Sister Joan Brown Quoted in NCR Article on Laudato Si

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“There has to be some deep-seeded shifts in the church for us to really grapple with this largest ethical and moral concern of our time. And the longer it takes us, the more we run into greater storms, greater need for emergency relief.”  -Sister Joan Brown, executive director New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light.

On May 24, the National Catholic Reporter published an article examining whether the Catholic Church and the faith community at large have heeded the message in Pope Francis’ encyclical letter on the environment, Laudato Si: Care: On Care for Our Common Home.

According to the article, entitled “Five years ago, Pope Francis asked us to care for Earth. Have we listened?” there has been much conversation in faith circles around the global climate crisis,  even though we are far short of our goals.  The conversation puts a major emphasis on the Philippines: a country facing extreme negative repercussions from climate change.  Climate activist Br. Jaazeal Jakosalem Jakosalem said Laudato Si’ has affirmed the work of church leaders in the Philippines to address the climate emergency by placing creation care squarely in the framework of church teaching.

The commitment to addressing climate change has led bishops in the Philippines and Ireland to divest from fossil fuels.

Despite these small victories, the overall effort to promote a broad campaign against climate change within the charge has fallen short. “Even with those examples, the consensus among Catholic ecological leaders is those responses have been not nearly as widespread as Francis sought with his universal call “for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet,” said the NCR article, authored by Brian Roewe.

“Sadly, the urgency of this ecological conversion seems not to have been grasped by international politics, where the response to the problems raised by global issues such as climate change remains very weak and a source of grave concern,” Pope Francis said in January in remarks to the Vatican diplomatic corps.

Sister Joan Brown, executive director New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light in Albuquerque agrees. “There has to be some deep-seeded shifts in the church for us to really grapple with this largest ethical and moral concern of our time. And the longer it takes us, the more we run into greater storms, greater need for emergency relief,” said Sister Joan.   Read full article

Text of Prof. Rich Wood’s Presentation on Laudato Si

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On May 20, University of New Mexico Prof. Richard L. Wood helped us commemorate the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment. Dr. Wood shared his thoughts online via Zoom. Here is a video. Below is an excerpt from the presentation followed by a link to the full text on the NMIPL blog.

St. Francis, like Pope Francis, deeply experienced the joy of living in God’s love. I would like to begin my reflections there, based on Pope Francis’ other great encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel. There, Francis emphasized living in daily encounter with the Spirit of Life, within the intimate flow of relationship between Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.

One thing we can do now, every day, is to make sure we are living within that intimate flow, cultivating a spiritual practice individually and (hopefully again soon) communally that provides a bedrock of joy in our lives and relationships because we know we are loved, we know we are sinners in the arms of a forgiving God, intimately embraced by the One that theologian Elizabeth Johnson calls “She Who Is”. It is that kind of encounter, lived intimately and mystically, that I think Jesus, Francis, and Clare all lived, and into which Pope Francis is calling us today. Here is the full text

Laudato Si at 5: Economy, Ecology with Prof. Richard L. Wood

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To commemorate the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si: Care for our Common Home, we invited UNM Sociology Prof. Richard L. Wood to share from his background of sociology of religion, social theory,democratic life and struggle for justice in United States.

This Zoom presentation contains Dr. Wood’s reflection, which touches on such themes as the role of ancient prophets to convey God’s love for creation alongside righteous anger and our society’s focus on consumption and production (not only on resources but on our time). The session is followed by a question and answer session. We will post a partial transcript in coming days.