This essay avers a relatively narrow claim. This is that the theosemiotic project of Michael Raposa is an ideal vehicle for addressing a concern about the integral ecology of Pope Francis, which is that one of integral ecology's signature phrases, the “cry of the Earth,” is insufficiently clear on how humans can understand, respect, and respond to the agency of non-human nature. This claim exists alongside another, broader claim, which at present is only suggested, but which bears mentioning as part of the context in which the narrow claim can be seen to matter. The broad claim is that to demonstrate this narrow claim is also to point to a pragmatist methodology for theological ethics.These two claims are linked in several ways. It is evident from Raposa's self-descriptions of theosemiotic, for example, that his project should be identified as pragmatist, even if its influences extend beyond pragmatism. As for integral ecology, as a pillar of Pope Francis's moral vision, this is clearly a fitting object of theological ethical attention, for non-Catholics as well as Catholics. Another link between the narrow claim and the broad claim can be seen in the subtitle of my essay, in which the word “case” functions in two ways: as “example of,” and as “argument for.” Inspired by C.S. Peirce's pithy claim that existing things, that is, facts do not “need reasons” because they “are reasons,” the dual reference here for “case” is meant to communicate that the theosemiotic relevance to integral ecology is both an example of a pragmatist theological ethics and a reason for greater consideration of pragmatism and theological ethics in partnership.1It helps to be clear on what is meant by the terms “theosemiotic,” “integral ecology,” and “theological ethics.” Theosemiotic refers to a method within philosophy of religion that both explicates practices and concepts drawn from religion and illuminates religious meanings for practices and concepts that do not immediately register as religious. Raposa introduced theosemiotic in a chapter from his 1989 book, Peirce's Philosophy of Religion, and the fullest expression of the project to date has been his 2020 book, Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning. For present purposes, theosemiotic's most important premises are that the world is “perfused with signs,” such that “semiosis is the life-blood flowing through the universe, giving it meaning and life,” and also that humans “inhabit such a world . . . as potential readers capable of discerning fragments of its meaning.”2 According to Raposa, “a theosemiotic perspective expedites the task of understanding what makes a community worth caring about, enabling one who adopts it to formulate morally meaningful answers to the question ‘Who is my neighbor?’”3 In addition to Peirce, reference points for theosemiotic include liberation theology, Simone Weil, and Ignatius de Loyola.Integral ecology refers to Pope Francis's project of integrating concern for the natural world with attention to the structures and concrete conditions of human injustice. As Vincent Miller has put it, integral ecology can be understood on three levels: “as an understanding that interconnection is the essence of reality, as a way of seeing that can perceive interconnections among humans and the rest of creation and as a moral principle for acting in harmony with them.”4 Although integral ecology has been expressed in contexts that range from ecclesial documents and academic texts to social activism, the most significant source for understanding integral ecology is Francis's 2015 encyclical letter Laudato si’. Within the tradition of Catholic social ethics, integral ecology is significant for its shift away from the anthropocentrism that has traditionally attended Catholic assertions of human dignity, for its framing of interspecies relations in terms of kinship, and for its relative prominence of liberationist elements following the hostility to liberation theology during the papacies of Francis's two predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Beyond Catholicism, integral ecology is significant for its address to persons of goodwill regardless of religious identity, for its engagements with scientific research and its media impacts, and for its potential in grounding an ethics that addresses forced displacement as well as ecological devastation.Theological ethics refers, first of all, to navigating questions in terms of their ethical quality. As Elizabeth Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker put it, “We all have ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, which guide our actions and judgments of others, and thus, all human action implies morality. ‘Ethics’ is intellectual reflection on this morality.”5 In light of the “theological” in theological ethics, the intellectual reflection in question is that of theological reflection. Typically drawing from normative sources indigenous to a given religious community, theological ethics