Catholic clerical responses to climate change and Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’

Abstract

The 2015 release of Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment—Laudato Si’—was met with widespread praise by many who hoped this document would spur Catholics around the world to join movements struggling against climate change. Frequently, these hopes were accompanied by expectations that leaders in the Catholic Church would begin greening their churches and help integrate their parishioners into broader environmental movements. However, while there are strong theoretical rationales supporting Catholic environmental action, few studies have examined what—if anything—is actually happening. This paper responds to this gap by assessing how Catholic clergy in one U.S. diocese are engaging environmental concerns. Drawing upon 31 interviews with priests and deacons across the Diocese of Syracuse, N.Y., this study finds that few clergy are substantively engaging environmental issues. In addition, this paper identifies and discusses several personal and systemic barriers hampering Catholic clerical efforts to further green their churches.

Keywords

Climate change religion environmental humanities local climate action Catholic Church

Introduction

In June 2015, Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, released his first social encyclical, which focused on moral dimensions of human–environment relationships and called all people to address environmental crises. This letter, Laudato Si’, was widely praised by many commentators for its commitment to addressing environmental crises. The writer Amitav Ghosh (2016) saw the encyclical as a key tool for shaping global climate policy due to its narratives of hope and solidarity. The Guardian called it “the most astonishing and perhaps most ambitious papal document of the past 100 years,” while Time claimed it was “poised to reshape the international conversation on climate change” (Dias, 2015; The Guardian, 2015). It received a similar reception among environmental activists, with Bill McKibben saying “Laudato Si’ stands as one of the most influential documents of recent times,” while hoping this encyclical would allow climate activists to better reach religious communities (McKibben, 2015, 2017). These commentators anticipated that Laudato Si’ would inspire the 1.2 billion Catholics around the planet to engage in environmental advocacy.

This initial reception has led scholars to inquire whether and how Laudato Si’ has helped green the Catholic Church. Several early studies demonstrated significant connections between exposure to Francis’s encyclical and pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors (Meyers et al., 2017; Schuldt et al., 2017; Shin and Preston, 2019), though such results were at times influenced by prior assumptions and beliefs that raise questions about the extent of Laudato Si’’s effects (Landrum et al., 2017; Myrick and Comfort, 2019; Shin and Preston, 2019).

This paper contributes to the burgeoning social scientific study of the Catholic Church and the environment by assessing whether and how parish clergy in one diocese—the Diocese of Syracuse, N.Y.—are engaging environmental issues. It begins by discussing prior studies of U.S. Catholics and the environment before briefly summarizing Catholic papal environmental teaching. After outlining its method, this paper presents its empirical results and discusses potential impediments to further greening. It concludes that, while there is a great deal of scholarly and public hope that Laudato Si’ will radically alter Catholic environmental relationships, at least within this diocese, several substantial obstacles frustrate the realization of such change.

Conceptual framework

Theoretically, this paper draws upon the growing academic conversation surrounding the greening of religion (Konisky, 2018; Taylor, 2004, 2010). Largely originating in response to Lynn White Jr.’s (White, 1967) classic, if outdated, essay, the past two decades have seen the field rapidly grow as a study of how religious institutions, organizations, and actors influence human–environment relationships (Berry, 2016; Gould and Kearns, 2018; Hart, 2017; Jenkins et al., 2017; Rigby, 2017; Riley, 2017; Taylor et al., 2016a, 2016b).

There are several ways scholars of religion and the environment assess a religion’s environmental relationships (Grim and Tucker, 2014; Konisky, 2018; Taylor, 2007, 2010; Tucker and Grim, 2001; Veldman et al., 2014). This study follows the approach articulated by Veldman et al. (2014). Rather than highlighting exceptional cases already known to be green or querying whether a particular tradition can theoretically and/or theologically be green, Veldman et al. (2014) argue for empirically evaluating a particular religion or religious community’s various engagements with environmental issues through social scientific frameworks.

Many researchers following this approach focus on evangelical and/or fundamentalist Protestants, often finding a strong relationship between conservative Christianities and the politicization of environmental issues over the past 40 years in the United States (Callison, 2014; Carlisle and Clark, 2017; Ecklund et al., 2017; Guth et al., 1995; Haluza-DeLay, 2014; Morrison et al., 2015; Riley, 2017; Taylor et al., 2016a, 2016b; Veldman, 2019; Veldman et al., 2014; Zaleha, 2018; Zaleha and Szasz, 2015). These projects often challenge assumptions that religions are greening despite significant internal and external pressure to do so (Berry, 2016; Haluza-DeLay, 2014; Konisky, 2018; Taylor, 2004; Veldman, 2019; Veldman et al., 2014; Zaleha, 2018). Taylor et al.’s (2016b: 348, 351) extensive literature review demonstrated that religious affiliations are often—though by no means always—associated with lower environmental concern and action; whether this has changed in recent years is currently a matter of intense scholarly debate (see also Konisky, 2018). Some scholarship on religion and the environment does suggest, however, that moralistic and religious frameworks are effective at communicating climate science to religious climate skeptics and deniers and motivating action, particularly among evangelical Christians who rely heavily on nonscientific epistemologies to understand and assess human–non-human relationships (Callison, 2014: 159–161; Hulme, 2009; Smith and Howe, 2015).

Relatively few scholars, however, have followed such an approach when studying Catholicism. Binde (2001), for instance, argues that, independent of formal teachings, popular Catholicisms have long legitimated a complex and at times contradictory range of perspectives concerning the relationships between humanity, God, and nature. Other scholars have found long-standing interest in environmental concerns among both lay and ordained Catholics in the United States throughout the 20th-century, though such efforts have remained largely disconnected from mainstream environmentalism (Hamlin, 2018; Hamlin and McGreevy, 2006; Hart, 2002; Nepstad, 2019). Agliardo (2014) discusses key efforts U.S. religious orders and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have taken to establish the environment as a Catholic issue, while Schaefer (2016) highlights the work the Global Catholic Climate Movement and individual dioceses have done to raise the profile of environmental issues among Catholics (see also Nepstad, 2019). Overall, however, this research has found that, while pro-environment attitudes and behaviors are present, environmental concern nevertheless remains marginal to U.S. Catholicism, especially among white Catholics (Agliardo, 2014; Jones et al., 2014; Zaleha, 2018; Zaleha and Szasz, 2015).

Scholarly interest in Catholicism and the environment increased in earnest following Laudato Si’’s release, largely because many early commentators anticipated that local Catholics churches would quickly follow the papacy to engage in environmental advocacy (Bartosch et al., 2018; Gould and Kearns, 2018; McCallum, 2019; Mazo, 2015; Nature, 2015). Laudato Si’ is widely considered a major internal pressure for Catholicism’s greening (Ghosh, 2016; Hulme, 2015) and assessing responses to the encyclical is likely to be key for understanding how Catholics interact with the environment (Arbuckle, 2017). The central question facing social scientists interested in the greening of Catholicism is thus not whether Catholicism could be green—the answer is clearly yes—but whether and where such greening is occurring (Taylor et al., 2016b).

Recent years have seen several widely publicized examples of Catholic climate action (Archdiocese of Atlanta, 2015; Roewe, 2018, 2019a, 2019b). There has, however, been limited research into whether such anecdotes reflect widespread changes in Catholic environmental relationships. The few empirical assessments that have been conducted since Laudato Si’’s release found little immediate effect on environmental attitudes and actions, especially among conservative Catholics (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2016; Jones et al., 2014; Li et al., 2016; Maibach et al., 2015; Taylor et al., 2016b; Vincentnathan et al., 2016). Maibach et al. (2015), for instance, found that, even with widespread media coverage, almost half of U.S. Catholics reported hearing “a little” or “none” about Francis’s encyclical in the months following its release—only 9% said they had heard “a lot.” Relatedly, the Catholic Church’s internal research arm found that Catholic awareness of Laudato Si’ had fallen during the year after its release (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2016). Some assessments, however, have found evidence that suggests more significant shifts may be beginning (McCallum, 2019; Maibach et al., 2015). Consequently, the question of the Catholic Church’s environmental relationships remains open.

