National Catholic Reporter's 2014 "Our Environment" special section

By BRIAN ROEWE

t was 1981.Only two years separated

the United States from its sec-ond oil crisis in a decade. In 1979, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomei-ni had slashed oil shipments to

the U.S. to fewer than 500,000 barrels a day. Prices at the pump had soared and gas lines lengthened.

In this context, the Committee on Social Development and World Peace of the U.S. Catholic Conference draft-ed “Reflections on the Energy Crisis,” a statement addressing energy policy.

Though never endorsed by the full assembly, it remains, 33 years later, the most comprehensive engagement by U.S. bishops into the moral implica-tions of energy decisions.

Recently, it has become the subject of a three-year study by a task force within the Catholic Theological So-ciety of America that will apply the ’81 energy statement to current reali-ties. Eight theologians will explore the various themes of the letter at their second meeting in June, during the so-ciety’s annual conference. They aim to eventually publish a paper on energy justice that will update the document with new research and a new context — climate change.

“It’s the critical ethical issue of our time, with so many implications,” said Erin Lothes, an assistant theology pro-fessor at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, N.J. She convened the task force, known as the Interest Group on Discipleship and Sustainability.

Lothes described the statement as “amazingly present,” even after

33 years. “This letter was noting the importance of energy to fair devel-opment, to peace and social stability around the world,” she told NCR. “It talked about the risks of waiting while the situation worsened.”

Development of the document be-gan in January 1980. That month a conference, “Religion and Energy in the ’80s,” brought religious leaders to Washington, with President Jimmy Carter asking their help in address-ing the energy crisis, saying that “conservation of oil has religious con-notations,” particularly in a nation of “profligate wasters.”

Among the participants was Bishop William Cosgrove of Belleville, Ill., chair of the subcommittee on energy, who said religion’s greatest contribu-tion “is to communicate some of the human reality of the energy situation and motivate a human response to it.”

Just six days after the social devel-opment committee published its state-ment on April 2, 1981, Walt Grazer began with the bishops’ conference as policy adviser for food and agriculture. One of his first duties became selling the document across the country.

“There was a lot of debate at that time about this energy question,” said Grazer, who headed the conference’s Environmental Justice Program from 1993 until 2007.

The bishops provided him plenty of material to enter the conversation.

“The fading of the petroleum age disquiets the entire world,” the com-mittee began.

“Now it is only a matter of time un-til oil and gas production peaks and starts to drop,” it continued. “In the

years ahead, the nations of the earth, both rich and poor, must learn to con-serve what supplies they can obtain. They must also find some way of switching over to dependence on alter-native sources of energy without sink-ing into economic chaos.”

Fearful of future oil crises further destabilizing an American economy, the bishops perceived a “special moral urgency” for the U.S. to lead the world toward its energy future.

Failure to do so would instead lead

the world toward destruction, they said, warning, “The black seed of the final holocaust may lie beneath the sand of the Middle East.”

Out on the road, Grazer highlighted the moral and ethical dimensions the bishops saw in energy decisions: its production, distribution, and impact upon the health of both people and ecosystems. Often, voices of opposi-tion would question the bishops’ in-volvement in technical matters.

Anticipating such retorts, the com-mittee outlined the principles of Cath-olic social teaching — energy is a life issue in a just society, conservation of creation an obligation — that formed a framework for moral reflection and action.

“The fundamental problem, simply put, is the need to effect a transition from primary dependence on oil and natural gas to primary dependence on something else in the fairly near fu-ture,” the committee said.

It examined in detail six energy op-tions: oil and natural gas, coal, nuclear fission, geothermal energy, synthetic oil and gas, and solar power.

“America moves on petroleum,” they observed, and a transition could not occur overnight. However, they concluded, “As long as oil remains our primary fuel, we are on a collision course with nature.”

In coal, they saw a “key transitional fuel,” but worried about dangers it posed to workers and the land and air. They supported a cautious, continued development of nuclear energy, aware of the “great evil” of its misuse and accidents, such as the 1979 Three Mile

Continued on Page 2a

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER

OUR ENVIRONMENTAPRIL 11-24, 2014 NCRonline.org

Time for a tuneup

—Getty Images/AFP/Nicholas Kamm

Students protesting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline lie on a black plastic tarp representing an oil spill in front of the White House in Washing-ton, D.C., March 2.