in the case of this essay refers to Christian theology. In the most basic sense, theological ethics is involved whenever the question arises as to how one should live in light of the Christian faith. Put more formally, theological ethics is “an interdisciplinary ‘bridging subject’ between church and society or social, human and environmental sciences,” one that “proves to be indispensable for a responsible contemporary society and necessary learning processes within the Church itself.”6 This element of boundary navigation for the field is crucial. As theological ethics examines the applications for religious normativity beyond the borders of Christian communities, it also critically investigates whether public problems might occasion a revision as to some set of Christian norms.The relationships among these terms can be layered in support of the essay's narrow and broad claims. By representing itself through the semiotically potent and morally urgent phrase “cry of the Earth,” integral ecology renders itself amenable to being interpreted as theosemiotic. By occasioning intellectual reflection on how the morality of integral ecology extends across species lines and into the life of human communities in a theologically significant way, integral ecology-as-theosemiotic renders itself amenable to being interpreted as theological ethics. And by virtue of theosemiotic's grounding itself within the pragmatic tradition, the theological ethical dimension of integral ecology-as-theosemiotic renders itself amenable to participate in a partnership between pragmatism and theological ethics more broadly. These layers build from a common premise, which is that in an atmosphere of rising political instability and human displacement amidst pervasive interspecies entanglement, pragmatism has a significant role to play in engaging with and enlisting religious cultures to respond creatively to crisis. To the extent that this essay participates in that undertaking, it thus participates in something vital.The essay is structured in four sections. The first section establishes a specific context of relevance for integral ecology conceived as theosemiotic. This context concerns a critique of integral ecology from Willis Jenkins regarding the phrase “cry of the Earth” and its entailments. The second section presents specific features of theosemiotic that recommend it as a response to Jenkins's critique; these features include theosemiotic emphases on attention, community, and norms and ideals. The third section explores the consequences of bringing these resources to bear on a theosemiotic interpretation of “cry of the Earth.” These consequences include not only a successful response to Jenkins, but also a robust account of silence and otherness. The fourth section speculates on the relationship between pragmatism and theological ethics, hypothesizing that, whatever else its potential applications, it bears a particular relevance for cases of importance to the papacy of Pope Francis.Imagine the cry of a baby. One need not be a parent oneself to know what a crying baby sounds like. Even in loud, hectic environments—a crowded airport, a public market—the cry cuts through the surrounding sound like a scythe. Interpreting what a cry means is a different question, of course. For that, more familiarity with the situation is likely needed. The baby may be tired. Her diaper may be dirty. He may need food, or maybe he has had too much food. Interpreting a baby's cry requires some further element of context. Yet whatever the cause or purpose of the cry, to understand its meaning, one must first hear the cry and recognize it as such.Now imagine a cry of the Earth. This phrase is a piece of rhetoric fraught with significance. As it functions in the writings and reception of Pope Francis, “cry of the Earth” indicates an awakening into recognizing a moment of profound ecological peril. The Earth's cry is meant to represent the front end of a process that passes through many discursive regions, from the human relationship with nonhuman life to sources of values in relation to our environments and to the basic human ability to recognize the world around us, always with some keen awareness of suffering. Yet to what object does one's imagination actually move upon hearing the phrase “Earth's cry”? For that matter, what does one actually hear? As a basic question of decibels, the world is surely as loud today as at any point in human history. Yet where amidst our loudening soundscapes does one detect the cry of the Earth? More difficult still, how might anything in such a cry actually suggest a particular course of action as a response?The language of “cry” has assumed particular importance within the discourse on Pope Francis's integral ecology. The phrase “cry of the Earth” (or some variation on “cry” interpreted ecologically) has featured prominently within such papal texts as Laudato si’, Querida Amazonia, and, to a lesser extent, Fratelli tutti.7 World leaders have heard