Linda Plitt Donaldson

Pope Francis reminds us that caring for creation is not only about caring for the planet; it also includes caring for humanity, especially the poor. In this encyclical, Pope Francis repeatedly states that “everything is connected,” and throughout he underscores the “intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet.” He speaks explicitly about the impact of pollution and dangerous waste producing “a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, [that] cause millions of premature deaths.” He addresses the warming effects that compromise “their means of subsistence [which] are largely dependent on natural reserves and economic systemic services such as agriculture, fishing, and forestry.” He adds that the suffering of the poor is compounded because they have no financial resources to help them adapt to the effects of climate change.

He draws on the ample scientific evidence that climate change risk is severely acute in developing countries and has caused destruction, displacement, and forced migration of people in many poor communities. The report by the 2015 UCL-Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change warns that “the effects of climate change threaten to undermine the last half-century of gains in development and global health.” Pope Francis notes the differences between the global north and the global south, and takes to task multinational corporations who “do [in developing countries] what they would never do in . . . the so-called first world . . . leav[ing] behind great human and environmental liabilities such as unemployment, abandoned towns, the depletion of natural reserves, deforestation, the impoverishment of agriculture and local stock breeding, open pits, riven hills, polluted rivers and a handful of social [services] which are no longer sustainable.”

Climate change is also impacting communities in the United States, and there are businesses that engage in practices that exploit low-income communities for their own profits. Readers may remember the film Erin Brockovich as one Hollywood depiction of the environmental impact of corporate practices that undermined the health of low-income residents. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has funded several community organizing projects to address environmental justice. The Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance is one example of a CCHD-funded effort and is highlighted in John Hogan’s wonderful book Credible Signs of Christ Alive.

In paraphrasing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Pope Francis asks us to “replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, [and] wastefulness with a spirit of sharing.” Pope Francis also realizes that such changes of behavior and attitude will take a conversion of hearts, so he has declared Sept. 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. In addition to a conversion of hearts, Pope Francis recognizes that we need community organizing, particularly grassroots movements, to address the structural factors that feed the “mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for the social exclusion or the destruction of nature.”  At the World Meeting of Popular Movements in July, Pope Francis encouraged people who are poor to organize for social change. In offering gratitude and hope, he stated: “You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, are doing, a lot. . . . the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize… You are the sowers of change.” Social workers have a long history of community organizing. Let’s join with our brothers and sisters in organizing to care for God’s creation — our planet and all of humanity — particularly our neighbors near and far who are poor, vulnerable, and excluded.

—    Linda Plitt Donaldson is an associate professor in The Catholic University of America National Catholic School of Social Service.

Charles C. Nguyen

Meeting agendas usually included a session on Catholic mission in which the deans presented and discussed their school activities aimed at serving the mission of the Church. The deans debated among themselves that engineering by the nature of its profession in aiding humankind and protecting the common good naturally serves the Catholic mission. Supporting examples could include efforts in drinking-water treatment, development of alternative energy sources, and building efficient automobiles with minimum pollution.

During the meeting at Villanova, the deans discussed Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Sí, particularly as it pertains to the Pope’s concerns on climate change. We believed that in his encyclical, the Pope talked directly to the engineering profession and provided engineers and engineering educators with ideas to improve the engineering discipline structure and teaching methodologies to deal with climate change. After the meeting, the deans continued the dialog on the encyclical, and explored inter-school collaborations to respond to the Pope’s call on climate change. As a start, we decided to work together to publish an op-ed in the U.S. News & World Report to express our view on the Pope’s encyclical. All deans commented on and contributed to the initial draft and after several revisions, endorsed the final version of the article. The op-ed was titled “How Can Engineers Heed Pope Francis’ Challenge on Climate Change?”

The op-ed pointed out that while Catholic engineering schools have focused on producing ethical and competent engineers inspired to provide service to others and capable of employing technologies to solve issues, they still “must learn to see problems from an interdependent perspective that goes beyond ‘helping others’ to consider what he (Pope Francis) has coined our ‘integral ecology’.” It further noted that over-specialization of engineering disciplines makes it difficult to see the world as an interconnected and interdependent entity. The op-ed concluded with a call for action from Pope Francis’s encyclical for all engineering educators to produce a new generation of engineers who do not only possess the relevant skills but also have the sense of duty to protect the earth.

