Recently in Catholic Ecology Category

Joe Walsh:

If the early returns from the online environmental community are any indication, Kennedy’s progressive credentials earned him green cred that may even outstrip his actual accomplishment in the field. Thought leaders at places like Treehugger and Grist are singing his praises as an environmentalist, though it should be noted that they both cut and paste large swaths of their tributes from Kennedy’s own Senate page of accomplishments.

A Google search of the Senator’s name and the word “environment” brings up first-page hits that are incredulous about his opposition to the wind project, and a search pairing his name with the word “green” brings up mostly hits touting the rumor that Teddy had once been a Green Bay Packers prospect after his Harvard football career wound down.

In the end, I suspect that many Americans will be left with the mental image of the Senator as a sailor, so often was he photographed in nautical blue and white (with a touch of Red Sox red), sailing the waters off of Cape Cod. That image, his solid—if not aggressive—environmental voting record, and his unequaled progressive bona-fides will likely leave Senator Edward M. Kennedy with an environmental legacy that will only be burnished over the years - regardless of whether wind turbines ever tower over Horseshoe Shoal. [Greenpeace photo.]

I wonder if Catholic greens, like the pro-life faithful, regret that he didn't do more for the cause.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has more.

Reuters: (h/t)

In 1678, the inhabitants of the Alpine villages of Fieschertal and Fiesch made a formal vow to live virtuously and to pray against the growth of the Aletsch glacier, Europe's longest, which had caused a lake to flood into their homes.

To reinforce their prayers, they started holding an annual procession in 1862, when the glacier reached its longest during the mini-Ice Age Europe suffered in the mid-19th century.

But the villages now want to seek permission from Pope Benedict to change their vow as the glacier is melting fast due to climate change and have requested an audience with him.

More here. And here:

"We all know — and the Holy Father reminded us in his Easter message — that an unprecedented change in the climate is taking place," Rev. Pascal Venetz said in his sermon to 100 people at the chapel, where until modern times pious women were prohibited from wearing colored underwear for fear of provoking the glacier.

Wanna connect with this vital prayer effort? Track down the local Catholic church through the Swiss Directory of Administrative Authorities: 

Kanzlei, 3984 Fieschertal, Telephone: 027 971 19 45 Fax: 027 971 36 19

Internet: http://www.fieschertal.ch/

And skip the colored undies. [AP photo]

Ross Douthat in the NY Times:

Why should being pro-environment preclude being pro-life? Why can’t Republicans worry about economic inequality, and Democrats consider devolving more power to localities and states? Does opposing the Iraq war mean that you have to endorse an anything-goes approach to bioethics? Does supporting free trade require supporting the death penalty?

These questions, and many others like them, are the kind that a healthy political system would allow voters and politicians to explore.

But for now, at least, you’re more likely to find them being raised in Benedict XVI’s Vatican than in Barack Obama’s Washington.

I wonder if many folks in Creation Care have even read it.

Much more on the "seemless garment" of Benedict's solical gospel here.

Lauds the Examiner:

Yesterday, July 7, Pope Benedict released his much-awaited encyclical on the economy. As anticipated, it was filled with commentary about poverty, social responsibility, and, of course, abortion. However, nestled in the encyclical’s 144 pages was an admonition that “the environment is God's gift to everyone” and must not be squandered.

More:

When one thinks of the hot-button issues facing Catholicism, the environment probably doesn’t top the list. However, last year Pope Benedict listed pollution as one of seven “social” sins, and his attention appears to be turned to the earth as well as the heavens. Certainly much of Benedict’s recent encyclical is theoretical in scope, and it’s dubious if the pope can affect real economic change. But we can all find inspiration in the Vatican’s concrete efforts in the area of renewable energy. Who knows? While Benedict’s encyclical may fail to fix the global economic crisis, it may just motivate the faithful to purchase energy-efficient light bulbs.

Lightbulbs? God help us! The Pontif's greatest work would be to make the world hate abortion and divorce as much as climate change.

I'm sure God does.

In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even an apposite education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society. If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves. The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment and damages society.

-- Pope Benedict XVI

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. [John 10:10, NIV]

MetroCatholic:

Recently, religious leaders have spoken about global climate change and its impact on people in poverty. The National Religious Partnership on the Environment has called particular attention to the hardships that will burden the poor if policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not carefully structured. Representing the Partnership as a guest speaker, Walter Grazer said that it is incumbent that policies “create new well-paying, climate-friendly jobs and assist workers who lose their jobs as a result of new climate regulations and other policies.”