This paper responds to this broad question by assessing how one diocese’s clergy are engaging environmental issues. The remainder of this section explains why it is important to include the perspectives and actions of the parochial clergy when assessing whether and how U.S. Catholicism is greening.¹

The Catholic Church is a deeply hierarchical institution with almost all formal authority vested in its clerical leaders (Sweeney, 2002). Within parishes these are the priests and deacons who have substantial leeway in managing parish affairs, including parish buildings and grounds, and are crucial to the day-to-day practice of Catholicism (Sweeney, 2002). These clergy also have a canonical duty to educate all people residing within their parish about Catholic thought (Sweeney, 2002). Consequently, how these clergy do (or do not) engage Catholic environmental teaching may greatly influence the greening of U.S. Catholicism. It is particularly important to attend to potential variation among clergy, especially in an institution such as the Catholic Church that operates in highly disparate and at times contradictory ways (Ives and Kidwell, 2019; Linden, 2009; Taylor et al., 2016b).² With respect to environmental concerns and the Catholic Church, however, such internal variation remains largely unassessed (Zaleha, 2018).

Most studies of political action among U.S. Catholic clergy have focused on nonenvironmental issues (Smith, 2008; see also Wald, 1992). This work suggests that clergy can significantly influence their parishioners by framing topics as moral or religious concerns and through direct political advocacy (Smith, 2008; see also Wald, 1992). Throughout the 20th-century, there have been several instances—including especially in protests against nuclear weapons—where individual clergy in the United States sparked, grew, and led activist movements with major effects on public opinion and policy (Nepstad, 2019). However, because clerical perspectives frequently vary between parishes, far more research is needed to discern how Catholic clergy influence particular issues within their communities (Smith, 2008). This is especially the case when it comes to the environment.

Far more research has examined the influence of clergy in non-Catholic Christian denominations on environmental concerns (Lysack, 2014; Mohamad et al., 2012; Sleeth-Keppler et al., 2017; Veldman, 2019; Wardekker et al., 2009; Wisner, 2010). Such studies have found that clergy can significantly shape political perspectives and behaviors among their congregants (Djupe and Gilbert, 2003, 2009; Djupe and Olson, 2010). However, whether this occurs in any particular instance depends heavily on local factors and leadership; studying individual clerical actions is thus crucial for any assessment of a religion’s political effects (Djupe and Gilbert, 2009; Djupe and Olson, 2010). In her book examining the relationships between evangelical clergy and climate science, for example, Candis Callison (2014) found that clergy needed to “bless the facts” in order for congregants to accept them. Neither scientific argument nor scientists themselves could affect parishioner perspectives without such clerical support (Callison, 2014).

At present, whether and how U.S. Catholic clergy address environmental issues remains unclear. This paper studies this through a diocesan-wide assessment of Catholic clerical engagements with environment–society concerns. In doing so it offers a few related contributions. By revealing substantial clerical disengagement, this paper unsettles perceptions that top-down transformation will successfully green religions, even in institutions as hierarchical as the Catholic Church. This paper also demonstrates the importance of attending to geographic variance within religions when assessing their greening. Further engagement with these varied and at times contradictory geographies will allow scholars studying the greening of religion to better analyze and discuss these complex and at times contradictory processes within religious communities. Finally, this paper reveals that while Laudato Si’ tackles massive structural issues, including climate change, global capitalism, and intergenerational poverty and suffering, many clergy who participated in this study are responding to Francis’s impassioned call for change through little more than increased recycling and gardening. The ramifications of this dissonance, as well as the question of whether it can be found elsewhere, is an important direction for future research.

Catholic environmental teaching

Before delving into this paper’s empirics, it is important to provide a brief grounding in the history of Catholic environmental teaching. Though a greater priority during his reign, Francis’s teachings concerning human–environment relationships are not entirely novel but build upon a decades-long papal project (Gould and Kearns, 2018).

Catholic papal concern with the environment began increasing in the late 1980s and early 1990s.³ John Paul II (1987, 1990, 1991) started more regularly engaging environmental concerns, critiquing the use of resources as if they were unlimited and failures to address industrial pollution. He reaffirmed that human–environment relationships always needed to advance the common good and the collective right to a safe environment (John Paul II, 1990). In doing so John Paul II (1990) called for solidarity in order to ameliorate the suffering of the poor due to pollution and unjust land distribution.

Several national bishops’ conferences also produced statements outlining their commitment to the environment (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, 1988; Guatemalan Bishops’ Conference, 1988). This included the U.S. bishops, who in 1991 released a statement affirming the relationship between ecological destruction and poverty and the duty of all Catholics to promote sustainability and social justice. In 2001, they issued a second statement formally acknowledging the scientific consensus on climate change and the need to immediately address this crisis.

Benedict XVI expanded papal environmental concern to the degree he was named “the green pope” (Schaefer and Winright, 2013). In his only social encyclical, Benedict XVI (2009) devoted a full chapter to the intersection between poverty, development, and the environment, repeating concerns that resource exploitation severely harms the poor. He further argued that Catholics must understand human–environment relationships as intimately and inextricably intertwined with interhuman relationships (Benedict XVI, 2009: §51–52).

It was on this foundation that Laudato Si’ was written as the first papal encyclical dealing exclusively the environment. Alongside climate change, Francis (2015) discusses the scarcity of potable water, particularly among the poor: the loss of biodiversity: and the privatization of ecological and communal space amidst inefficient urbanization. He argues, following Benedict XVI (2009), “that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach” and that significant changes are needed to address these crises (Francis, 2015: §48–61).

Throughout Laudato Si’, Francis (2015) contends that contemporary ecological crises share two key causes—overconsumption driven by the search for material salvation and a technocratic economic paradigm leading people to dominate all existence for their personal benefit. Francis (2015) argues these in turn stem from a modernist anthropology that fails to appreciate humanity’s inextricable relationships with the non-human world.

In response Francis proposes an ethic of “integral ecology” closely related to sustainability and ecojustice (Francis, 2015; Rigby, 2017). Drawing on long established principles of Catholic social teaching, including the common good, the universal destination of goods, and intergenerational justice, the pope contends that all people share a duty to address contemporary environmental crises.

This is not to suggest Laudato Si’ offers nothing novel, for Francis does push papal environmental teaching in new directions. This is particularly pronounced concerning liberation theology, which was out of papal favor under Francis’s two immediate predecessors (Linden, 2009).⁴ Laudato Si’ draws from liberation theology in several sections, including especially the preferential option for the poor and its discussion of the political economic structures causing oppression (Flores, 2018; Jenkins, 2018; Martins, 2018; Peppard, 2016). Some commentators have gone as far as suggesting that integral ecology can only be understood as a continuation of liberation theology’s rejection of traditional economic development in favor of radical structural transformation (Castillo, 2016). Similarly, Francis’s emphasis on voices from poor and indigenous communities echoes discourses of liberation he was intimately familiar with before his papacy—though whether Laudato Si’ successfully engaged such voices remains contentious (Boff and Elizondo, 1995; Jenkins, 2018; Martins, 2018).

Yet even given these new engagements with liberation theology, papal concern for the environment long predates Francis’s reign (Gould and Kearns, 2018; Peppard, 2016). Catholic leaders have for decades critiqued environmental degradation while calling for widespread action. The effects of this collective teaching, however, remain unclear. The remainder of this paper addresses this by assessing clerical engagement with environmental issues in one U.S. diocese.

Site selection and method

This study examines how clergy in one of the 210 U.S. Catholic dioceses engage environmental concerns. The Diocese of Syracuse, N.Y., covers seven counties in Central New York (Diocese of Syracuse, 2020a). Spread across 114 parishes, approximately 230,000 Catholics, roughly 20% of the region’s population, are members of the diocese (Diocese of Syracuse, 2020a; New York State Department of Labor, 2019). Its parishes encompass a mix of high-density cities, small towns, suburban sprawl, and sparsely populated rural areas. There are just under 120 priests and 75 deacons assigned to active parochial ministry throughout the diocese (Diocese of Syracuse, 2020b).

Prior to and during the study period, Syracuse’s diocesan hierarchy released very few public statements about Laudato Si’ or environmental topics. The diocesan website provided links to several different documents concerning the environment, frequently produced by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Climate Covenant. Only one—a four paragraph announcement of the encyclical’s publication in 2015—was produced by the diocese.⁵ This announcement calls for “conversations within our own faith communities,” “to be more thoughtful about our use of natural resources,” and for Catholics to “read and reflect on the words of Pope Francis” (Cunningham, 2015). Notably, however, the diocese does not include environmental initiatives among the programs and ministries they financially support (Diocese of Syracuse, 2020c), and the diocesan-supported Catholic Charities similarly do not include environmental concerns within their mission statement (Catholic Charities, 2020).

