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

National Catholic Reporter, August 15, 2003 by Patricia Lefevere

Around the Great Lakes, especially in the Cleveland and Detroit metropolises, dioceses are studying the "where would Jesus build" question by bringing together environmentalists, developers, water districts and others to look at the issue of "sprawl."

In the Pacific Northwest, U.S. and Canadian dioceses have taken joint action to draw public attention to the ecological problems facing the Columbia River system (NCR, June 4, 1999). Dominican Sr. Carol Dempsey, a Garden State native, served as theological adviser to the Northwest bishops writing the river pastoral. The biblical scholar and theologian at the University of Portland in Oregon also gave a keynote address on "Reclaiming a Prophetic Vision for the Dream of the Earth."

Dempsey said she hoped the Bible could still help the world to "focus its Amens" around the stories of creation, redemption and revelation. She turned to Sirach, author of Ecclesiasticus, for his insight: "The glory of the Lord fills all his works."

Such a proclamation could still rouse Christians to respond to the "violence and destruction raping our planet and chasing out God," she said. Cleaning up the Columbia, dredging PCBs from the Hudson, saving the rainforests all have something to say about the "holiness of creation," where everything lives in the presence of God.

Dempsey teaches in the University of Portland's environmental studies program, where biology and theology intersect and where questions of medical ethics and human cloning are looked at in the light of biblical ethics and the prophets. The university's Institute of the Holy Cross, which combines the study of science and religion, "is our gift in the Pacific Northwest to the whole church," she told NCR.

While scholars may be cross-fertilized by probing what's under the heavens along with what's under the microscope, the best way to join the "Save the Planet" movement is to get mad, suggested Jeanne Fox, president of New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities and a member of Gov. James McGreevey's cabinet. She pointed to an Ohio environmentalist who woke up one day and said: "This is intolerable," and decided to do something about it. After such a decision one "looks at the same world with new eyes."

A river runs through it

Finding God and a spiritual life in the midst of nature is a tradition that Hugh Carola is handing to his two sons, but also to hundreds of schoolchildren and adults in Northern New Jersey. As a member of a citizens' group called Hackensack Riverkeeper, Carola conducts eco-cruises, canoe excursions, nature walks, hikes and birding tours in the 21,000-acre wetlands, known as the Meadowlands, through which the Hackensack River meanders. The Meadowlands have been called "the Everglades of the North," but also "Jersey's toxic marshlands," he said.

"Our kids know more about the Amazon and the Pacific than they know about the Hackensack River," said Carola, who is trying to change all that with his outings and talks in schools and churches.

The river, which has been heavily polluted by local industries and runoff from construction, lawns, motor oil, even dog-doo, flows through 14 towns in North Jersey. These boroughs house 30 Catholic parishes, a score of Catholic elementary schools, five Catholic high schools, a seminary, and dozens of Protestant churches, synagogues, a mosque and a university--making the area rife for an ecology tutorial.