The Catholic nuns at the Green Mountain Convent in Vermont have prioritized protecting the planet as the most important “problem of pro-life” facing the Church and society.
This was emphasized week By progressives National Catholic ReporterThe Sister Community of Earth mission It is about moving towards a future where “the natural world is one sacred community.”
“We were welcomed into the Diocese of Vermont by Bishop Kenneth Angell and arrived in Vermont on June 1, 1999,” the group says on its website.
The community credits Father Thomas Berry (1914-2009), who considers himself its “leader, teacher and co-founder.”Explained He's called a “geologist” Newsweek The magazine called him “the most provocative of the new generation of ecotheologians.”
“While it would have been unthinkable in past centuries for women's religious organizations to take up the cause of protecting the natural world, it is now unthinkable for such organizations not to take up this task,” Berry argued.
Berry embraces his own version of eco-spirituality and envisions a new era in which humanity “stops the destruction of species caused by the impacts of extractive industries, pollution and the abuse of the earth, and forges a closer relationship with the earth and nature.”
The Catholic nuns and lay women who relocated included Sister Gail Worthello, a former Passionist nun and co-founder of St. Gabriel Convent in Pennsylvania.
The Community of Sisters of the Earth is “the first community of Catholic sisters founded specifically for the healing and protection of the Earth in the Ecozoic Age,” Sister Walcelo asserts.
“This mission must be supported, promoted, shared, and invited in the church,” Warcelo argues. “It is the cutting edge of Christian responsibility on the planet, the biggest pro-life issue.”
“Think of the Earth as a lifeboat. If the Earth sinks, all our service, all our good deeds, all our contributions sink with it,” she added.
The Sisterhood of the Earth has not yet achieved status as an official body within the Church, the next canonical step before becoming a religious organization.
The fusion of environmentalism and Christianity received a major boost from Pope Francis in 2015, who became the first pope to dedicate an entire encyclical to the cause. letter On the theme of environmental protection, Laudato Si (“Praise be to Him”).
In the text, the Pope said the Earth is “more and more beginning to look like a giant pile of filth, a once beautiful landscape now covered in rubbish.”
He also criticized the lack of recycling of paper and other resources, and called climate change a “global issue of great consequence” and “one of the major challenges facing modern humanity.”
Citing “scientific studies”, the pope said “most of the global warming in recent decades is due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides etc – mainly as a result of human activities”.
“Any effort to protect and improve the world involves profound changes in lifestyles, models of production and consumption, and the existing power structures that dominate societies today,” he warned.