Consequently, the Diocese of Syracuse provides a good opportunity to study whether and how parochial clergy—those, as one participant remarked, “in the trenches” of Catholic ministry—are responding to Francis’s and other Catholic leaders’ increasing focus on environmental issues. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 priests and deacons across the diocese from May to October 2018. These interviews aimed to better understand not just what clergy thought about environment–society relationships but also how clergy and their parishes engaged such concerns in practice. Each participant was heavily involved in the day-to-day practice of Catholicism throughout this diocese. Due to the diocesan hierarchy’s general disengagement with the environment, the perspectives and actions of the parish clergy may significantly shape how, in this diocese, Catholics engage the environment.

Participant recruitment occurred primarily through in-person visits both after masses and during public office hours, though occasionally telephone calls and direct emails were used. Twenty-seven priests and four deacons agreed to interviews. Other potential participants declined due to lack of interest, insecurity in their own knowledge, or unavailability, or they did not respond to initial overtures at all. Interviews lasted between 15 and 90 minutes depending upon participant responses, prior knowledge, and their schedules, and participants could choose to have the interview audio-recorded or have the interviewer take detailed notes. Fieldnotes taken before and/or after interviews were appended to transcripts to contextualize conversations. All participants were assigned a pseudonym and all references to participants in this paper are pseudonymous.

Interviews began by discussing participant’s engagements with Laudato Si’ and other Catholic environmental teaching, as well as their personal perspective on environment–society relationships.⁶ Midway through, discussion shifted toward specific actions participants had taken (or wanted to take). I concluded interviews by asking whether participants wished to discuss or revisit any topics. They frequently accepted, and some provided, of their own volition, supplementary documents which I appended to the transcript. I transcribed and thematically coded all interviews in order to both identify patterns and exceptions concerning clerical engagement with environmental concerns. Drawing from the interview framework, I initially identified two broad categories—perspectives and concrete actions—within which subthemes, including, among others, Laudato Si’, other Catholic environmental texts, climate change, and other environmental issues, were identified and coded. It quickly became clear that one of the central patterns continuously emerging from the data was clerical disengagement. Given this, barriers to action was added as a third broad category within which themes were inductively discerned.

Before presenting this study’s results, I first want to discuss my positionality in relation to both participants and these results. I am a young, white, able-bodied, cisgendered man and a U.S. citizen with professional-class origins. Any or all of these may influence both my analysis and my relationships with participants in ways I cannot know. Two aspects of my identity, however, stand out as particularly important. I am not a Catholic, and this research does not stem from an interest in Catholic theological questions. I instead came to this project through deep concerns about the unjust ramifications of climate change and an interest in the success of efforts seeking to address such injustices. To this end, this study focuses on ascertaining whether Catholic environmental teaching is, in this diocese, inspiring environmental action among Catholic clergy and within their parishes.

Clerical engagement with environmental teaching

Perspectives

Each interview began by discussing Laudato Si’, though the discussion’s depth often hinged on whether clergy had even read the document. Four priests acknowledged that they had not read it at all, while seven other priests and one deacon said they had read selections or breezed through. Additionally, four priests and one deacon prefaced their response by saying they only read Laudato Si’ immediately after its publication and only retained a general impression of the text. There were certainly exceptions, such as Father Nathan, who arrived carrying a dog-eared copy of the encyclical with annotations on seemingly every page, but they were few and far between. Most interviews instead began with participants admitting they were largely unfamiliar with Laudato Si’. Moreover, due to self-selection bias, there remains a chance this may over-represent clerical engagement.

Those who had read Laudato Si’ generally praised the document, calling it a groundbreaking contribution to the Church (several were more effusive, such as Father Nicholas, who called it a “theological masterpiece”). Clergy said that Francis had revealed how environmental degradation and pollution are intertwined with human suffering and poverty, long a central tenet of Catholic social teaching. Participants frequently emphasized how caring for creation is part of the Church’s broad focus on pro-life issues, using this connection to make sense of the environment’s place within their broader ministry. They argued that, while abortion, the death penalty, and the environment are frequently seen as separate issues in the United States, a Catholic approach requires understanding that all stem from disrespecting human dignity. Most clergy, including self-identified conservatives, thought an increased environmental focus would benefit the Church moving forward.⁷

Yet when the conversation turned toward what in Laudato Si’ was particularly insightful or important, only a dozen participants referenced specific passages or elaborated on Francis’s propositions. Even then, this was often only in vague references to Chapter 2 or how they now saw environmental degradation’s links to poverty. Specific propositions were less important than the encyclical’s ability to legitimize discussions of environmental concerns within the Church (and their own churches). As such, the encyclical’s effects thus far are best understood as contextual, not textual—its mere existence has been more influential than the words within. Most clergy are not engaging the arguments and concepts that so inspired early commentators. This raises concerns about the efficacy of religious denominations as communication and information networks, an oft-deployed model concerning the intersection between religion and political issues (Djupe and Hunt, 2009; Djupe and Olson, 2010).

Clerical engagement with other environmental texts varied a great deal. Only five priests said they were entirely unaware of any other texts, though several others hedged by saying that, while they know other Catholics had engaged environmental concerns, they could not recall any specific text off hand.

Two parts of Catholic tradition—Genesis’s creation stories and St. Francis of Assisi—were frequently discussed as key sources for Catholic environmental teaching. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were also repeatedly mentioned as early drivers of Catholic environmental concern, while references to scripture (the remainder of the Pentateuch, the Book of Psalms, and Romans 1: 19–20), hymns, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement were each raised by a few participants.⁸ The works of thinkers such as Teilhard de Chardin (3×), Karl Rahner (2×), Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Thomas Merton, and Judy Camuto were also mentioned, as was the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s (2015) climate action plan. Others looked beyond Catholicism, discussing Silent Spring, Al Gore, the 1970 Earth Day movement, the tragedy of the commons, Love Canal and Onondaga Lake, and the “Crying Indian” public service announcement (see Dunaway, 2015: 79–95), as foundational to their environmental views.

Often, however, when I pushed to discuss how these specific texts contributed to Catholic environmental thought, our conversations sputtered out. Creation stories were the sole exception, as clergy often said these stories taught all creation is beautiful and good, that Genesis is not literal but provides guiding principles for responsible relationships with creation, and that long-term stewardship is required for humanity’s survival while abuse will end with collective destruction. Even more than Laudato Si’, clergy discussed Genesis as foundational for Catholic environmental ethics and a resource for environmental knowledge among Catholics.

Clergy described the other sources they mentioned as texts that allowed people to recognize creation’s sacrality and not destroy the world. Though a few participants pushed deeper, arguing against dualisms dividing humanity and non-human nature, most were unfamiliar with what Catholic environmental teaching actually teaches (for example, Deane-Drummond, 2016; Schaefer, 2011; Warner, 2008). Most clergy were aware various Catholic texts concerning human–environment relationships existed, but with few exceptions they did not know what was written in them. Such disengagement is particularly noteworthy given the central role reading such texts has for continuing clerical education concerning political issues (Ammerman, 2005).

Given this disengagement, the theoretical portion of our conversations largely focused on clergy’s personal perspectives. These were often interesting and detailed conversations, though their details were too varied to succinctly discuss as a single clerical perspective (or set of perspectives). However, a few themes repeatedly came up. First, the vast majority of participants agreed that human–environment relationships are moral issues, though a small minority saw them as moral only “to a degree.” When asked what this required, clergy often took an approach limited to individual actions. They suggested “take care of the environment” by producing less trash, using less plastic while recycling more, no longer wasting or polluting drinking water, donating food, driving less, and more efficient electricity use. A few went further, saying this required overcoming greed and rejecting cultures of consumerism, which approaches the systemic change Francis urges. Finally, every participant thought environment–society relationships should improve.

