The push for ecological conversion: Jersey conference put environment in faith framework

National Catholic Reporter, August 15, 2003 by Patricia Lefevere

Like the word "blonde" or "mother-in-law," just say, "New Jersey" and laughter erupts. The state that has proven fodder for funny men for decades gave comedians a boost in 1987 and 1988 when medical waste began to wash up on its Atlantic shoreline and a garbage barge hugged its coast.

But New Jerseyites who care about their future aren't laughing--especially not when the state has 600 polluted facilities under Environmental Protection Agency regulation. The pharmaceutical, chemical and oil refining industries that have brought jobs and riches to the state have also fouled its air, waterways and landscape.

"We are pretty poor stewards. Our 'Garden State' has become a toxic waste site," in the view of Valorie Caffee, director of organizing at the New Jersey Work Environment Council. She believes the state has built too much of its economy on hazardous products, making its citizens choose between their jobs and their health. The council provides information and referrals on occupational and environmental health problems.

Caffee urged some of the 200 Catholics attending a three-day environmental conference, held at Princeton University in late April, to look at their environment holistically. The New Jersey Catholic Coalition for Environmental Justice in cooperation with Partners for Environmental Quality, PEQ, and other faith traditions sponsored the gathering, which had the theme, "A Vision for Environmental Justice: Our Responsibility for God's Creation."

A basic tenet of environmental justice is that everyone has a right to a safe setting in which to live, work, learn, play and worship, Caffee said. So why is it, she asked, that some children at Sacred Heart School in Camden and at other schools in the city feel it is a form of punishment to have to play in the park or go outside at recess?

Dust and pungent odors abound around Sacred Heart School. The city of 85,000 has everything that no community wants in its backyard--an industrial laundry, incinerator, a county and municipal sewage plant, a number of scrap metal facilities, 12 contaminated waste sites, degraded soil and a cement plant whose hundreds of daily truck deliveries produce tons of air pollution and spew cement dust on people and cars, she said.

Small wonder that "asthma rates among our kids are epidemic," Bradley Campbell, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, said, noting that the steep rise in the number and rate of cases corresponds directly to diminished air quality.

Starting to pay attention

Campbell is pleased that Catholic parishes and schools are starting to pay attention to ecology. "The language of faith and justice is the frame in which to see environmental issues," he said.

Politicians and business owners have failed to recognize that the burdens of pollution don't fall equally, he said. "They ought to stop pretending that they do." Campbell cited former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman, the recently resigned EPA chief in the Bush cabinet, as someone who "reiterated her commitment to environmental justice yet didn't recognize who is bearing the cost.... These issues need to be part of the debate."

Campbell blamed "moral indifference" for the neglect of communities like those in Newark, Camden, Paterson and Jersey City where children are exposed to toxic chemicals, lead paint, polluted air and water.

The neglect of some communities is so systematic, Campbell charged, "it constitutes a breech of civil rights." He pointed especially to the state's urban poor, to farm workers and landscapers, who are mostly non-white, non-English-speaking and non-union.

The environment gives the church the opportunity to "get a life," the Rev. Fletcher Harper told NCR. Harper, an Episcopal priest, directs Partners for Environmental Quality, an interfaith environmental coalition based in Trenton.

If parishes chose to deal with ecological concerns, they must be prepared to take on such issues as environmental injustice, racism and questions of class, as well as be able to ask, "What is the proper place of the corporation and the role of business?" Harper said.

Consumption is a key piece of environment degradation, he noted. Its end product is "greed." This uncomfortable topic needs to be addressed urgently, he said, but watch for it to generate "some heat" in the parish community.

Harper said he hoped that every parish could begin to change the way it consumes resources.

In a workshop titled, "A New Covenant for the Earth," Harper introduced PEQ's "Covenant of Sustainability," designed to help faith-based institutions reduce their energy use, energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.

Harper praised the Catholic church's teaching on environmental justice, from its long tradition of thinkers and writers such as Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas, to more recent statements by Pope John Paul II and the U.S. bishops' 1991 pastoral, "Renewing the Earth."

Where would Jesus build?

Dioceses and regional groupings of bishops have begun to translate such teaching in their own areas. The southern Louisiana diocese of Houma-Thibodeaux has gathered farmers, shrimpers and oil industry leaders to address the problems of subsidence and coastal erosion.