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

National Catholic Reporter, August 15, 2003 by Patricia Lefevere

Eco-justice is not only an issue for the poor and the professionals, but for seniors and youth too, Grazer said. Saving the earth can be "a moment of evangelization for the young. If the church doesn't address it, they'll turn elsewhere."

"No topic better lends itself to ecumenical sharing," Grazer added. "It's about the whole planet, which none of us owns. It's fairly new so none of the religions has fought over it. We each bring a distinctive theology to the discussion," and should be working together, said Grazer who moderated a panel on the environment with representatives of the Jewish, Muslim and Jain faiths.

He and others at the conference indicated that the environment was an issue waiting for lay leadership, particularly at a time of fewer and more burdened priests. But Pat Mulligan, a parishioner at Sacred Heart in Camden and the development director of the city's Heart of Camden organization, wasn't so sure. "This is a sacred responsibility of the church. I think we should hold the bishops accountable" for raising the issue and taking action. "Priests have the pulpit. That's where consciousness is going to get raised."

As proof of the clergy's not handling the subject, Mulligan said he saw only one priest at the meeting and Trenton's Bishop Smith at its opening. Still he rated the conference "high" for the fact that "it happened," but "low in terms of official church response."

For Fr. Ronald Cioffi, pastor at St. Joseph's in Keyport, N.J., the environment is "a Johnny-come-lately item on the church's social justice agenda." He felt that all New Jersey bishops had "signed on" to the issue by supporting and funding the conference.

Cioffi saw "the works and technologies of war and the execution of war" as the greatest danger to the environment. Ending war, promoting peace and redistributing the goods of the earth could best save the planet, he said. "The gospel is politics and environmental justice is about taking the works of mercy to their logical conclusion."

Whether that message gets to people in the pew on time to retard what many here saw as the rapid "degradation of the planet" remains to be seen. "I'm not pessimistic," Mulligan said, "but we have to get to the generation that's in school right now. They're not getting it from MTV or Disney."

Patricia Lefevere is an NCR contributing writer.

Bishops move cautiously into environment's 'thorny thicket'

Jesuit Fr. Drew Christiansen allowed a rare insight into the bishops' environment policy, which he termed a "thorny thicket" about which they were "not conservative, but cautious." Three years after publishing their 1991 pastoral letter, "Renewing the Earth," they took a "quite deliberate" advocacy position on the environment, ever aware of their critics and knowing that none among them was an expert in science or economics.

Christiansen, an adviser to the U.S. bishops' conference, recalled that just when the bishops were sculpting their ecology policy, the Newt Gingrich Revolution had claimed both houses of Congress and was out to roll back environmental legislation with four devastating measures, known as the "takings" legislation. The bishops commissioned a paper on the common good and private property from David De Cosse, then a graduate student at Boston College.