American Roman Catholicism and the environmental movement

Abstract

In the later part of the 20th Century, the nearly two millennium old institution of the Roman Catholic Church began to address as a body the issues of Environmental Stewardship. Although lay, religious and clerical scholars have addressed environmental issues in the past, it wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that bishops in a number of dioceses, provinces and nations around the world produced letters addressing environmental issues as part of their teaching mission (Magisterium) on Social Justice. It was not until 1990 that the Pope formally addressed the issue in his New Year's Message. Many of the key elements of the Church's positions on protection of the Environment are very socially progressive and quite in line with mainstream American and European Environmental activism and reflective of some of the best elements of Environmental Science. This progressivism is often surprising to many outside the Church and often ignored by Catholic laity in positions of social and political power. Divergent theological movements within and outside of the Church have diluted progress on these issues, especially the controversies revolving around the area of Earth Centered Theology. Nonetheless, bodies of scholarship and activism based in different parts relying upon Science and Theology are producing an upsurge in collaboration and a fruitful marriage of these seemingly divergent areas. This paper addresses the history of emerging Catholic environmental teaching, the interface of Science and Theology in Catholic teaching, potential impacts of including Environmental Stewardship under the umbrella of the Magisterium and remaining areas where collaboration can be developed.