Actions

After participants suggested better relationships with the environment are needed, interviews turned toward discussing how clergy sought to realize such changes. Participant responses can be split into four broad groups, though as with any typology there is more variation than can be discussed here. The first group are those few clergy heavily engaged in environmental action and whose parishes have consequently changed their environmental relationships. The second group has made (or attempted) at least one change, but they largely maintain pre-encyclical behaviors. Encompassing most participants, the third group was interested in change yet had not yet acted to bring it about. The final group, though saying they agreed with Francis’s message, did not in practice engage environmental concerns and were uninterested in doing so.⁹ Overall, however, while participants had many ideas about what they might do, these conversations were almost entirely hypothetical and few actions are actually being taken.

This first group, those clergy who were taking substantial action, contained three participants—Fathers Flynn, Nathan, and Nicholas. Father Flynn’s parish was the only one that had set up a “Care for Creation” team among parishioners—a step toward building community that is crucial for effectively engaging parishioners (Ammerman, 1997, 2005; Djupe and Gilbert, 2009). This was the case here, as Flynn’s “Care for Creation” team had implemented new recycling programs, adjusted parish landscaping, hosted workshops and book studies on Laudato Si’ and other texts, identified opportunities for preaching and bulletin inserts, and sought ways to collaborate with local environmental activists. Flynn said parishioners appeared enthusiastic about these transformations and wanted to do far more. While they lacked the ability to do what they wanted—such as installing solar panels—Flynn hoped over time such changes would become viable.

The encyclical had also inspired Father Nathan and his parish to change. Carrying a well-worn copy of Laudato Si’, he effusively praised the document as an insightful, necessary contribution to Catholic thought. Following its publication, Nathan led a six-week interfaith book study on Laudato Si’, attracting more than 40 participants. Recalling that “there was never anything like that before,” Nathan began integrating Laudato Si’ into his homilies and youth faith formation. His parish had changed their landscaping and tended a garden meant to benefit the broader community, and though Nathan knew his parish needed to do far more to meet Francis’s challenge, he was busy laying groundwork for future transformation. Drawing from a climate action plan developed by the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s (2015), Nathan saw these efforts as imperative and was looking forward to further engaging the environment.

Father Nicholas’s experiences were similar, though he was well attuned to the limited impact he could have. Nicholas was intimately familiar with Laudato Si’ and broader Catholic environmental teaching, mentioning St. Francis’s Canticle of Creatures, the theologians Karl Rahner and Teilhard de Chardin, panentheism, and theologies of systemic sin as key foundations for Catholic environmental concern.

Nevertheless, as he finished discussing these sources Nicholas reflected that his parish did not always do what it needed to. Nicholas had preached frequently on environmental topics, suggesting small changes parishioners could make while hoping they would eventually become more substantive. When preaching about these issues, Nicholas always sought to first suggest concrete actions parishioners could take (neighborhood cleanups, volunteering with urban farms, saving water) to initially raise awareness before turning toward broader systemic critiques. However, Nicholas thought it would take a long time to even reach the people in his pews, especially in the United States where many have the privilege to ignore environmental problems. Additionally, though shifting toward ceramic dishware internally, his parish continued using plastic bags and Styrofoam cups in their food ministry and as a consequence were one of the worst polluters in their neighborhood. While Nicholas had both deep knowledge and clear ideas about what transformations were needed, many steps were yet to be taken.

The second group of clergy was less engaged. Though many did something to green their parishes, beyond these isolated actions they largely continued business as usual.

Frequently their changes involved gardening. Nine participants said their parishes kept gardens in order to better connect with the environment and surrounding communities. Father Lorenzo’s parish, for instance, partnered with a local community organization to provide food to impoverished communities and their own parishioners. However, Lorenzo admitted doing little else. He wistfully repeated that both local and global Church needed to improve their social and environmental action ministries. Though he knew how he should approach this—beginning with a small applied project before shifting toward more abstract education—it just was not something he had done.

Educational programing was also central to how this second group engaged environmental issues. Frequently these clergy thought youth education should be their primary engagement with the environment. Father Otto, for instance, said

is climate going to be my biggest topic, and maybe it should be because that’s probably going to be one of the biggest issues that’s going to face you, but I have more years behind me than ahead of me, so…I’m not going to outlive the disaster.

Fathers Matthew and Nathan discussed the importance of adult education, but their primary focus was on youth so children would lead change when they reached adulthood. In doing so these clergy neglected Francis’s calls for immediate change, instead understanding environmental crises as primarily a concern for the future. This approach to climate change as a future rather than contemporary problem replicates common patterns in climate risk perception severely hampering efforts to address environmental crises today (Leiserowitz, 2006; Spence et al., 2012).

Another way this second group engaged environmental concerns was by making them the focus of their Lenten practice during the six-and-a-half weeks before Easter. Deacon Charlie’s parish, for instance, organized a parish-wide carbon fast during one Lenten season, something several others had mentioned but not implemented. Each day there was a small action—drinking from reusable bottles, turning down the heat—parishioners could take with the hope they would inspire long-term behavioral changes. Though Deacon Charlie said the fast went well, his parish had not yet repeated it.

Together, these two groups of clergy show that Laudato Si’ has the potential to begin greening Catholic parishes, though even here transformations remain preliminary and uncommon.

Far more frequently, however, clergy in the Diocese of Syracuse were part of a third group. Though interested in Laudato Si’ and concerned about the environment, this third group had in practice done little. This is not to suggest they ignored Laudato Si’, as most initially said a few words or held an event to mark the encyclical’s release, but since then they had done little else. They wanted change and often had detailed ideas about what it might entail, but frequently they had barely begun making such changes.

Many members of this group mentioned preaching as a way they could engage environmental concerns. Leaders across the Church have promoted this as an easy step clergy should take (Archdiocese of Atlanta, 2015; Francis, 2015; Roewe, 2019b), and several participants said they had at least mentioned nature and environmental themes while preaching. Father Walter was particularly keen on addressing “social science stuff” from the pulpit, because after he first did this, parishioners were far more interested in his homilies and said they appreciated learning about these dimensions of Catholic teaching. Even with Laudato Si’, however, Walter did not think he knew enough to preach about the environment and said additional resources, such as a lectionary companion, would help him do this.¹⁰

This reflects a need observed elsewhere for clergy, if they hope to inspire parishioner environmental action, to speak not just in relation to theological perspectives on human–environment relationships but also address local environmental conditions (Djupe and Hunt, 2009). Furthermore, despite Walter’s experience with parishioner interest, the extant literature concerning clerical political engagement casts doubt on preaching’s ability to inspire parishioners to act (Djupe and Gilbert, 2009). Though clergy communicate cues toward political action they perceive as clear, congregants often do not recognize or properly contextualize them (Djupe and Gilbert, 2009). Consequently, though several participants preach on environmental issues—or at least wanted to—this may not be enough to effectively influence parishioners (Djupe and Gilbert, 2003, 2009; Smith, 2008).

Many clergy thought there were other opportunities during the liturgy where they could easily draw more attention to environmental concerns. Several were especially interested in the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi (October 4) as a chance to discuss human relationships with non-human life. Others, such as Father Sebastian, thought using hymns praising God for the gift of creation could be used to inspire stronger environmental concern among congregants. In preparation for our interview, Sebastian collected a list of hymns he thought might be good for this. Again, however, this incorporation of environmental concerns into Catholicism’s practice had not happened in many participant’s parishes, and it consequently remains unclear whether they would be effective.

Other participants hoped to transform parish buildings, as clergy frequently discussed wanting alternative energy production in their parish. Typically this involved installing solar panels at some future date, though Father Tobias had been looking into small-scale geothermal as a heating source. Some clergy critiqued the poor insulation and shoddy construction of church buildings, saying repairs and upgrades would drastically reduce energy use. Yet they had not made these changes and continued using energy in much the same way as they had before. Some were even moving in the opposite direction—Father Sean’s parish planned to install air conditioners to mitigate the effects of increasing summer temperatures, thereby exacerbating (at a small scale) the very problem he purported to oppose. This third set knew they should do something, and frequently they had an inkling about what actions they might take. At the time of our interviews, however, such action remained largely hypothetical.

Engagement was even less among the fourth group—those clergy who had not engaged Laudato Si’ nor indicated any want to do so. Though agreeing with the encyclical in principal, these clergy did not discuss actions beyond recycling they might take in response. Father Earl epitomized this while discussing potential actions, saying

I’m not sure. I think, you know, we’ve done a couple recycling projects, which I assume has some positive impact on this relationship between the human and non-human part of the world. And I’m not aware of too much more than that.