We at the School of Engineering at The Catholic University of America are very proud that our research and educational programs are involved in tackling issues that Pope Francis emphasized in his encyclical. Our research programs in environmental engineering aim at preserving the earth and providing clean drinking water. Our degree track in alternative and renewable energy helps to reduce waste and minimize pollution. Our world-renowned research program in robotic rehabilitation provides assistance to patients with brain injury. Our active Engineers Without Borders chapter has organized humanitarian missions for our students to go to developing countries to help improve their quality of life.

For me personally, after being with CUA for 33 years, I feel very fortunate to witness two papal visits to our campus.  During the last papal visit by Pope Benedict in 2008, after it was announced that the Pope would enter his lecture room through one of the three doors (for security reasons, I guess), I decided to go to the third far right door hoping to greet him.  Luckily I was able to touch the hand of Pope Benedict after he entered that same door. Lucky me! This time, the visit of Pope Francis is not only a great honor to CUA, but for me personally, I will be very happy and honored to see our Holy Father who is able to speak to the heart of my profession, the engineering profession. I look forward to the visit of Pope Francis and want to see how lucky I will be this time.

– Charles C. Nguyen is a Professor and Dean of The Catholic University of America School of Engineering

Father Eric de la Pena

Of course, this lake played a significant part in the life of the apostles who were mostly fishermen.  In fact, there is a fish in that lake that has been named after St. Peter, who once fished there. It was also on this lake that the disciples witnessed some of the awesome miracles of Christ: the miraculous catch of fish, Jesus walking over the water, and the calming of the storm. On this lake, Christ used the elements of creation to reveal himself to his disciples as the Son of God. It really is quite amazing to ponder how God uses all of nature to teach us about God.

In the Franciscan mindset, nature is the starting point of God’s revelation. St. Bonaventure calls creation the “vestiges of God” or simply the thumbprint of God. We cannot contemplate the goodness and pleasure that we find in nature without arriving at the Maker who designed it. Indeed, a certain respect and awe overtakes us whenever we realize the origin and purpose of the visible world. But this due reverence for God’s creation has often been trampled by human greed and contempt. We have seen enough forest devastation, animal abuse and global pollution in our life time to illustrate the point.

Pope Francis’ recent encyclical Laudato Si’ calls us back to our senses when he addressed the important issue of ecology. Unless we become responsible stewards of creation, Pope Francis warns, we will find ourselves regretting how much we have lost because we neglected to care for Mother Earth:

“We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world.” (161)

What can we do? Fortunately, we still have time to make the necessary remedies to our ecological problems. As the saying goes, “Charity begins at home,” so also is the work of repairing the environment. It begins with us. We simply cannot demand a clean surrounding, without first cleaning our own. At the same time, the enormous task of caring for the integrity of creation is more than just an individual homework assignment or a solitary concern. It requires a united effort from all sides.

In Campus Ministry we try to inculcate these important values in our student leaders and volunteers. One way of doing this is through service. During our Service Days in August and September, our students will be doing trash removal at sites across the city and on our own campus. The work may seem insignificant in the face of an enormous ecological crisis. But this is where conversion of heart truly begins. As Pope Francis insists:

“We must not think that these efforts are not going to change the world. They benefit society, often unbeknown to us, for they call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread. Furthermore, such actions can restore our sense of self-esteem; they can enable us to live more fully and to feel that life on earth is worthwhile.” (212)

— Father Eric de la Pena, O.F.M. Conv., is an associate chaplain for faith development at The Catholic University of America.

Lucia Silecchia

When I first read Laudato Si’, a line that caught my attention was one unlikely to be much noted because it expresses an idea so universal, yet so simple.  Pope Francis wrote:

“The history of our friendship with God is always linked to particular places which take on an intensely personal meaning; we all remember places, and revisiting those memories does us much good. … [G]oing back to those places is a chance to recover something of [our] true selves.”

This line touched my heart for a deeply personal reason. Laudato Si’ was released the same morning as my Dad’s funeral. I first read it when I returned home from that sacred farewell, and I knew exactly what Pope Francis meant by linking “ [t]he history of our friendship with God” to particular places.

To be with my family, I spent most of this past year in New York. While there, I prayed at the parish church that generations of my family called home — and that my heart still calls home too. My parents married there, I was baptized there, and it has been the scene of my life’s most joyous and sorrowful moments.  It is where I still see my first grade teacher, where people have told me until fairly recently that I have gotten taller (?!), and where neighbors who knew my grandparents come to worship. Within this past year alone, the Pascal candle burned to celebrate our family’s joy at my baby nephew’s baptism, and it burned again to call us to joyful hope of a different kind at my Dad’s funeral. It was at that church that my “history of friendship with God” was born, nourished, and celebrated.

