Take Heart!

“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair: Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

I am so happy to be able to report on some of the ways young Catholics are returning gifts to the earth – and taking us with them! Thanks to their faithfulness, reverence, dedication, and energy, we can all take heart about what we are doing and what we can do – even within our own Church – about climate change.

I recently attended a web presentation titled “Young Catholics and Climate Change”. Anna Gordon, manager of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, moderated and began with an immediately encouraging message: “We are not beyond hope and not beyond redemption. We can still be a beneficial species on the earth.” She then added: “To hear and respond to the cry of the earth and poor is to realize we are not separated. In fact, that is where God is.”

Here is a brief profile and inspiring opening thoughts by the presenters:

Anna Robertson is Director of Youth & Young Adult Mobilization with Catholic Climate Covenant, an organization with the mission to inspire and equip people and institutions to care for creation and care for the poor through education, public witnesses, and provision of resources to effect change. She sees climate change as a pastoral crisis for the Church and believes young people are leading us in seeing a resolution. One of her main points: “The way the Church is institutionally structured can actually be put to use as a ready-made organizational vehicle for channeling action for climate justice. At the same time, its spiritual dimension can provide equally necessary “incentive, support, and succor.”

Sharon Lavigne is the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for her leadership and community activism with Rise St. James, a faith-based grassroots organization fighting for environmental justice, specifically working to defeat the proliferation of petrochemical industries in St. James Parish, Louisiana, nicknamed “Cancer Alley” because of the devastation they have caused. She describes herself as the one “on the front lines, leading a personal fight to combat climate change. Five generations of us have lived in St. James Parish and never realized the petrochemical industry was poisoning us all that time – and worse, that more were coming.” She formed a coalition and fought hard and ultimately successfully to prevent the latest polluting industry to locate there. “We want to pass on our ancestral home to our children,” she stressed. As an ardent Catholic, she believed it was God’s presence and inspiration telling her to “Fight!”

Suzana Moreira is a Catholic theologian and Brazilian program assistant with the Laudato Si’ Movement which has as its mission: “To inspire and mobilize the Catholic community to care for our common home and achieve climate and ecological justice.” She spoke from the community in Brazil which she had joined when her study of Catholic theology – and especially Catholic social teaching – led her to question her privileged life. A devout Catholic, she translated what she saw as the Church’s focus on bodies and sexuality in its messages to youth into care and reverence for the sacredness of all bodies and life. She now works with youth in poor neighborhoods specifically to combat environmental racism, and beautifully expressed her message to them and us: “Understanding creation and climate and ourselves as gifts will immerse us in a constant movement toward love now and in the generations to come.”

Dan DiLeo, PhD, is associate professor and director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at Creighton University. His education, research, and scholarship have focused on Catholic social teaching and climate change, and since 2009 he has been a consultant with Catholic Climate Covenant.  He began by stating: “Our interconnectedness calls us to be people of action to enhance God’s kingdom.” He lamented the bishops’ responses – or lack of responses – to “Laudato Si”. They prioritized other issues like abortion or gay marriage or readily engaged in political discourse, all of which he saw as “ideology overcoming ministry” and showed their “impoverished sense of Catholic mission in general and the urgency of climate change specifically.” The Church could do so much in targeting “green” goals for its properties, investments, and emissions, acting as a role model in the world. The Church also “lends itself perfectly to catalyzing climate activism with an already set up structure that could help us organize quickly and make things happen.”

Above is just a brief outline of what the panelists had to say about climate change, but as important was what they said about what we as Catholics could actually do:

Suzana Moreira offered succinct recommendations specifically for U.S. Catholics:

“1. Don’t forget the importance of prayer to counter griefs and anxieties and to keep going in the face of hardships.

2. Don’t forget to party, to celebrate achievements, which also keep us going.

3. Learn at least one other language to expand understanding, problem-solving, and compassion for people from all different backgrounds.”

Anna Robertson urged us to “retrieve out of our faith tradition other ways of being faithful and being human. Young people want to be accompanied in this dark night of the soul, and many are already doing a lot at Catholic universities, local and national groups, even with the USCCB which is a sign of hope. We need to proclaim loudly that all other crises, war, poverty, racism, healthcare, are linked to climate change. Identify and then maximize your own power!”

Sharon Lavigne celebrated the Pope as leader of the Church speaking out about climate change. “We have Catholic schools, churches, religious classes, seminaries, social service organizations that can teach our children and others about the moral and urgent need for action. This is about families, neighbors, our own health. If we don’t take the lead, we won’t have community or family or neighbors.”

Dan Di Leo urged us to use the advocacy model and put together a cohort in our parish to clearly define what we want done and what strategies might work and then together take this to the priest and the bishop and beyond. “Help the Church and community see this is a moral issue, an opportunity for catechesis, and a call for fidelity to the Church’s true mission.”

And he spoke the last words sure to resonate for all of us:

“Find the ‘Yes’ vision for a thriving future and then live into it.”