Father Richard’s response was similar as he repeatedly pivoted toward abortion and the lack of respect for the Church’s teachings on sex and sexuality as more pressing crises. Among this fourth group, environmental concerns remained largely separate from ministerial work; they continued on as if Laudato Si’ was never written.

One single change cut across these categories—recycling. Fifteen participants mentioned this as the biggest step their parishes had taken to help the environment, making it by far the most common action. Yet recycling is far from a panacea for environmental crises, as it requires a great deal of energy, frequently involves poor labor conditions, and is largely inefficient in the long-term (Burns et al., 2019; Dunaway, 2015; Eriksen et al., 2018; Garcia and Robertson, 2017; Pellow, 1998; Reck and Graedel, 2012; Singh et al., 2018; Steinberg, 2010). Moreover, recycling may be little more than a symbolic shift legitimizing the same consumptive paradigms Laudato Si’ explicitly rejects (Francis, 2015; Markle, 2014; Steinberg, 2010).

This dissonance with Francis’s call to address climate change runs throughout many of these clerical actions. Recycling, gardening, picking up litter and the like are certainly efforts to improve parish relationships with the environment, and thus are in line with Laudato Si’—but they are not actions that mitigate climate change. Some actions, including especially education and carbon fasts, do directly engage climate change—yet even these remain largely ineffective as a response to climate crises, for they are but drops in the bucket compared to what is needed to address “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (Francis, 2015: §49). The remainder of this paper focuses on several reasons why clergy have not more substantively engaged climate change in their work.

Barriers to action

Throughout interviews, clergy repeatedly discussed why they had not further engaged environmental concerns. These include both personal constraints (a lack of knowledge, packed daily schedules, and perceived unimportance or irrelevance) and more systemic hurdles beyond clerical control (low diocesan prioritization, parishioner resistance, low moral authority, and financial constraints). While this study cannot assess the weight of each variable, participants suggested that each can hinder their engagement with environmental issues.

The first set of hurdles manifest at the individual level, and these are the hurdles those clergy most interested in environmental concerns have largely overcome. First, many clergy have little prior knowledge about the environment. Before interviews began, clergy frequently warned me that, though they were interested in this project and concerned about environmental issues, they did not know if they had anything to contribute. A few were unsure about the validity of environmental and climate science to begin with, such as Father Harvey, who explicitly denoted climate science as an area still up for debate within the Church—even as hierarchical statements suggest otherwise (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2001). Others thought there was simply little that Catholicism could teach about the environment, saying that “teaching on the environment is probably the weakest of the seven areas [of Catholic social teaching].” Clergy are not trained to speak about environmental issues and were uncomfortable publicly discussing environmental topics. Such disengagement is not unique to Catholic clergy (Lysack, 2014; Veldman, 2019), but because low clerical knowledge is often addressed through reading (Ammerman, 2005), this study’s finding that many clergy are not even taking this first step further underscores the significance of this barrier.¹¹

Others did not engage environmental concerns due to their already hectic and over-packed schedules. With little time or energy left to themselves, clergy are often unable to take on new tasks. Father Gert, though an avid reader of nature magazines and self-identified environmentalist, said when reflecting on his engagement that “I’ve been so busy in the last few years trying to keep my head above water, I could not say I’d like to have it come up more.” Deacon Arthur thought similarly, saying “I haven’t—I don’t want to say put a lot of thought or effort into [Laudato Si’] because I’ve been consumed by daily activities.” This study is not the first to find that Catholic clergy are exhausted by their day-to-day responsibilities (Conway, 2011; Fichter, 1987; Kane, 2017; McDevitt, 2010; Pietkiewicz, 2016), yet it is important to understand that such pressures, particularly as they increase concurrent with declining numbers of active clergy, hinder Catholic parochial clergy’s ability to green Catholicism.

This itself, however, raises questions as to why environmental issues fall outside these hectic schedules. In large part this stems from clergy’s personal priorities. Father Richard thought the destruction of traditional family life was the root of all other ills, contending that if this was addressed, other crises (including the environment) would be fixed. Alternatively, Father Phillippe prioritized critiquing U.S. immigration policies. Though he had not read Laudato Si’, Phillippe hoped he would soon, but something always appeared more pressing than the environment. This reinforces findings from risk perception research that the environment is often considered a low priority (Leiserowitz, 2006; Pidgeon, 2012), itself compounded by a lack of underlying knowledge (Lee et al., 2015). Though Francis (2015) repeatedly emphasizes that climate change must be addressed immediately, his impassioned call has not effectively overcome the environment’s perceived unimportance.

Frequently this was because clergy did not think environmental concerns were relevant to their communities, even when thinking the broader Church should do more. Six participants explicitly mentioned that they thought Catholic environmental teaching was more relevant to rural parishes and thought Laudato Si’ mattered little for urban communities. This too stems from low knowledge concerning nature–society relationships, reproducing long-critiqued yet widely prevalent urban–rural and urban–nature binaries (Cronon, 1991; Rickards et al., 2016; Williams, 1973). This in turn led several clergy to consider climate change and other environmental issues as a rural problem not applicable to many parishes. They thought non-rural parishioners would have little interest in environmental topics and did not expect success in engaging these issues.

This first set of barriers—low knowledge, perceived unimportance or irrelevance, and already packed schedules—are important reasons why many participants have not incorporated environmental concerns into their work. However, even when clergy successfully overcome such hurdles, as several have, their parishes remain far from as green as they would like. Parish education programs only engage limited subsets of the parish and subsequent dialogs are limited. Fossil fuel use is still prevalent. Efforts to reduce ecological impacts are focused on recycling and reducing plastic waste, and engagements with broader environmental science or politics are almost non-existent. This suggests a second set of barriers to action, many of which may be difficult, if not impossible, for clergy to overcome alone.

Central among these structural barriers were widespread perceptions that diocesan leadership was uninterested in environmental issues. While clerical life is often framed as a vocational calling and not a career, it nevertheless involves reviews, promotions, preferred work assignments, supervisors, and centralized authoritative bureaucracy. Given this, clerical impressions of diocesan priorities (and topics best avoided) can be central to their ministry, particularly if they have higher ambitions (Lysack, 2014). Many participants—though not all—shared an impression that environmental issues were unimportant to the diocese.

Consequently, those clergy seeking professional advancement had little need to engage environmental issues. While some pressure emanates from the Vatican concerning the importance of Catholic environmental teaching, it largely dissipates before reaching the parochial clergy. Though some participants mentioned that diocesan officials had relayed instructions and suggestions for preaching about the environment, several others could not recall hearing anything from the diocese. Moreover, only one priest—Father Paul—said that these suggestions led him to preach about environmental concerns. Father Nicholas anticipated this disengagement, attributing it to “bishop fatigue” while remarking that over the last few decades clergy have been overwhelmed by hierarchical directives. Nicholas suggested that as a result many older clergy simply choose to ignore the hierarchy altogether within their ministry.

Additionally, this perceived diocesan disinterest made it more difficult for clergy to overcome the individual barriers to action. Father Sebastian thought that because the diocese did not appear to have publicly embraced Catholic environmental teaching, he would have difficulty convincing his parishioners that environmental issues were relevant to Catholicism. Sebastian hoped a stronger diocesan emphasis on creation care would provide him more leeway to raise these issues. Parishioners, he hoped, would see this joint focus and understand that this was not Sebastian’s project alone. Without this support, however, he expected parishioners to simply brush off his efforts.

Several other clergy thought that, beyond disinterest, parishioners would actively resist any attempt to incorporate environmental issues into their ministry. Several expected or had already encountered parishioner resistance when raising environmental issues. This happened to Father Don when, the day after putting environmental inserts into the bulletin, a parishioner complained that he was supporting left-wing propaganda with no place in church. Father Otto had similarly been accosted after mass the sole time he preached on climate change. Others who mentioned climate change’s potential divisiveness anticipated similar reactions. Father Van, for instance, thought parishioners would accuse him of “making things up” and bringing personal politics into the pulpit, even if he framed them entirely as moral and religious concerns supported by papal teaching. While clergy consistently said this politicization would not dissuade them, they nevertheless mentioned it as a potential hurdle and, perhaps tellingly, have generally not discussed environmental issues with parishioners they expect to be unsympathetic.¹²

Though not anticipating that parishioners would reject environmental action on political grounds, Father Alex thought that other factors might dissuade parishioner engagement. Alex expected parishioners to hesitate when asked

to change the space they’ve grown in, and there’s a very deep emotional attachment to the places people have had their baptisms, weddings and funerals. They don’t want to change the way it looks because it gives them a sense of comfort, a sense of home.