I lived much of this year in the house I grew up in — discussing life and death, knowing joy and sorrow, and saying my last farewell to Dad in the same place I lost my first tooth, built grammar school science fair projects, celebrated dozens of birthdays, typed articles for a high school newspaper (on a real typewriter!), poured over college catalogs, studied for the bar exam, graded students’ papers, and lived the decades of friendships and adventures that make up life. It was in that home that my “history of friendship with God” was lived.

I spent time in other important places back home too, those “particular places which take on an intensely personal meaning” every time they are revisited.

How, you may ask, does this relate to our preparations for a papal Mass here on our campus? In the “history of friendship with God,” special places have always played important roles. While faith tells us that our true home is not of this world, God’s presence is often seen and known in particular places. The Garden of Eden, Mount Sinai, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Galilee, Cana,  the Jordan River, Mount Tabor, Gethsemane, Calvary, Golgotha, and the road to Emmaus — to name but a few — all call to mind important moments in the “history of friendship with God.” For centuries, pilgrims to Jerusalem, Rome, Assisi, Lourdes, Fatima, and Czestochowa have sought out sacred places inextricably intertwined with that history and that friendship.

I hope that for many, this campus is a special place in their “history of friendship with God.” Whether through our sacramental life, academic life, or community life, I hope that for all of us there is a moment — or many — that took place here and that is a landmark in the history of that friendship. On Sept. 23, in the heart of our campus, the successor of St. Peter will be among us. The successor of the fisherman from Galilee who marveled at Mount Tabor, slept at Gethsemane, ran from Calvary, and died a martyr’s death in Rome will celebrate Mass and the very first canonization in America right here in our home. Many wait a lifetime to journey to Rome or plan a pilgrimage hoping to travel to a celebration like the one that we will be privileged to witness. Many never dream of it.

Years from now, when the papal Mass is long over, I hope it will remain for many an important moment in our “history of friendship with God.” I also hope that it is a moment that will be forever linked to this place.

—   Lucia Silecchia is a professor of law at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. She also is director of the International Human Rights Summer Law Program in Rome.

John Garvey

But who is to effect it? Given the scope of the problem, one might think Pope Francis would call on governments, the EU, or the United Nations. But instead Pope Francis addresses the poor and underprivileged:

“What can I do as a craftsman, a street vendor, a trucker, a downtrodden worker, if I don’t even enjoy workers’ rights? What can I do, a farmwife, a native woman, a fisher who can hardly fight the domination of the big corporations? What can I do from my little home, my shanty, my hamlet, my settlement, when I daily meet with discrimination and marginalization? . . . A lot! They can do a lot. You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, and are doing, a lot.”

The call for the small, daily, and concrete action of the individual has been a hallmark of Francis’s papacy. In his general audiences Pope Francis has been known to give homework assignments: Look up the day of your baptism so you can celebrate it; memorize the beatitudes. In his recent encyclical Laudato Si’ he offered several concrete steps any person could take to care for and appreciate creation: Say grace before and after meals (227); wear warmer clothes instead of turning up the heat (211). It’s the kind of practical advice your dad might give you.

It’s also the kind of practical advice that removes any excuse we might have for inaction. No matter the scope of the problem — whether it’s environmental degradation, human trafficking, or poverty — there is some small step we can take to contribute to its solution. And that small step often requires a conversion of heart from love of self to love of God and neighbor.

Pope Francis’s pragmatism is also not without principle. It has theological roots. As he reminded us in his first apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium,

We may be sure that none of our acts of love will be lost, nor any of our acts of sincere concern for others. No single act of love for God will be lost, no generous effort is meaningless, no painful endurance is wasted. All of these encircle our world like a vital force. (279)

This certainty arises from our faith that God can and does act in every situation and does so through our small and insufficient efforts. As St. Paul reminds us, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7).

— John Garvey is President of The Catholic University of America.

Chad Pecknold

To provide some context for why Pope Francis wants to tie together climate change and “modern day human slavery,” recall that last year the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child urged the Catholic Church to change its positions on contraception and abortion, and it also advocated that the Church support “diverse forms of family.”