—Newscom/Everett Collection/Warren K. Leffler

Cars wait in long lines for gasoline in the Washington, D.C., area on June 15, 1979.

IWith updates for today’s context, bishops’ 1981 message on energy could have renewed impact

2a OURENVIRONMENTNATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER APRIL 11-24, 2014

Continued from Page 1a

Island catastrophe. “By contrast, the general reaction to

solar power is hope,” the bishops said. Viewing wind and water within so-

lar power, they described the sun as “an inexhaustible fount of energy for a variety of purposes.” It is a “renewable and generally benign” energy source that is available to all peoples, especial-ly the poor. “We can render the whole human family a service by perfecting the relevant technology,” they said.

A sound energy perspective, they concluded, rises above selfish con-cerns of producers and consumers, and recognizes the transition to re-newables “as a moment in history, a link between episodes in the develop-ment of civilization.”

Today’s energy sceneThe committee envisioned such a

transition period taking U.S. 20 to 30 years to switch from a dependency on oil and natural gas to alternative sources of energy.

So far, the energy landscape has not undergone such a transition. The 33 years since the statement have seen a parade of energy-related disasters — Chernobyl (1986), Exxon Valdez (1989), Deepwater Horizon (2010) and Fuku-shima (2011) — as well as the symbolic tug of war for America’s energy fu-ture that has become the Keystone XL transnational pipeline.

In 1981, nearly 90 percent of U.S. energy consumption came from pe-troleum, natural gas and coal, accord-ing to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Today, more than 80 percent still comes from those three sources. Meanwhile, fossil fuel com-panies run TV commercials touting their energy sources as the solution to tomorrow’s energy needs. In Febru-ary, leading coal producer Peabody En-ergy launched its “Advanced Energy for Life” campaign — aimed at ending global energy poverty through coal.

The current energy scene, it seems, clamors for a moral conscience.

For many, the new lens for scrutiniz-ing energy policy has become climate change. In 1981, the bishops made passing reference to “a darker, more shadowy threat” of burning coal that could raise global temperatures, melt the polar ice caps, and impact food supplies and growing conditions.

“No one is sure how great an in-crease in carbon dioxide levels would be necessary to produce such conse-quences or if they would happen at all. But it would be the height of folly to tamper in ignorance with the ecology of the entire planet,” they said.

Today, 97 percent of climate sci-entists have concluded that human-caused climate change is a reality.

The bishops’ committee also proved prophetic in suggesting that govern-ment employ “stringent performance standards” for automobiles and build-ings — core pieces of President Barack Obama’s climate action plan.

That the bishops encouraged a full cost accounting of energy options was welcome, said Loretto Sr. Kathy Wright. Her community has raised similar points in its objection to the Bluegrass Pipeline carrying fracking byproducts across its lands and other parts of Kentucky.

Wright said a more complete cost assessment of energy choices comes “when you look at the health risks, when you look at the environmental damage, when you look at how peo-ple’s access becomes limited because you get a few giant organizations who can control everything.”

Through such observations, “Reflec-tions on the Energy Crisis” retains its relevance, said Grazer, who has worked as a consultant for the Na-tional Religious Partnership for the Environment since he left the bishops’ conference in 2007.

“It’s still a precious statement but would obviously need to be upgraded, if you will, a tuneup,” he said.

That tuneup appears more likely to come from outside the conference, such as from the theological task force, than from within. Since 1981, the bishops’ conference, which declined multiple interview requests, has said little on energy choices. It briefly broached the topic in pastoral letters or statements on peace (1983), econom-ics (1986), the environment (1991) and climate change (2001). In May, the do-mestic and international policy com-mittees restated key principles of the document in a two-page statement.

But regional assemblies have spoken on energy decisions. The Washington state bishops addressed it in their 1991 Columbia River pastoral letter, and more recently this fall in a brief state-ment on a proposed coal terminal.

Likewise, the bishops of Appalachia

included energy aspects in two pas-toral letters, “This Land Is Home to Me” (1975) and “At Home in the Web of Life” (1995).