Climatists have unwittingly created a new sort of eco-justice program.

UPDATE: More here. What about the "climate refugees" created by the economic impacts of climate change regulations?

God bless the Great Republic of Texas. "Members of the Catholic church, including Bishop Michael Pfeifer called everyone out here to brave the hot sun and celebrate the elements. 'Rural mass means all of natures, because all of nature gives us life in some way.'"

Rome operates a telescope in Arizona. Who knew? (h/t)

The Roman Catholic Church’s interest in the stars began with purely practical concerns when in the 16th century Pope Gregory XIII called on astronomy to correct for the fact that the Julian calendar had fallen out of sync with the sky. In 1789, the Vatican opened an observatory in the Tower of the Winds, which it later relocated to a hill behind St. Peter’s Dome. In the 1930s, church astronomers moved to Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. As Rome’s illumination, the electrical kind, spread to the countryside, the church began looking for a mountaintop in a dark corner of Arizona.

Building on Mount Graham was a struggle. Apaches said the observatory was an affront to the mountain spirits. Environmentalists said it was a menace to a subspecies of red squirrel. There were protests and threats of sabotage. It wasn’t until 1995, three years after the edict of Inquisition was lifted against Galileo, that the Vatican’s new telescope made its first scientific observations.  

~

Tidings: "The Catholic focus on the common good provides a wonderful starting point for moral reflections on every Christian's responsibility for ecological stewardship."

Rome is certainly on board.

The Vietnamese central government wants the Church to endorse industrial projects in the name of progress. The Cardinal of Ho Chi Minh City says no.

In his letter, card. Pham Minh Man echoes the concern of scientists and intellectuals that: “Since natural environment is for everyone, no one has permission to damage or control it even in the name of economic development”.

The prelate argues that industrialists only think “to gain profits for a small group of privileged people” without any thought for the “collateral effects caused” by their factories.

“These strategies of economic development can only lead to chaos– concludes the archbishop of former Saigon – They are neither for the common good of society, nor the future of the nation”.

The criticism of bauxite projects has come from various directions of Vietnamese civil society, but the communist party has singled out the Catholic community for punishment: Last month, Fr. Peter Nguyen Van Khai, the spokesman of Hanoi Redemptorist Monastery, and another Redemptorist, Fr. Joseph Le Quang Uy were victimized by the government for their opposition against bauxite projects.

Communists have historically traded off the environment for industry, something Western democracies quit doing a generation ago. Think about that as you watch America slide toward socialism. And think about the risk these Christian leaders are taking for creation.

Pray for them too, while you're at it...

From his eulogy at National Catholic Register Online: 

Passionist priest and acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Berry...was one the 20th-century's most probing thinkers on the human relationship with the natural world and its implications for religion. [snip]

Fr. Thomas Berry, described in Newsweek magazine in 1989 as "the most provocative figure among the new breed of eco-theologians," was among the first to say the earth crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis. His diagnosis of the negative effects of our religious views on our treatment of the planet rang true for many who were willing and able to work for a cure. Many created their own earth ministries, inspired by the work and life of Fr. Thomas Berry.

Rather than a theologian, Berry considered himself a cosmologist and "geologian," an Earth scholar.

Not always popular, certainly influential. More links to his life and writings here.

UPDATE: NY Times green columnist Andrew Revkin's thoughts here. And Nic Paton elicits quite a few comments in a post that lumps Berry in with other Emergent Christians.

The Guardian UK:

Explaining the initiative, an official at the Vatican office on clergy told Vatican Radio that the declining number of churchgoers who went to confession were confusing it with "a psychiatrist's couch". "An ever decreasing number of people see a clear difference between good and evil, between truth and lies and between sin and virtue, and therefore fewer are taking confession," said Archbishop Mauro Piacenza.

That includes sins of pollution.

Somebody tell Al Gore.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from George Will.

CNS News:

The pope said the image of wind "makes us think of the air, which distinguishes our planet from the other heavenly bodies and allows us to live on it. What air is for biological life, the spirit is for spiritual life."

"And just as there exists atmospheric pollution, which poisons the environment and living beings, so there exists a pollution of the heart and of the spirit, which mortifies and poisons spiritual existence," he said.

Pope Benedict said it is right that protecting the environment has become a priority today, but it is equally important that people begin combating "the many products polluting the mind and heart" today, including "images that make a spectacle of pleasure, violence and contempt for men and women."

Amen, brother. Read the whole thing, and pass it along.

UPDATE: It's also true that you can't solve the terrestrial pollution problem without first addressing the heavenly one.