Francis speak it in his addresses to them.8 Academics wishing to interrogate Pope Francis's public role as a religious advocate for ecological action have used it as a heading for his project.9 Seeking an appropriate description of integral ecology, Bruno Latour selected “cry” as his term of choice.10 Indeed, such is the prominence of the phrase “cry of the Earth” within ecological moral discourse that the phrase even appeared in the inaugural address of President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.11Prominence, however, does not necessarily equal clarity. This is the subtext to an article from Willis Jenkins, “The Mysterious Silence of Mother Earth in Laudato si’,” which uses the crying-Earth metaphor to venture a measured critique of integral ecology.12 As Jenkins puts it, “Earth's voice—as mother, sister, or any sort of kin—seems silent in crucial loci of the encyclical's argument.”13 For Jenkins, Earth's silence bespeaks important omissions. In spite of celebrating intercultural dialogue, for instance, integral ecology omits from its otherwise inspiring reflections on environmental education any role for Earth as teacher.14 Jenkins offers perhaps the most basic summary statement on the problem with a “mysterious silence” in observing that the “deep political ecology critique of LS [Laudato si'] works with its dialogical approach only if the voices of other creatures can enter the dialogue through the expression of human participants, whose own interests are transformed by the goodness of all Earth.”15 Jenkins also expresses frustration at the encyclical's lack of direct legal protections for the Earth.16 Citing movements for Earth rights within Bolivia and Ecuador along with Leonardo Boff's efforts to explore this terrain, Jenkins finds it puzzling that the encyclical should have failed to address the issue of political status for nonhumans in any meaningful way.17More of a lament at opportunities missed than an attack in the spirit of ěcrasez l'infâme, Jenkins's critique is not levelled at Pope Francis or at integral ecology in full. In fact, Jenkins complements his critique with the following, relatively constructive suggestions: “The argument of LS needs further development on two points: the role of creation in forming human dignity and the political standing of Earth. In both matters a kind of “voice” for nature is implied yet left underdeveloped.”18 Although Jenkins errs, in my view, in neglecting the value of silence, his points are worth taking seriously, as they raise valuable questions for interspecies communication and the politics of indigenous rights and nonhuman legal status, as well as how such familiar terms from Catholic moral theology as dignity or the common good can be reinterpreted across interspecies categories. As Jenkins's work is astute regarding the theological concepts emic to a given group and the strategies by which a religious culture summons both its own received values and also engages with wider publics, Jenkins is a clear observer, then, of both the concepts and values within a document like Laudato si’—placing it within the tradition of papal encyclicals on Catholic social teaching—and also the implications for the document with respect to a wider public culture. Moreover, Jenkins's critique can be met. Jenkins states, when it comes to the cry of the Earth, “the question should direct thought as practically as does the phrase ‘cry of the poor’,” and he asks, “Can humans learn to listen to the voices of nonhuman creatures?”19 The answer is an unequivocal “yes,” and theosemiotic can help us understand both how this is the case and why it is significant.That the cry of the Earth bears a semiotic dimension is unsurprising. There is indeed something paradigmatically semiotic about a cry. In certain respects, hearing the cry of the Earth can even be shown to resemble the cry of the baby: embodied, sensory, and suggestive of a course of action on the basis of a sense of recognition and urgency on the part of the hearer. Moreover, there is every reason to see in C.S. Peirce the materials for an account of the cry of the Earth, given that Peircean semiotics understands human distinctiveness in terms of symbolic representation that entails language, morality, and wonderful capacities for abstraction, yet which should never be understood as being fundamentally separate from that from which it emerged nor projected back onto nonhuman semiosis. That is, Peircean semiotics undermines categorical divisions between nature and culture, posits categories of semiosis by which nonhuman communications can be understood—and to a certain extent, rendered intelligible—in continuity with the human; as theosemiotic illustrates, Peircean semiotics also leaves itself open to understandings of sign interpretation as an inherently ethical, perhaps even inherently religiously relevant project. In Peircean vocabulary, one might interpret the cry as fundamentally of the nature of an index, in that it refers