Glenmary Fr. John Rausch helped develop the Appalachian letters, and they are frequent tools in his ministry, which often locates him in coal coun-try. The ’81 statement? Less so, but af-ter rediscovering it, Rausch said, he was “struck by how complete it was in terms of looking at energy alterna-tives.” He said an updated appendix — addressing technological updates, new health research, consolidation of en-ergy control, and fear of altering the energy status quo — would create “one very good study guide for today.”

For 29-year-old Jason Miller, the ’81 document predates him. The director of campaigns and development for the Franciscan Action Network was unaware of the document, despite his work’s frequent intersection of faith, climate change and energy, like his ar-rest outside the White House during a protest against the Keystone pipeline.

Miller said a renewed statement by the bishops’ conference would offer val-idation to the Franciscan Action Net-work and other groups on the ground level, like the Catholic Climate Cov-enant, that seek to motivate Catholics to engage the moral dimensions of energy.

“It defeats the whole partisan, back-and-forth bickering,” he said. “If you can just say, hey, this is what the bish-ops have said.”

Wright, treasurer for the Lorettos, said language addressing divestment

and guidance on how Catholics play a part with their finances would be helpful. “The oil companies are, from an economic-only standpoint, a great investment. … But there are so many other costs and factors that are part of it,” she said.

For Lothes, any updates to the state-ment should first “highlight the un-equivocal nature of the science” on cli-mate change. It should emphasize that energy decisions are ethical decisions, “part of our sacramental reverence for creation and care for the neighbor,” she said.

She wonders what impact an updat-ed statement, endorsed by all bishops, could have. If the U.S. represents near-ly a fifth of global carbon dioxide emis-sions, and Catholics make up about 20 percent of the U.S. population, then American Catholics represent 4 per-cent of the global solution.

For environmentalists hungry for a strong moral voice, the January news that Pope Francis would devote his next encyclical to ecology elicited ex-citement. The pope posing with a shirt condemning fracking didn’t hurt, ei-ther. But wherever the energy conver-sation picks up next, the members of the social development committee in 1981 didn’t seem to view their contri-bution as the end of the line.

“The Catholic Christian commu-nity should be a continuous presence in the energy debate as long as issues so closely touching the welfare of hu-manity go unresolved,” they wrote.

EnErgy: TransiTion sTill unrEalizEd

—CNS/Patrick Murphy-Racey

Sr. Rosemary Kirwin checks the garden on the property of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Ky., in 2013. The congregation has joined others in opposing the Bluegrass Pipe-line that would carry natural gas liquids to the Gulf Coast.

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OURENVIRONMENT 3aNATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER APRIL 11-24, 2014

By ELISE D. GARCÍA

The snow fell steadily through the night and into the morning, adding an-other 5 or 6 inches to the layers blanket-ing the ground from earlier snowfalls. At our house — just outside the city limits of Adrian, Mich., and 3 miles from the motherhouse of the Adrian Dominican Sisters — we can hear the clang and hum of three oil rigs, drill-ing 24/7, breaking the winter stillness of our neighborhood where the few remaining cornfields amid suburban houses are rapidly becoming oil fields.

This is the stark reality that lead-ers of the rights of nature movement, who met at a global summit Jan. 13-17 in Otavalo and Quito, Ecuador, are up against. They returned home to face the tar sands of Alberta, Canada; megaton coal extraction near Austra-lia’s Great Barrier Reef; genetic ma-nipulation of India’s seeds; fracking in shale basins around the United States; copper mining and oil extraction in the Amazon; and other threats to life in Af-rica, Europe and South America.

It is the stark reality I faced, having been sent to the summit by the leader-ship of my congregation to see how we as a community might engage in this movement in our struggle against eco-logical ruination.

“Even as we address concrete situ-ations in various parts of the world,

we need to remain focused on the big picture,” renowned environmental leader and Indian physicist Vandana Shiva urged toward the end of the summit. “This movement is about transitioning from killing economies to living economies.”

“It’s about changing the dream, the vision of what it means to live well,” said Cormac Cullinan, South Afri-can lawyer and author of the semi-nal Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice (2002).

