is challenging our indifference to climate change and calling us to reevaluate and push our priorities to find a bit more time to take on this work. The time has come for us to listen carefully to the words of Genesis: "The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it." (Gen. 2:15)
Two weeks ago, the Archdiocese of Boston Social Justice Ministry held a virtual workshop on how to better understand our moral responsibility as Catholics to care for creation. Erin Lothes, PhD, senior manager of the Laudato Si' Movement Animator Program, and Christina Bagaglio Slentz, PhD, associate director of the Creation Care Office for Life, Peace, and Justice of the Diocese of San Diego, spoke about our responsibility to respond to Pope Francis' call to add caring for creation to our moral duty as Catholics. This call was not in the Catechism that I studied as a young Catholic, so some of us have to reset our moral compass a bit.
A link to the presentation is on the Boston Catholic Social Justice Ministry web page: bostoncatholic.org/social-justice-ministry.
This is our issue. The pope has written to Catholics twice, with "Laudato Si'" and "Laudate Deum," pleading with us to search our hearts and find a way to reset our daily habits and priorities. Before we can make a difference, we must decide if we want to make a choice: As Catholics, do we want to care? Once we can do that, even the little things like refusing to use disposable plastic water bottles or using cloth dish towels rather than paper towels can make a big difference.
I urge you to read about the next steps that will come from the COP 29 meeting in Baku. Contact the Boston Catholic Climate Movement and read about their work. Contact the RCAB Social Justice Ministry and ask them to come to your parish to lead a discussion. Write to the leaders in your parish, town, city, or state and tell them this is important to you. Participate in the annual Rice Bowl Collection during Lent to help CRS. And sign up for the archdiocese's Social Justice Ministry Convocation at Boston College High School on March 29, 2025.
Pamela in Kenya can cope with CRS's help for a while, and I can feed my bees in the winter to supplement their food supply, but the sooner we all engage together, the sooner we can all help each other care for creation.

DEACON TIMOTHY DONOHUE IS A PERMANENT DEACON AT HOLY NAME PARISH, WEST ROXBURY. HE IS CO-CHAIR OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON'S SOCIAL JUSTICE MINISTRY, DIOCESAN DIRECTOR OF CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES, DIOCESAN DIRECTOR OF THE CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, AND CO-CHAIR OF THE ARCHDIOCESE'S DEACON COMMUNITY FUND.