attention back to its object as an effect would for its cause.As a project drawing extensively from Peirce, theosemiotic shares these attributes, even as it adds several distinctive and promising features of its own. Through Raposa, it becomes possible to understand not only how nature's cry can be heard and recognized as such, but also how responding to it becomes an ethical and potentially religious endeavor. Furthermore, theosemiotic articulates a sense in which a human can train oneself to notice signs in nature as a cry in a way that might not otherwise occur involuntarily, and in which communal values can provide normative ideals toward which ethical praxis can be directed. The upshot of a theosemiotic understanding of the cry of the Earth is that through one's conduct, one becomes the sign—in Peircean terms, the interpretant—of a cry of nature and gives it meaning through the sustained trajectory of self-controlled actions in response to it. As is explained below, this theosemiotic account of a cry of the Earth not only meets the demands of Jenkins critique; it also contributes some significant additional insights concerning silence and otherness.Before rushing into the benefits of interpreting integral ecology as theosemiotic, it is worth taking a moment to consider a bit more closely what makes a consideration of integral ecology-as-theosemiotic particularly congenial. Of course, any project that has “theo” as its prefix is likely to possess some receptivity to religious readings, and Raposa's Theosemiotic is rich and transparent when it comes to the religious dimensions of the project. It may seem obvious, then, that this essay pursues a joint theosemiotic-integral ecology pairing. Still, the fit is not as simple as it may seem. Francis's writings contain critical references to pragmatism, for example, which echo popular misconceptions about pragmatism as a sort of crude utilitarianism or instrumentalism.20 These references are merely the latest in an inherited strain of Catholic aversion to pragmatism that dates back to the days of Peirce and William James. It bears mentioning, then, that theosemiotic and integral ecology share some important common antecedents, including liberation theology, the Second Vatican Council, and Ignatius de Loyola.Regarding liberation theology, the Argentine Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis) has never identified too overtly with the strains of liberation theology made famous in Medellín, and he took care as Archbishop in Buenos Aires to thread a needle among factions that included both advocates and opponents of liberation theology. Yet liberationist themes nonetheless inform Francis's thought and writings, including the roots of the phrase “cry of the Earth” itself as a counterpart to the “cry of the poor.”21 One sees Francis's liberationist influence in the turn toward praxis embedded in principles Francis outlines in his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, particularly the principles that “time is greater than space” and “realities are greater than ideas.”22 As for liberationist influences on theosemiotic, Raposa characterizes liberation theology as akin to a “pragmatically inspired theosemiotic,” in that it “emphasizes the continuity of theory with praxis, the insight that inquiry is itself a form of praxis.”23 In identifying theosemiotic with liberation theology, Raposa is reflecting longstanding affinities between pragmatist and liberationist thought.24Regarding the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, this epochal event of 1962–1965 was the most important Catholic council since the Council of Trent, and its influence on Francis manifests itself, among many other places, in Francis's explicitly global outreach. In addition to celebrating friendships across religious traditions, Francis's messages are addressed to persons of goodwill regardless of religious identity. As for theosemiotic, Raposa notes the connection between theosemiotic and the theological method pioneered within Pope John XXIII's Mater et magistra, specifically the notion of “look, judge, act,” which presents a “logic of inquiry” suitable for liberationists and theosemioticians.25 Like theosemiotic, integral ecology also shares much with the Vatican II formula regarding the need to read the “signs of the times,” a phrase whose semiotic relevance is obvious.Regarding Ignatius de Loyola, it should not be a surprise that Ignatian spirituality would be an influence on Francis as the first Jesuit pope. As J. Matthew Ashley notes in his article, “Pope Francis as Interpreter of Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises,” “While Francis of Assisi has pride of place in Laudato si, it seems abundantly clear that the spirituality that has been most formative of the pope's thought and practice is that of Ignatius.”26 On the theosemiotic side, Raposa writes of Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises that “one should be disposed to listen, not in order to