Against such nostalgia, Alex felt unable to even begin fundraising to change his parish. Geographers of religion have long discussed the importance of such affective ties to place (Brace et al., 2011; Dwyer, 2016; Holloway, 2006; Kong, 2001; Stump, 2008), and these relationships may seriously hamper future efforts to “green” religions and especially religious places. The Church’s (and church’s) ability to bind communities across time and space directly limits their capacity to transform despite clear reasons to do so.

Moreover, Father Alex felt neither he nor his colleagues in Europe and North America had the moral authority to inspire such change. Due to widespread child sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups throughout the Catholic Church, Alex thought that no one would listen to him.¹³ He hoped clergy could eventually rebuild trust by foregrounding “the Church in the South,” but he expected many parishioners would simply ignore Catholic clergy who attempted to speak as moral authorities. Though deeply concerned about environmental issues—we discussed topics ranging from whether to have children in a world devastated by climate change to strip mining and heavy metals extraction—Alex felt largely unable to affect his parishioners’ morality. Several other participants similarly expected parishioners to tune them out as most attended mass solely to fulfill religious obligations—clergy could say whatever they wished, but most parishioners would ignore them.

The final key structural barrier are financial constraints. Lysack (2014) discusses how limited finances have required staffing cuts across religious institutions at the national level, and it is important to understand how such constraints also effect local churches (Ammerman, 1997). Routine maintenance and obligations to support other diocesan activities mean that individual parishes have limited resources for additional programming, let alone for the renovations required to physically green church buildings. Without access to financial support, clergy are severely limited in what they can actually do, regardless of how much they want to address environmental issues.

Read together, this myriad of mutually reinforcing barriers appears to substantially inhibit clerical engagement with environmental issues in the Diocese of Syracuse. While assessing how these hurdles may be overcome is beyond the scope of this paper, each presents an important obstacle to greening Catholic churches.

Conclusion

This paper has assessed how Catholic clergy in the Diocese of Syracuse, N.Y., have engaged environmental issues by drawing on interviews with 31 parochial clergy. I began by contextualizing this study within the literature concerning the greening of Catholicism in the United States before briefly reviewing Catholic papal teaching on the environment. After discussing my methods, I presented this study’s empirical results. Divided into three sections (perspectives, actions, and barriers), these results suggest that, while clergy in this diocese have begun discursively engaging Laudato Si’ and other Catholic environmental teaching, few have taken concrete steps in response. There are a few exceptions, parishes that have begun incorporating concern for the environment into their daily operations, but these are quite uncommon. While clergy expressed an interest in changing this and more robustly addressing environmental concerns, due to several interlocking barriers, at present many remain unable to do so.

These findings offer several important lessons for scholars studying the relationships between Catholicism and the environment. First, this project expands upon Lysack’s (2014) study to suggest several additional barriers to further green Catholicism, including especially a lack of knowledge concerning environmental and diminished moral authority that together contributed to clerical self-perceptions that their environmental advocacy would be largely ineffective. This project also suggests four general levels of clerical engagement with environmental issues. Further research into the prevalence of these levels, as well as the existence and prevalence of other forms of clerical engagement, can expand understanding of clerical activity and inter-clerical variance concerning environmental issues.

More broadly, despite clear reasons why religious and/or moral narratives may appear more effective at spurring movements to address climate change and other environmental crises (Ghosh, 2016; Hulme, 2009; Smith and Howe, 2015), this study underscores the importance of empirically assessing whether and how such narratives are engaged. Even a document such as Laudato Si’ is unable to spur change when left unread on a shelf. Given that many clergy want to better engage environmental issues but do not know how, this study also suggests that there may be potential opportunities for future collaborative research and teaching between scholars and clergy.

Finally, even in parishes where sustained engagement with Laudato Si’ is occurring, such efforts are far from those Francis urges. Francis (2015: §106–113, 172–175) repeatedly calls for an entirely new way of understanding human relationships with the non-human world and structural transformations to reverse climate change and eliminate poverty across the planet. Participants in this study by and large responded by setting up recycling programs, incorporating environmental asides into their preaching and hymns, and setting up gardens. Some go further, attempting to educate their communities about environmental relationships and ensure that people have access to fresh food. Such efforts are moves toward integral ecology, but they are only initial steps and remain far from the “radical change which present circumstances require” (Francis, 2015: §171). While clergy are limited in what they can each individually accomplish, in this diocese Francis’s call and clerical responses nevertheless remain quite dissonant.

As with any study, these results have limitations. This study has assessed Catholic clergy within only one diocese, and research in other dioceses is needed to better understand how clergy elsewhere are involved in greening the Catholic Church. Similarly, this research was conducted only a few years after Laudato Si’ was released, and it may take more time for its effects to be fully realized. Consequently, while this study provides a baseline for the encyclical’s immediate effect among clergy in the Diocese of Syracuse, additional research is needed to understand whether, how, and why this changes in the years to come.

Further research also is needed to evaluate how other groups within the Catholic Church—religious orders, Catholic universities and seminaries, hospitals, and the laity—have engaged Laudato Si’ and other Catholic environmental texts. Along the lines of Taylor’s (2007) Green Sisters, this work can ascertain the differences in whether and how Catholicism greens within these communities. Doing so will provide the groundwork for more comprehensively assessing how the Catholic Church in the United States and around the world engages and shapes relationships between humans and the world beyond.

Highlights

Thirty-one interviews with parochial clergy in one Catholic diocese revealed that many clergy are not engaging Catholic environmental teaching

Interviews identified four broad types of clerical engagement with Catholic environmental teaching, ranging from highly motivated to entirely disengaged

This study also identified both personal and systemic barriers that may substantially impede future efforts to green Catholicism

These findings suggest a wide gap between Francis’s calls for deep structural change and clerical actions taken in response

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Robert Wilson, Timur Hammond, and Tom Perreault for their suggestions concerning this project. Earlier versions of this paper were presented in sessions at the AAG 2019 and ISSRNC 2019, and I thank participants there for insightful questions and comments. Finally, I would like to thank Lelia Harris and the anonymous reviewers for providing feedback which greatly benefited this paper.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

References

Agliardo

(2014) The U.S. Catholic response to climate change. In: Veldman

Szasz

Haluza-DeLay

(eds) How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations. New York: Routledge, pp.174–192.

Ammerman

(1997) Congregation & Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Ammerman

(2005) Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and Their Partners. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Arbuckle

(2017) The interaction of religion, political ideology and concern about climate change in the United States. Society & Natural Resources 30(2): 177–194.

Archdiocese of Atlanta (2015) Laudato Si’—On care for our common home: An action plan for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta. Available at: https://archatl.com/catholic-life/refreshatl/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

Bartosch

Meier

Weyers

(2018) Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ as a catalyst for societal transformation? Critical remarks and presentations of an inspired exemplary project as a driver for sustainability. Factor X 32: 427–444.

Benedict XVI (2009) Caritas in Veritatae. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Berry

(2016) Social science perspectives on religion and climate change. Religious Studies Review 42(2): 77–85.

Binde

(2001) Nature in Roman Catholic tradition. Anthropological Quarterly 74(1): 15–27.

10.

Blanco

(2018) Laudato Si’: Care for creation at the center of a new social issue. Journal of Religious Ethics 46(3): 425–440.

11.

Boff

Elizondo

(1995) Ecology and Poverty. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

12.

Brace

Bailey

Carter

, et al. (2011) Emerging Geographies of Belief. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

13.

Brenner

(2016) Cross-national trends in religious service attendance. Public Opinion Quarterly 80(2): 563–583.

14.

Burns

Sayler

Neitzel

(2019) Stress, health, noise exposures, and injuries among electronic waste recycling workers in Ghana. Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology 14(1): 1–11.

15.