“It is a movement with a powerful spiritual dimension,” said Adrian Do-minican Sr. Pat Siemen, who has led the effort to introduce the rights of na-ture in U.S. law schools — the belly of the beast — through the establishment in 2006 of the nation’s first Center for Earth Jurisprudence at Barry Univer-sity School of Law in Orlando, Fla.

But how to infuse this larger, dream-changing, spiritual concept into hu-man consciousness around the planet?

That challenge absorbed much dis-cussion. By the end of the summit, leaders of the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature had outlined a num-ber of steps, including the establish-ment of a permanent World Tribunal on Rights of Nature and a week of glob-al acts of Satyagraha — nonviolent re-sistance — beginning Oct. 2, Mahatma

Gandhi’s birthday.Another key commitment the lead-

ers made was to sow the concept among ecological, social justice, faith-based, farming and other organiza-tions concerned about the well-being of the community of life on Earth.

Like the “butterfly effect” in chaos theory, where the air disturbance caused by a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world could cause a hur-ricane elsewhere, the rights of nature concept — a limited disturbance to the status quo — could have the capacity to change whole systems.

Making resonant connections is key to stimulating the amplifying effect.

For people of faith in the Christian tradition, a resonant connection to the ethic of rights of nature is available through the mystics and their sense of the natural world.

“Mystics and theologians like Thom-as Aquinas recognized creation as a sa-cred revelation of God — as God’s pri-mordial Scripture,” Siemen said. “Over the centuries, we have lost that sense of the sacred, but it is being reclaimed, es-pecially among women religious.”

Through the teachings of the late Pas-sionist Fr. Thomas Berry (see Page 6a) and the instrumental work of Caldwell Dominican Sr. Miriam Therese Mac-Gillis, women religious throughout the United States and elsewhere have embraced the mystics’ reverence for na-ture and care of creation as a constitu-ent part of their peace and justice work.

“Rights of nature language may not yet be widely known or adopted among Catholics,” Siemen said, “but it’s a natural for Catholic sisters, who could play a powerful role in advancing this movement.”

And so could women throughout the world, said Osprey Orielle Lake of the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus.

“Between 60 to 80 percent of all food production in the world is done by women,” Lake said. “Who’s been sav-ing and caring for seeds? Women.”

When it comes to water issues, stud-ies by the United Nations repeatedly show that if women aren’t involved, those solutions won’t work, according to Lake. Further, she noted, women decide 80 percent of all consumer pur-chases in the United States, impacting both our economy and planet.

“Women are a key constituency for the rights of nature movement,” Lake said.

A partial listing points to the num-ber of women leading organizations (which are also often founded by wom-en) that make up the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature. The alliance it-self is directed by a woman, Robin Mi-lam. Some other women who run orga-nizations include:

n Michelle Maloney of Australian Earth Laws Alliance;

n Carmen Capriles of Reacción Climática in Bolivia;

n Natalia Greene of Fundación Pa-chamama, Esperanza Martínez of Ac-ción Ecológica, Blanca Chancoso of Saramantas (“Women of the Corn”), and Gloria Ushigua of the Association of Sápara Women, all in Ecuador;

n Alexandra Postelnicu of Pachama-ma Romania;

n Doris Ragettli of Rights of Mother Earth in Switzerland;

n Mumta Ito of International Centre for Wholistic Law and Liz Rivers of Wild Law UK, both in the United King-dom;

n Linda Sheehan of Earth Law Cen-ter, Atossa Soltani of Amazon Watch, Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange, Mari Margil of the Community Envi-ronmental Legal Defense Fund, Casey Camp-Horinek of Indigenous Envi-ronmental Network, all in the United States.

Affirming the pivotal role of wom-en to the success of the movement, Cullinan quoted an African proverb: “When women are in charge, even the rivers can flow uphill.”

The challenge ahead, both in terms of the magnitude of the problem and the speed with which it must be over-come, might well be akin to having a river flow uphill.

On the last day of the summit, when the facts of multiple crimes and vio-lence against Earth were presented at the tribunal, the most potentially cata-strophic — and the biggest ticking time bomb — was global warming.