hear only a specific, determinate message, but as a readiness to perceive the divine will in the manner that it is communicated, whether it manifests itself as confirmation of one's expectations or as a complete surprise.”27 Aside from the tantalizing reference here to listening, Raposa's point also reflects an influence from the key Ignatian value of discernment. Theosemiotic's emphasis on attention, which is a counterpart to discernment, is discussed below.Common antecedents alone—the roots of integral ecology-as-theosemiotic—do not suffice to justify theosemiotic as a vehicle to answer Jenkins's critique regarding the “cry of the Earth.” For this, it is necessary to isolate some key elements from theosemiotic as particularly promising—the potential fruits of integral ecology-as-theosemiotic. It bears mentioning that roots and fruits are not held here in tension or competition; rather, they complement one another in support of the plausibility and promise of a theosemiotic-integral ecology pairing. The promising elements of theosemiotic are threefold: attention, community, and norms and ideals.Regarding theosemiotic's account of attention, this account indicates how habits of observation might be cultivated to receive sensory signals and interpret them as a cry, as opposed to just more noise. Raposa writes powerfully about attention's moral significance: Paying attention is always our first deliberate reaction to the things that we encounter the world, our attending to one thing rather than to another constituting a fundamental act of volition. Even if one insists that ethics is limited to the evaluation of what we ought to do, it must be conceded that what we do with our attention is of immeasurable moral significance, a feature of our moral lives and behavior that is all too readily overlooked . . . In every case of discernment, questions will arise about how one ought to be disposed toward the persons and situations under consideration. These questions are clearly self-reflexive. What do I see or fail to see? How do I evaluate what I see? What must I do?28That there are profound moral implications to the question of where we direct our attention is one of the most significant features of theosemiotic's relevance for theological ethics.Regarding integral ecology and the cry of the Earth, a theosemiotic account of attention is significant for three reasons. First, attention according to theosemiotic recognizes suffering. Second, it carries a moral imperative that implicates the perceiver. Third, it includes within its sphere of moral attention the needs of non-humans. These reasons complement the emphasis on attention in integral ecology, which, as Vincent Miller puts it, proposes a “path of transformation” that “suggests that moral change comes not only from will and self-control but also from attentiveness to the world around us.”29 Notably, theosemiotic refuses to determine in advance what sorts of signs or experiences can count as religious or as ethically urgent. This leaves the door open for receiving signals across species lines. As Raposa puts it, “Very many different types of things—nature, physical objects, words, concepts, feelings, dispositions, persons, actions—can all serve as religious meaningful signifiers.”30 What prevents theosemiotic from become unmoored in its sheer breadth can be captured in its accounts of norms and ideals and of the importance of community.Regarding norms and ideals, there are at least two ways in which the issue of norms and ideals intersects with a theosemiotic account of Earth's cry, one that applies antecedently to the perception of the cry, the other subsequently to it. The former suggests that at least some of training oneself to hear involves an intentional effort, and as such this must involve some self-conscious norm of paying attention as a goal in developing good habits. Raposa points to Ignatius as an exemplar for this sort of rigorous and highly regimented cultivation of attention. The latter is a bit more interesting when it comes to the task of substantiating and responding to a crying Earth, which is that the norms and ideals of a given community shape patterns of response that unfold across time and serve as a sign of the cry. Raposa expresses this point thusly: To put it baldly . . . what we feel is of very little consequence for the spiritual life. What we then do with our feelings, how we interpret them, respond to them, the habits that we consequently choose to cultivate—these will all prove to be of enormous significance.31The presence of norms and ideals is what transforms a given situation from one characterized by simple likenesses, classifications of qualities held in common, into systems that organize constituent parts toward some the realization of some purpose. Put in Peircean semiotic terms, the cry as an index of some object becomes a symbol that has purchase relative to some community or communities of interpreters. Thus is the issue of community of obvious