Callison

(2014) How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

16.

Carlisle

Clark

(2017) Green for god: Religion and environmentalism by cohort and time. Environment and Behavior 50(2): 213–241.

17.

Castillo

(2016) Integral ecology as a liberationist concept. Theological Studies 77(2): 353–376.

18.

Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (1988) What Is Happening to Our Beautiful Land? Manila, Philippines: Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. Available at: http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/What-is-Happening-to-our-Beautiful-Land.pdf (accessed 7 November 2020).

19.

Catholic Charities (2020) About us. Catholic charities, Diocese of Syracuse. Available at: https://www.ccsyrdio.org/about-us/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

20.

Cavanaugh

(2018) Fragile World: Ecology and the Church. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books.

21.

Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (2016) CARA Catholic Poll (CCP) 2016: Attitudes about Climate Change. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Available at: https://cara.georgetown.edu/climate%20summary.pdf (accessed 7 November 2020).

22.

Conway

(2011) The vanishing Catholic priest. Contexts 10(2): 64–65.

23.

Cronon

(1991) Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton.

24.

Cunningham

(2015) Statement from Bishop Robert J. Cunningham on the release of Laudato Si’. The Catholic Sun, 24 June. Available at: https://thecatholicsun.com/statement-from-bishop-robert-j-cunningham-on-the-release-of-laudato-si/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

25.

Deane-Drummond

(2016) Laudato Si’ and the natural sciences: An assessment of possibilities and limits. Theological Studies 77(2): 392–415.

26.

Dias

(2015) Pope Francis urges climate change action in encyclical. Time, 18 June.

27.

Diocese of Syracuse (2020a) Diocesan profile. Available at: https://www.syracusediocese.org/about-us/diocesan-profile/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

28.

Diocese of Syracuse (2020b) Find clergy/staff. Available at: https://www.syracusediocese.org/find-clergystaff/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

29.

Diocese of Syracuse (2020c) HOPE appeal. Available at: https://www.syracusediocese.org/foundation/hopeappeal/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

30.

Djupe

Gilbert

(2003) The Prophetic Pulpit: Clergy, Churches, and Communities in American Politics. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

31.

Djupe

Gilbert

(2009) The Political Influence of Churches. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

32.

Djupe

Hunt

(2009) Beyond the Lynn White thesis: Congregational effects on environmental concern. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48(4): 670–686.

33.

Djupe

Olson

(2010) Diffusion of environmental concerns in congregations across U.S. states. State Politics & Policy Quarterly 10(3): 270–301.

34.

Donnelly

(2016) Sins of the father: Unravelling moral authority in the Irish Catholic Church. Irish Journal of Sociology 24(3): 315–339.

35.

Dunaway

(2015) Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

36.

Dwyer

(2016) Why does religion matter for cultural geographers? Social & Cultural Geography 17(6): 758–762.

37.

Ecklund

Scheitle

Peifer

, et al. (2017) Examining links between religion, evolution views, and climate change skepticism. Environment and Behavior 49(9): 685–1006.

38.

Eriksen

Pivenko

Olsson

, et al. (2018) Contamination in plastic recycling: Influence of metals on the quality of reprocessed plastic. Waste Management 79: 595–606.

39.

Fichter

(1987) Life-style and health status of American Catholic priests. Social Compass 34(4): 539–548.

40.

Flores

(2018) “Our sister, mother Earth”: Solidarity and familial ecology in Laudato Si’. Journal of Religious Ethics 46(3): 463–478.

41.

Francis (2015) Laudato Si’. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

42.

Ganiel

(2019) Negating the Francis effect?: The effect of the abuse crisis in Ireland. In: Hood

Cheruvallil-Contractor

(eds) Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion. Vol. 30. Leiden: Brill, pp.335–357.

43.

Garcia

Robertson

(2017) The future of plastics recycling. Science 358(6365): 870–872.

44.

Ghosh

(2016) The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

45.

Gould

Kearns

(2018) Ecology and religious environmentalism. In: Corrigan

(ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp.604–646.

46.

Grim

Tucker

(2014) Ecology and Religion. Washington, DC: Island Press.

47.

Guatemalan Bishops’ Conference (1988) The Cry for Land. Mixco, Guatemala: Guatemalan Bishop’s Conference. Available at: http://www.inee.mu.edu/documents/20CryforLand_000.pdf (accessed 7 November 2020).

48.

Guth

Green

Kellstedt

, et al. (1995) Faith and the environment: Religious beliefs and attitudes on environmental policy. American Journal of Political Science 39(2): 364–382.

49.

Haluza-DeLay

(2014) Religion and climate change: Varieties in viewpoints and practices. WIREs Climate Change 5: 261–279.

50.

Hamlin

(2018) Turning over the right rocks: Finding legacies of Catholic environmentalism. In: Cavanaugh

(ed.) Fragile World: Ecology and the Church. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, pp.11–32.

51.

Hamlin

McGreevy

(2006) The greening of America, Catholic style, 1930–1950. Environmental History 11: 464–499.

52.

Hart

(2002) Care for creation: Catholic social teaching on the environment. Josephinum Journal of Theology 9(1): 120–145.

53.

Hart

(2017) The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

54.

Holloway

(2006) Enchanted spaces: The séance, affect, and geographies of religion. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96(1): 182–187.

55.

Hopkins

Kong

Olson

(eds) (2013) Religion and Place: Landscape, Politics, and Piety. London: Springer.

56.

Hulme

(2009) Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

57.

Hulme

(2015) Finding the message of the Pope’s encyclical. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 57(6): 16–19.

58.

Ives

Kidwell

(2019) Religion and social values for sustainability. Sustainability Science 14: 1355–1362.

59.

Jenkins

(2018) The mysterious silence of mother Earth in Laudato Si’. Journal of Religious Ethics 46(3): 441–462.

60.

Jenkins

Tucker

Grim

(2017) Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. London: Routledge.

61.

John Paul II (1987) Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

62.

John Paul II (1990) Peace with All Creation. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

63.

John Paul II (1991) Centesimus Annus. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

64.

Jones

Cox

Navarro-Rivera

(2014) Believers, Sympathizers, and Skeptics: Why Americans Are Conflicted about Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science. Findings from the PRRI/AAR Religion, Values, and Climate Change Survey. Washington, DC: Public Religion Research Institute/American Academy of Religion. Available at: https://www.prri.org/research/believers-sympathizers-skeptics-americans-conflicted-climate-change-environmental-policy-science/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

65.

Kane

(2017) Stress and relaxation among aging Catholic priests. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health 19(1): 1–19.

66.

Kong

(2001) Mapping ‘new’ geographies of religion: Politics and poetics in modernity. Progress in Human Geography 25(2): 211–233.

67.

Kong

Woods

(2016) Religion and Space: Competition, Conflict and Violence in the Contemporary World. London: Bloomsbury.

68.

Konisky

(2018) The greening of Christianity? A study of environmental attitudes over time. Environmental Politics 27(2): 267–291.

69.

Landrum

Lull

Akin

, et al. (2017) Processing the papal encyclical through perceptual filters: Pope Francis, identity-protective cognition, and climate change concern. Cognition 166: 1–12.

70.

Lee

Markowitz

Howe

, et al. (2015) Predictors of public climate change awareness and risk perception around the world. Nature Climate Change 5: 1014–1020.

71.

Leiserowitz

(2006) Climate change risk perception and policy preferences: The role of affect, imagery, and values. Climate Change 77(1–2): 45–72.

72.

Hilgard

Scheufele

, et al. (2016) Cross-pressuring conservative Catholics? Effects of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the U.S. public opinion on climate change. Climate Change 139(3–4): 367–380.

73.

Linden

(2009) Global Catholicism: Diversity and Change Since Vatican II. New York: Columbia University Press.

74.

Lysack

(2014) Stepping up to the plate: Climate change, faith communities and effective environmental advocacy in Canada. In: Veldman

RG Szasz

A Haluza-DeLay

(eds) How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations. New York: Routledge, pp.157–173.

75.

McCallum

(2019) Perspective: Global country-by-country responses of public interest in the environment to the Papal Encyclical, Laudato Si’. Biological Conservation 235: 209–225.

76.

McDevitt

(2010) Ministerial burnout: Motivation and renewal for mission. Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling 64(4): 1–10.

77.

