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Jul 30, 2018

Interfaith Oceans goes live

A new web resource is inspiring the world to take action for our common oceans

With the harm caused by human activity on our oceans becoming more evident, an interfaith group has assembled an online resource to bring to the world the means to tackle this growing crisis.

InterfaithOceans.org is “a multi-faith campaign that encourages religious and spiritual communities to join with scientists to appreciate the gifts of the ocean systems, species, and coastal communities—and work together to protect and restore them.”

While still being added to, it’s already an important piece of faith-based eco-advocacy. When fully built out it will offer:

  • a Religious Declaration of Ocean Emergency
  • an overview of major ocean issues with action responses and links to climate change and marine conservation campaigns and organizations
  • faith resources for teaching the connections to individual religious backgrounds and ocean care, and shared interfaith rationale and ethic on common principles
  • interfaith ocean ethic and pledge and links to other faith pledges
  • timely actions and ongoing ones
  • a blog for news of Interfaith Ocean actions or guest blogs

This is definitely a resource to spend time with and to share. Our planetary oceans are under great stress—the result of human sin on a global scale.

The answer, then, is the witness and...

Jul 25, 2018

Humanae Vitae: The foundation and companion of Laudato Si'

On this Golden Anniversary of Paul VI's prophetic encyclical, Catholic eco-advocates must reaffirm and teach Humanae Vitae

Forty-seven years before the issuance of Laudato Si’, another encyclical about life rocked the Church. Like Laudato Si’, this earlier encyclical was cheered and reviled along ideological lines and still is. And also like Pope Francis’s eco-encyclical, Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae speaks more than a few inconvenient truths to those who seek the satiation of personal desires rather than heed the natural order of things.

Paul VI issued his prophetic encyclical on human life against the advice and hopes of many—a topic receiving much attention on this Golden Anniversary.

Given a great number of errant voices seeking magisterial approval for artificial contraception and other ills, Paul VI demonstrated a prophet’s courage and trust in Christ by making clear the teachings of the Church. A good many on the left were outraged by this—and still are—just as some on the right are dismissive of Laudato Si’.

The good news is that the commonality between these two papal documents offers ways forward.

Papal prophets

Paul VI was correct in his warnings about disconnecting the conjugal act from procreation—as many have noted recently. Who can deny the coming to pass of this prophetic statement?...

Jul 18, 2018

A sci-fi novel about faith, eco-choices

Guest post: A Printer's Choice uses a unique medium to ask tough questions about saving life on Earth

The following review of A Printer's Choice is from Marybeth Lorbiecki, M.A., a writer, author, and the director of the Interfaith Ocean Ethics Campaign, a joint program of the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care and the Franciscan Action Network.

In A Printer's Choice, W. L. Patenaude sets a sci-fi murder mystery in the technically constructed world of 2088—post Earth's environmental and societal collapse due to wars over reduced resources and fundamentalist terrorist religious factions. To escape the destruction and maintain the human species, "New Athens" was built and printed in outer space.

Not exactly the Father Brown setting, but [main character] Father McClellan is as artfully drawn and compelling in his hard-won spiritual wisdom works. He uses his marine toughness, programming skills, and gritty faith to sort out potential motivations and methods to solve the murder of an undercover priest, Father Tangelo.

An engineer himself, Patenaude describes all the technological details, societal tensions, and moral ambiguities of New Athens with confidence and finesse. The most compelling passages, though, are the human ones, where McClellan and other characters grapple with their troubled pasts and future options, and the free will choices before them....

Jul 13, 2018

Why I’m not cheering Ireland’s disinvestment

Catholic eco-advocates have an opportunity to build consensus with their more conservative brothers and sisters.

The big climate/eco news this week was Ireland’s disinvestment from the fossil fuel industry—a major win for the disinvest/reinvest movement. But another recent vote by the people of Ireland, which pulled the right to life for unborn children, darkens the image of Ireland’s ability to live the message of Laudato Si’. Now the question is, how will Catholic eco-advocates respond?

From the cheering and adulatory social media posts that I’ve encountered over the decision to disinvest, I’d say that the big players in Catholic eco-advocacy may be missing an opportunity to extend a unitive hand to conservative Catholics (and others) who prioritize the lives of the unborn over eco issues.

Of course, for Catholics, all these issues should be related. This has been the consistent teaching of Saint John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis—who made this point in Laudato Si’:

Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is

...
Jul 6, 2018

In Rome gathering, Laudato Si’ urged to become action

Some five-hundred participants attend Vatican conference devoted to implementing goals of the three-year-old eco-encyclical

The International Conference Marking the 3rd Anniversary of Laudato Si’ wrapped up in Rome today—but the final “take action” marching orders from Cardinal Peter Turkson to some five hundred participants will certainly maintain and focus the momentum of carrying out the vision of Pope Francis’s eco-encyclical.

Few papal statements have received the attention that Laudato Si’ has. Indeed, as seen this past week, the document continues to attract attention from Pope Francis himself, from his curia, and from a small army of front-line lay and religious eco-advocates. Like Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae—On Human Life—Laudato Si’ has both inspired and polarized Catholics and non-Catholics with its sweeping view of human choices and the implications thereof.

For their part, high-level Vatican officials—such as Cardinal Turkson and Secretariat of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin—have been working overtime to keep the spotlight on the pontiff’s eco-encyclical while at the same time assuaging critics of Catholic eco-activity, most especially on the right.

On that note, the conference heard from Lord Deben of the United Kingdom, a British Conservative Party politician, formerly a member of Parliament, and now a member of the House of Lords....

Jun 18, 2018

On the three-year anniversary of Laudato Si’: U.S. bishops, Catholic leaders affirm “We are still in” Paris Accord

Nearly 600 U.S. Catholic institutions sign the Catholic Climate Declaration, which affirms the Paris Agreement

Following a weekend of Catholic rebukes of the Trump administration over the handling of children at immigration detention centers, Catholic leaders this morning announced their support for another initiative at odds with the president: the signing of the Catholic Climate Declaration by some 600 US-based Catholic institutions.

The overwhelming support of the declaration is notable with the document's affirmation of the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. The Catholic Climate Declaration echoes the U.S. bishops’ disappointment with the Trump Administration’s announced withdrawal and it reiterates the Church’s well-established moral and non-partisan call for climate action in caring for our common home and our one human family—especially among poor and vulnerable communities.

It was three years ago today that Pope Francis released his encyclical Laudato Si’, in part to influence the Paris Agreement negotiations. At the time, President Obama’s administration was orienting the United States to be a leader in climate action. Much of that momentum was lost in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump and organizers of the Catholic Climate Declaration are hoping today's news will fire up the faithful.

The declaration—signed by cardinals and other bishops, college and...

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About the Blog

Catholic Ecology posts my regular column in the Rhode Island Catholic, as well as scientific and theological commentary about the latest eco-news, both within and outside of the Catholic Church. What is contained herein is but one person's attempt to teach and defend the Church's teachings - ecological and otherwise. As such, I offer all contents of this blog for approval of the bishops of the Church. It is my hope that nothing herein will lead anyone astray from truth.