As Pablo Solón, former Bolivian am-bassador to the United Nations, made clear, two-thirds of all proven fossil fuels need to remain in the ground if we are to limit global warming to no more than a 3.6-degree increase in av-erage temperature. We are already ex-periencing recurring record-breaking typhoons, droughts, floods and fires at less than half that outer limit (1.44 degrees), which the international com-munity agrees should not be exceeded.

On our present course, the world is slated to go well beyond that do-not-cross line to a 6.48-degree increase by midcentury, more than three times the present increase. The time may seem distant; it is not. Today’s first-graders will be striving to raise young families in a very changed landscape.

“The talks in Paris next year are our last chance to change this catastrophic trajectory,” Solón said. If recent cli-mate change talks are any indicator, the outcome is not promising.

Throughout this year, Dominican sisters in the United States are engag-ing the question: “What is Earth ask-ing of the Dominican order?” It is a question that rises from the depths of St. Dominic’s sense of non-duality — that spirit and matter are one. It is a question that might well be asked of the entire human species.

[Adrian Dominican Sr. Elise D. García, is the

former co-director of Santuario Sisterfarm,

an ecology center in the Texas Hill Country.]

rights of nature a

natural fit for women religious

—Patricia Siemen

The opening ceremony for the Global Rights of Nature Summit in the courtyard of a 300-year-old hacienda in Otavalo, Ecuador, Jan. 14

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Christiana Z. Peppard’s Just Wa-ter: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis is as comprehensive and thoughtful as it is accessible. It is also disturbing, which should be expected, given the subject.

Peppard is an assistant profes-sor of theology, science and ethics at Fordham University. As her position and the book’s title imply, Just Water reviews the scientific, social and po-litical realities of freshwater through the helpful lens of ethics informed by faith, particularly Catholicism.

Peppard’s examination of our use and misuse of water thus follows the long Catholic tradition of plac-ing reason in dialogue with faith. It calls to mind how pastors might ap-ply Catholic teachings to the particu-lar sufferings of parishioners or how water regulators like me consider the case-specific variables of whatever it is we’re investigating and whatever laws we are called to enforce. Peppard

writes that the challenge of clean wa-ter requires the need “to specify val-ues that can honor both universality and particularity and to navigate care-fully their translation into norms.”

This theme of a relationship be-tween universality and particularity is a helpful observation — one that we may not consider when swallowing a glass of cold water. How does our need for that water unite humanity? And how did it come to be that that clean water is able to fill that glass at this time? These are the sorts of questions prompted by Peppard’s book — ques-tions that many working in water sup-ply and wastewater treatment fields

wish more people would ask. To help answer these questions, Pep-

pard stresses two fundamental truths: Water “is a universal, baseline require-ment” and there is no substitute for it. With these global precepts in mind, the reader can better encounter specific is-sues, such as:

n The threat to groundwater from hy-draulic fracturing;

n The depletion of freshwater aqui-fers;

n Scandalously polluted portions of the Jordan River;

n The dark side of bottled water;n The pros and cons of technology to

meet our water woes;n The true value of water, seen as a

right to life, not a commodity;n The impact of a changing climate

on already delicate freshwater systems.Peppard nicely balances these partic-

ulars by providing only the necessary details. But that’s all we need, because most of the details are revelations.

For such a watery planet, only a small fraction is freshwater. Of that, about a

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How did that cold, clean water come to fill yourJUST WATER: THEOLOGY, ETHICS, AND THE GLOBAL WATER CRISISBy Christiana Z. PeppardPublished by Orbis Books, $28

—Newscom/EPA/Rolex Dela Pena

A Filipino seals canisters with drinking water for sale in March 2013 in Quezon City, east of Manila, Philippines.

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Using all ways and means…When Sister

Their goal is to wipe out the sad reality of villagers tra� cking their children for sex in exchange for food for their families. Sister Virginia returned to the U.S. where she serves as care coordinator for elderly Salvatorian Sisters. Then, sharing her vision with former students, their parents, her family and friends, she launched a grassroots campaign. In six months, she raised more than $70,000 for a new tractor, plow and wagon for the villages of Masasi, Mekulani, and Tundura. Sister Virginia brings her passion and the goodness and kindness of Jesus wherever she nds great need.

…the love of God inspires.

