What is there to praise about a “bottled-water free zone” in John Paul II Collegiate as recently reported on the Catholic Review Web page? I thought we stopped public water fountains (i.e. refill stations) years ago because they were health risks and wasted water.
Tying the student project to the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP) campaign “to raise awareness of the growing trend to privatized water” only made me suspicious of what Canadian bishops were doing with charitable contributions for “Development and Peace” initiatives.
Given the huge sums of money that the American version of CCODP (i.e. Catholic Campaign for Human Development) spent financing organizations such as ACORN in the past I could not help but wonder if all these “Human Development” organizations need some serious oversight and refocus.
My research discovered the emphasis that CCODP initiatives place on educating women in cultures where men seriously mistreat women, but that only educates half the problem. Unless there is emphasis on traditional family values, rights and responsibilities for both men and women, I suspect the education of women will remain along the secular humanist objective of encouraging contraception and abortion to address poverty and mistreatment.
A better leadership project for John Paul II Collegiate students might be a “condom drop-off station” that offers in exchange the Apostolic Exhortation of John Paul II, “The Role Christian Family in the Modern World”.
Jim Devereaux
Ijamsville