relevance.Regarding community, theosemiotic understands communities as keepers of norms and ideals, testing and refining and preserving them in ways that both regulate behaviors for participants within the community and define the community for the world beyond. As Raposa succinctly puts it, there is a “teleological impulse for interpretations to become exemplified in praxis, and also for praxis to become embedded in community.”32 This is not simply a question of the individual's flourishing within communal life; it is also a sense in which communal life provides normative measures that structure meaningful critique.33 Raposa here echoes the vision of religious communal life articulated within the work of Brandon Daniel-Hughes, particularly Daniel-Hughes's 2018 book, Pragmatic Inquiry and Religious Communities: Charles Peirce, Signs, and Inhabited Experiments. In this book, Daniel-Hughes writes that religious traditions are “are venerable, temporally extended, but fallible traditions of religious engagement that have developed astoundingly complex sign systems for making sense of the world and coordinating human commitments.”34 That Raposa and Daniel-Hughes express similar views makes sense; both are inspired, after all, by Peirce's theory of inquiry, which emphasizes community. But it bears noting that these views are similar to those of Francis, as well. In 2020’s encyclical Fratelli tutti, for example, Francis writes: The mutual sense of belonging is prior to the emergence of individual groups. Each particular group becomes part of the fabric of universal communion and there discovers its own beauty. All individuals, whatever their origin, know that they are part of the greater human family, without which they will not be able to understand themselves fully.35Although community here is understood specifically in human terms, it is important to point out that human communities are neither the sole locus of moral worth nor impervious to signs that emerge from non-human sources. This point is of obvious relevance when it comes to articulating and clarifying the cry of the Earth.These resources from theosemiotic—attention, norms and ideals, community—suggest that a sound becomes ethically meaningful as a “cry of the Earth” only when its hearer carries it over into their life and community in the form of an intentional, ideally patterned response. It now bears exploring how this view represents a response to Jenkins's critique of integral ecology. Recall that Jenkins claims that the argument of Laudato si’ “needs further development on two points: the role of creation in forming human dignity and the political standing of Earth. In both matters a kind of ‘voice’ for nature is implied yet left underdeveloped.”36 If Jenkins is right that the Earth's silent voice in Laudato si’ diminishes its effectiveness in these two areas, then the present effort can be gauged in terms of its effectiveness in accounting for the role of creation in forming human dignity and articulating political standing for the Earth. Both of these points can be answered here.First, regarding accounting for the role of creation in forming human dignity, Jenkins here implies a moral vision in which nonhumans contribute to the dignity of humans. What emerges out of Raposa's theosemiotic is an account in which humans are both in continuity with and also distinct from nonhuman life in nature; these are contrasting dynamics, yes, but it is important to note that, in either sense, such semantically charged notions as meaning or thought or interpretation are not understood by theosemiotic as simply projected onto nonhuman life. The theosemiotic perspective, rather, is that human thought is a product of more-than-human thought, moving from the natural to the human, rather than the reverse as a sort of projection of human categories onto nonhuman nature. In her thoughtful essay on what she calls “Biophany,” Lisa Sideris expresses something like this perspective as she reflects on what it means to listen to nonhuman nature; Sideris writes, “We might . . . counter our egotistical need to position ourselves as nature's savior by focusing less on our own disrupted routines and their consequences, and more on the ever-present vital agency of beings all around us.”37 For theosemiotic, nonhuman life—in the form of a cry or otherwise—interprets us humans, as well, even as it also generates signs that human interpreters extend and transform from its initial indexical reference into worlds of symbolic reference guided by norms and ideals, including dignity.38 This need not entail that nonhumans themselves possess dignity, though it could. That would depend on what one means by “dignity”—if dignity is defined, as it often is in the Aristotelian-Thomistic terms of Catholic tradition, as living according to one's own self-selected ends, its ascription to nonhumans is difficult. Regardless, what is suggested through the theosemiotic perspective is something more oriented to the role of creatio