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OURENVIRONMENT 5aNATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER APRIL 11-24, 2014

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third comes from underground. But such sources typically recharge at a far, far lower rate than we consume them. And surprisingly, the combination of industrial and domestic water use (the latter being what we drink, bathe with and use to flush our toilets) adds up to less than a third of all freshwater use. Most is used (and often lost) in agricul-ture. And did you know how much wa-ter it takes to produce a pound of beef? You may be alarmed when you find out.

While all this is important, the real strength of Just Water is not in its sta-tistics. Rather, it is Peppard’s calling our attention to the fact that when con-flicts and shortages do arise, they are not so easily solved by technologies or government edicts.

Having learned this in my own wa-ter career, I am delighted that Peppard stresses that free will and reason must be in conversation with something greater if we are to adequately engage issues of resource use. Peppard builds her case by taking advantage of a vari-ety of thinkers, including magisterial

statements on water and related is-sues. These come most especially from Pope Benedict XVI, as well as from bishops across the globe. (The result-ing overview of ecclesial statements is

itself worth the price of the book.) But even with pontifical backing,

some readers won’t appreciate every-thing about Just Water. Peppard’s re-view of Catholic involvement in social

issues is naturally limited by the size of the book. Sin and grace are scarce, and a discourse on liberation theology will be difficult for some to wade through. This may taint the book’s reception by those who need its message the most.

And an extended criticism of what we are told is the traditional exegesis of John 4, the woman at the well, ap-pears as a non sequitur about exegeti-cal bias rather than a support for the book’s essential themes.

But such detours should be expected in a work that covers so much and offers so much more. Just Water generously connects faith with reason, human con-sumption with theology and ethics, and private and public sector choices with the common good. Ultimately, Just Wa-ter is not just a book about water. It is about the many particular facets of be-ing human that assist us in meeting the universal call to love God and neighbor — and doing so, of course, by respecting the limits of creation.

[William Patenaude is a principal engineer at

the Rhode Island Department of Environmen-

tal Management’s Office of Water Resources.

Holding a Master of Arts in theology, he writes

at catholicecology.blogspot.com.]

—Newscom/VWPics/Ton Koene

Children carry water from a well in Burundi.

glass?


By SHARON ABERCROMBIE

One sunny Saturday in November 2002, more than 200 environmentalists packed into St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, Calif., to honor Pas-sionist Fr. Thomas Berry. For us, he was always Thomas, a gentle, humble soul, our beloved teacher, mentor and spiri-tual guide who brought joy to everyone.

In 2002, I was working as assistant editor of EarthLight Magazine, an in-terfaith journal of ecological spiritual-ity published in Oakland, Calif. Dur-ing my previous studies for a master’s degree in creation spirituality at Holy Names University there, the work of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme functioned as part of the core curric-ulum. Their enlivening on-campus lectures were not to be missed.

We were certainly a diverse lot that Saturday — students, storytell-ers, cosmologists, university profes-sors, journalists, gardeners, poets, musicians and social activists.

Since the 1970s, Thomas had been giving us an ongoing assignment to fall in love again with our precious Earth home. We were to use this re-enchantment to create our own ver-sions of the Great Work to help heal the dangerously imminent terminal damage to our environment caused by the industrial, petroleum-obsessed corporate establishment.

Thomas encouraged us to create mutually enhancing relations with the non-human Earth community, and to see the world around us as a “thou” rather than an “it,” to remember that our world is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.

“While humans cannot make a blade of grass,” he said, “there is liable not to be a blade of grass unless it is accepted, protected and fostered by hu-mans. If we approach our role based on the ‘use’ relationship that pervades the Earth, we will not succeed.”

This year marks the 100th anniver-sary of Thomas Berry’s birth on Nov. 9, 1914. He has left a legacy that, like the universe itself, continues to unfold.

Our human responsibility, Thom-as spelled out in The Universe Story, which he co-authored with Swimme, “is to develop our capacities to listen as incessantly as the hovering hydrogen atom, as profoundly as our primal an-cestors and their faithful descendants in today’s indigenous peoples. The ad-venture of the universe depends upon our capacity to listen.”