McKibben

(2015) The Pope and the planet. New York Review of Books. Available at: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/08/13/pope-and-planet/ (accessed 7 November 2020).

78.

McKibben

(2017) Global heating, Pope Francis, and the promise of Laudato Si’. In: Hart

(ed.) The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, pp.457–459.

79.

Maibach

Leiserowitz

Roser-Renouf

, et al. (2015) The Francis Effect: How Pope Francis Change the Conversation about Global Warming. George Mason University and Yale University. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

80.

Markle

(2014) Accounting for the performance of environmentally significant behavior: The symbolic significance of recycling. Symbolic Interaction 37(2): 246–263.

81.

Martins

(2018) Laudato Si’: Integral ecology and preferential option for the poor. Journal of Religious Ethics 46(3): 410–424.

82.

Mazo

(2015) The Pope’s divisions. Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 57(4): 203–212.

83.

Meyers

Rose-Renouf

Maibach

, et al. (2017) Exposure to the Pope’s climate change message activated convinced Americans to take certain activism actions. Global Challenges 1(4): 1600019.

84.

Mohamad

Idris

Mamat

(2012) Role of religious communities in enhancing transition experiments: A localised strategy for sustainable solid waste management in Malaysia. Sustainability Science 7(2): 237–251.

85.

Morrison

Duncan

Parton

(2015) Religion does matter for climate change attitudes and behavior. PLoS One 10(8): 1–16.

86.

Myrick

Comfort

(2019) The Pope may not be enough: How emotions, populist beliefs, and perceptions of an elite messenger interact to influence responses to climate change messaging. Mass Communication and Society 23(1): 1–21.

87.

Nature (2015) Hope from the Pope. Nature 522(7557): 391.

88.

Nepstad SE (1996) Popular Religion, Protest, and Revolt: The Emergence of Political Insurgency in the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran Churches of the 1960s–1980s. In: Smith CS (ed) Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism. New York: Routledge, pp.105–124.

89.

Nepstad

(2019) Catholic Social Activism: Progressive Movements in the United States. New York: New York University Press.

90.

New York State Department of Labor (2019) Annual population estimates for New York state and counties: Beginning 1970. Available at: https://data.ny.gov/Government-Finance/Annual-Population-Estimates-for-New-York-State-and/krt9-ym2k.

91.

Pellow

(1998) Bodies on the line: Environmental inequalities: Hazardous work in the U.S. recycling industry. Race, Gender, & Class 6(1): 124–151.

92.

Peppard

(2016) Hydrology, theology, and Laudato Si’. Theological Studies 77(2): 416–435.

93.

Pidgeon

(2012) Climate change risk perception and communication: Addressing a critical movement? Risk Analysis 32(6): 951–956.

94.

Pietkiewicz

(2016) Reaching a decision to change vocation: A qualitative study of former priests’ experiences. International Journal of Educational Vocational Guidance 16: 379–404.

95.

Reck

Graedel

(2012) Challenge in metal recycling. Science 337 (6095): 690–695.

96.

Rickards

Gleeson

Boyle

, et al. (2016) Urban studies after the age of the city. Urban Studies 53(8): 1523–1541.

97.

Rigby

(2017) Religion and ecology: Towards a communion of creatures. In: Oppermann

S Iovino

S (eds) Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene. London: Rowman and Littlefield, pp.273–294.

98.

Riley

(2017) Wicked problem of climate change: Christianity and environmental ethics fifty years after ‘historical roots’. Worldviews 21: 61–86.

99.

Roewe

(2018) Nearly 600 institutions back Catholic climate declaration. National Catholic Reporter, 18 June.

100.

Roewe

(2019a) A Virginia parish switched to 100% solar power—And paid nothing. National Catholic Reporter, 1 July.

101.

Roewe

(2019b) Amid climate threat, Catholics pursue ecological conversion in US church: Conference discusses turning point, shares successful solutions. National Catholic Reporter, 11 July.

102.

Schaefer

(2011) Confronting the Climate Crisis: Catholic Theological Perspectives. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.

103.

Schaefer

(2016) Motivated for action and collaboration: The Abrahamic religions and climate change. Geosciences 31(6): 1–19.

104.

Schaefer

Winright

(2013) Environmental Justice and Climate Change: Assessing Pope Benedict XVI’s Ecological Vision for the Catholic Church in the United States. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

105.

Schuldt

Pearson

Romero-Canyas

, et al. (2017) Brief exposure to Pope Francis heightens moral beliefs about climate change. Climatic Change 141: 167–177.

106.

Shin

Preston

(2019) Green as the gospel: The power of stewardship messages to improve climate change attitudes. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Epub ahead of print February 2019. DOI: 10.1037/rel0000249.

107.

Singh

Thing

John

(2018) Health risk assessment of the workers exposed to the heavy metals in e-waste recycling in sites of Chandigarh and Ludhiana, Punjab, India. Chemosphere 203: 426–433.

108.

Sleeth-Keppler

Perkowitz

Speiser

(2017) It’s a matter of trust: American judgements of the credibility of information communicators on solutions to climate change. Environmental Communication 11(1): 17–40.

109.

Smith

(2008) Politics in the Parish: The Political Influence of Catholic Priests. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

110.

Smith

Howe

(2015) Climate Change as Social Drama. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

111.

Spence

Poortinga

Pidgeon

(2012) The psychological distance of climate change. Risk Analysis 32(6): 957–972.

112.

Steinberg

(2010) Can capitalism save the planet? On the origins of green liberalism. Radical History Review 107: 7–24.

113.

Stump

(2008) The Geography of Religion: Faith, Place, and Space. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

114.

Sweeney

(2002) The Obligations and Rights of the Pastor of a Parish According to the Code of Canon Law. New York: Alba House.

115.

Szasz

(2015) Novel framings crease new, unexpected allies for climate activism. In: O’Lear

S Dalby

S (eds) Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics. New York: Routledge, pp.150–170.

116.

Taylor

(2004) A green future for religion? Futures 36: 991–1008.

117.

Taylor

(2010) Dark Green Religions: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

118.

Taylor

(2007) Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

119.

Taylor

van Weiren

Zaleha

(2016a) Lynn White Jr. and the greening-of-religion hypothesis. Conservation Biology 30(5): 1000–1009.

120.

Taylor

van Weiren

Zaleha

(2016b) The greening of religion hypothesis (part two): Assessing the data from Lynn White, Jr, to Pope Francis. Journal of the Society of Religion, Nature, and Culture 10(3): 306–378.

121.

The Guardian (2015) The Guardian view on Laudato Si’: Pope Francis calls for a cultural revolution. The Guardian, 18 June.

122.

Tucker

Grim

(2001) Introduction: The emerging alliance of world religions and ecology. Daedalus 130(4): 1–22.

123.

United States Catholic Conference (1991) Renewing the Earth. Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference.

124.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (2001) Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good. Washington, DC: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

125.

Veldman

(2019) The Gospel of Climate Skepticism: Why Evangelical Christians Oppose Action on Climate Change. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

126.

Veldman

Szasz

Haluza-DeLay

(2014) How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations. New York: Routledge.

127.

Vincentnathan

Smith

(2016) Catholics and climate change skepticism. Worldviews 20: 152–149.

128.

Wald

(1992) Religious elites and public opinion: The impact of the Bishops’ peace pastoral. The Review of Politics 54(1): 112–143.

129.

Wardekker

Petersen

van der Sluijs

(2009) Ethics and public perception of climate change: Exploring the Christian voices in the US public debate. Global Environmental Change 19(4): 512–521.

130.

Warner

(2008) The greening of American Catholicism: Identity, conversion, and continuity. Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 18(1): 113–142.

131.

White

(1967) Historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science 155(3767): 1203–1207.

132.

Williams

(1973) The Country and the City. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

133.

Wisner

(2010) Untapped potential of the world’s religious communities for disaster reduction in an age of accelerated climate change: An epilogue & prologue. Religion 40(2): 128–131.

134.

Wolford W (2010) The Land is Ours Now: Social Mobilization and the Meanings of Land in Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

135.

Zaleha

(2018) A tale of two Christianities: The religiopolitical clash over climate change within America’s dominant religion. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.

136.

Zaleha

Szasz

(2015) Why conservative Christians don’t believe in climate change. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71(5): 19–30.