The Vatican provided its own strong reply, which reminded the United Nations committee that it had overreached its mandate. The official reply reaffirmed that the Church’s teaching is based on divine law, and cannot be changed on the dignity of human life, pre-natal or post-natal, nor could the Church change her teaching on marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

This is where the Holy Father’s “integral ecology” begins to look interesting as a response not only to the United Nations, but to all local cultures, cities, and countries which may make urgent pleas concerning an ecological crisis, but then fail to see the human crisis. Pope Francis sees this failure to see the whole picture manifested precisely in our “throwaway culture” which wastes human life, especially the weakest and most vulnerable among us, the unborn, the refugee, the elderly, and the poor.

The U.N.’s new “Sustainable Development Goals,” which are set to be finalized this fall, will center on climate change. Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si’, in part, to influence global thinking on “our common home” in a way which showed that the commitment to the environment also demands a commitment to all life, but especially human life. This is why in the encyclical he says: “At times we see an obsession with denying any pre-eminence to the human person; more zeal is shown in protecting other species than in defending the dignity which all human beings share in equal measure.”

Pope Francis wants us to think about the ways in which the fundamental things of life, such as a baby in the womb, a family without a country, or the health of our planet on which we all depend, have to be considered together. Since everything is interrelated,” Pope Francis writes, the U.N.’s concern for the protection of nature, or Planned Parenthood’s concern for women’s health, is “incompatible with the justification of abortion.” The Holy Father asks, “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?”

This is why he spoke to the mayors this week not only about climate change, but also human trafficking and modern-day slavery: The love of creation is inseparable from the love of the human person. The more we become numb to the evil of abortion and fetal organ trade, to human trafficking and even the slavery of persons, the more our regard for the dignity of all human life withers. Jesus Christ came into “our common home” as an unborn child — truly human, truly divine in the womb of Mary to reveal to us the depths of God’s love for what he has made. It is for this reason that Pope Francis continues to surprise us with his integral ecology, good news which helps us to see that our common home is worth caring for because the human person who inhabits it is the image and likeness of the God who made it good.

—     Chad Pecknold is an associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America School of Theology and Religious Studies.

John Garvey

Few outlets led with “Pope says Mary is ‘Mother and Queen of all creation.’” Maybe that’s because the passage on Mary comes at the very end of the encyclical. Or maybe it didn’t seem newsworthy. It is, after all, common for papal encyclicals to conclude with a nod to the Mother of God. But it’s a passage worth reflecting on, because Mary, as Pope Francis says, can help us “to look at this world with eyes of wisdom” (241).

How does Mary teach us to see the world? The gospels tell us that she contemplated the life of Christ, treasuring it in her heart. She must have seen his first smiles, watched him learn to walk, and heard his inarticulate gurgling slowly become words. Like any new parent, she must have marveled at the beauty of each perfect toe, the complexity of both tiny ears, the softness of his cheeks. But her experience was also unique. While contemplating the matter of her Son, she contemplated the Son of God, who took the material world to himself in the Incarnation. Those toes and ears and cheeks belonged to God.

This, Pope Francis says, is the proper way to see reality. Creation is not ours to do with as we wish. What was true about Mary’s observations in a unique sense is true about all of creation in another sense. As Pope Francis puts it:

The ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. (83)

All of creation belongs to God. It is ordered toward God, and is shot through with his artistry. The first step in caring for creation, Pope Francis teaches in Laudato Si’, is recognizing it for what it is.

Mary, Queen of all creation, teach us to see the world with eyes of wisdom.

– John Garvey is president of The Catholic University of America.

Chad Pecknold

By now everyone should have read, or at least read about, Laudato Si’, the Pope’s latest encyclical on “Our Common Home.” I think we see here some important themes that have already come up on the Holy Father’s Latin American mission, and are likely to resurface when he visits us this September. Five stand out:

1. Pope Francis likes to invoke personal images. The encyclical wasn’t officially on the environment or climate change, but on “our common home.” This powerfully evocative image of the home recalls Pope Benedict’s frequent proclamation that nature is something prior to us, a gift which has been given by God, and which we can’t simply manipulate or abuse. The image of the home makes this theme more personal, but it achieves the same end. Whenever you hear Francis talk about “our common home” you should be hearing a challenge to relativism. Francis speaks less to climate change skepticism than to common-good skepticism. I expect we’ll hear this theme again in September, especially when he addresses a politically divided Congress.