Lauren de Boer, EarthLight’s editor, recounted in one tribute that Thomas once told Swimme to regard “the sing-ing bird as the hero of the new story.”

Time and again, Thomas reminded us that when we destroy the natural world, we destroy the ground of our religious imagination.

Living, breathing examples of the Great Work thrived in every one of the large church’s meeting rooms that Saturday, as some of his students and followers presented a series of mini-workshops on how they were applying Thomas’ teachings.

Mary Ellen Hill, a professional sto-ryteller from the Bay Area, stepped to the front of the church sanctuary to remind us of our cosmic origins. Dressed in a long flowing gown, deco-rated with spirals, suns and moons, and with glitter dust sparkling on her face, Hill told the story of the universe,

all 13 billion years of it, which eventu-ally delivered Thomas Berry to us.

“In the autumn of 1914, a baby hu-man boy was born, filled with ancient creativity, Earth flesh and star stuff. His parents named their third child Wil-liam Nathan, who later was called Un-cle Brother and known to most of us as

Thomas Berry. His human family, their collie dog, the Carolina Hills, welcomed him and goldenrod fading in the mead-ow, Sun, maybe moonlight, the smell of fall. And all of them were saying in their own unique voice, ‘We are so glad you have come. We await with delight-ful anticipation your magnificence.’ ”

Thomas died June 1, 2009, seven years after the Berkeley celebration. The first funeral was attended by his family and friends in Greensboro, N.C., at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church. His niece, Ann Berry Somers, remembered her Uncle Brother that day as bringing her to understand that “the sacred nature of the universe is real, not something added on to the physical.”

A larger celebration of Thomas’ life took place later that month at the Epis-copal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. De Boer recalls that the ritual featured dancers weaving through the crowd, “trailing banners that symbolized life on Earth and the water planet.”

Thomas’ final send-off and burial took place at the Green Mountain Monastery in Greensboro, Vt. In 1999, Thomas had helped Passionist Sr. Gail Worcelo and Sr. Bernadette Bostwick to found the monastery, which is dedi-cated to honoring the unfolding of the universe.

The number of Thomas’ students who are furthering his work is as-tounding.

Several years ago, Swimme, a fac-ulty member at the California Insti-tute of Integral Studies in San Fran-cisco, teamed up with two of his close colleagues, Yale University teachers John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, to write and produce an hourlong doc-umentary, “Journey of the Universe.”

Tucker and Grim initiated the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. Tucker helped edit many of Thomas’ essays for publication, including The Great Work, Evening Thoughts and The Sacred Universe.

Thomas’ work features prominently in two other academic programs. The

Sophia Center at Holy Names University in Oakland has

placed the new universe story at the center of its curriculum.

This coming July, the center’s an-nual summer institute will celebrate Thomas’ life.

Iona College’s religious studies de-partment in New Rochelle, N.Y., offers classes on the new universe story, the natural world and the creation-cen-

tered mystics, said Notre Dame Sr. Kathleen Deignan, a religious studies professor and the director of the Iona Spirituality Institute. In 2009, after at-tending Thomas’ Vermont funeral, Deignan and three friends, all his for-mer students, decided to initiate the Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue. The forum has sponsored ac-tivities and speakers on environmental “Great Work” leaders.

Interest in Thomas’ work continues to grow. The Center for Ecozoic Studies in Chapel Hill, N.C., will sponsor a col-loquium May 28-30. It is inviting par-ticipants to submit scholarly papers looking at the contemporary relevance and potential applications of his work. The center’s founder, Herman Greene, is welcoming submissions of art, per-formances and testimonies as well.

I asked Deignan what she imagines Thomas’ reaction might be regarding Pope Francis’ plans to write an encyc-lical on the environment. Deignan’s reply: “I think he would rejoice and say, “Catholicism is finally moving into its ecological phase. Now it can begin to seriously mediate the com-munity of faith to the natural world, and become a full integral religion.”

[Sharon Abercrombie writes for the Eco

Catholic blog on the NCR website: NCRon

line.org/blogs/eco-catholic.]

Berry’s legacy unfolds like the universe

—Kim Hoa Fox

Passionist Fr. Thomas Ber-ry in 1987

—NASA Earth Observatory