2. The theme of conversion is also prominent in Laudato Si’. Fundamentally, Pope Francis believes that it is the turn away from God that causes all our self-destructive habits, and what we most need is to return to God. He first calls us to an existential/metaphysical conversion to recognize our common home as a gift of the Creator, then he calls for conversion to God as Father, conversion to Christ and his saints who show us how to participate in the harmony between God and creation, and conversion in and through the Most Holy Eucharist, which unites the created world to the heavenly home, and forms us to think about the universal destination of goods. Listen for these calls for conversion this fall.

3. In Evangelii Gaudium, the Holy Father stressed (perhaps subtweeting American Conservative senior editor Rod Dreher!) the need for Catholics to follow “the missionary option.” This is the message which is also being enacted by Pope Francis’s mission to the Americas: Every Catholic is sent into the world to preach good news to the poor, not only the materially poor, but also the spiritually destitute, those who are lost without God.

4. A “culture of encounter” is often how Francis translates mission. For the Holy Father, “dialogue” is tied to mission. We can see this in the way he always has an eye on God as Father, and Mary as our Mother — for he consistently proclaims that all people have God as their Father, and then invokes Mary as the Mother we all need. This is the spiritual context for encounter, a word which should always be heard as an invitation to participate in Mary’s Yes to God, and as a call to be enfolded into the saving arms of Holy Mother Church.

5. This Holy Father is a master of gestures. Everyone saw, and immediately understood, his look of disapproval when Bolivian President Evo Morales gave him a hammer and sickle crucifix. These are the small, powerful, even prophetic gestures the Pope is now known for, but we should be careful to interpret them well.

Together, Laudato Si’ and the Latin American mission give us some clues for what to expect from the Holy Father’s mission to the people of the United States of America…

– Chad Pecknold is an associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America School of Theology and Religious Studies. 

Lucia Silecchia

But, of greater personal interest to me was a series of questions that Pope Francis posed to those gathered at the University — questions that I will reflect on as a teacher preparing for Pope Francis’s visit to our own pontifical university. He asked:

“My question to you, as educators, is this: Do you watch over your students, helping them to develop a critical sense, an open mind capable of caring for today’s world? A spirit capable of seeking new answers to the varied challenges that society sets before humanity today? Are you able to encourage them not to disregard the world around them, what is happening all over? Can you encourage them to do that? To make that possible, you need to take them outside the university lecture hall; their minds need to leave the classroom, their hearts must go out of the classroom. Does our life, with its uncertainties, its mysteries and its questions, find a place in the university curriculum or different academic activities? Do we enable and support a constructive debate which fosters dialogue in the pursuit of a more humane world?… How do we help our young people not to see a university degree as synonymous with higher status, with more money or social prestige? It is not synonymous with that. How can we help make their education a mark of greater responsibility in the face of today’s problems, the needs of the poor, concern for the environment?”

Those are questions harder than any I have ever asked on an exam (my students may dispute that!) and questions that could take a lifetime to answer. They are questions that ask me to think about the heart of my vocation as a teacher, particularly at a university with our own unique mission and identity. All are questions worth pondering, not only in anticipation of our third papal visit, but in anticipation of the start of a new academic year.

This will be the 25th August that I have started a new academic year here. And, yet, the questions Pope Francis posed to my colleagues in Ecuador last week are fresh, new questions for me to pose to myself. In particular, he asks me to think about what I do as a teacher to assist students not merely in preparation for their careers, but in preparation for lives well led. So, in the weeks to come as I prepare both to start a new school year and to welcome Pope Francis to Catholic University, these will be my questions for prayer and reflection.

And, lest you students reading this blog believe Pope Francis had challenges only for us, your teachers, you are out of luck! He posed a question or two for you, as well. And, just as I will be thinking about his questions for educators, I invite you to think of the question he passionately asks you: “Do you realize that this time of study is not only a right, but also a privilege which you have? How many of your friends, known or unknown, would like to have a place in this house but, for various reasons, do not? To what extent do our studies help us and bring us to feel solidarity with them? Ask these questions, dear students.”

Pope Francis has given us all the gift of great questions and here’s hoping that in this exciting time of prayerful preparation and refection, we might be blessed with some answers to these questions as well!

– Lucia Silecchia is a professor of law at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. She also is director of the International Human Rights Summer Law Program in Rome.