Laudato Si and the US Catholic Church

Jason King writes:

Last year at Creighton University, more than 200 people gathered for the first of a series of conferences aimed at deeper daily integration of the messages of “Laudato Si’, on Care of Our Common Home.” The participants arrived in Omaha from many corners of Catholic life, among them parishes, high schools, congregations of religious women, universities and the Vatican.

Dan DiLeo, an assistant professor at Creighton and one of the conference organizers, proposed publishing papers presented at the conference in the Journal of Moral Theology, which I edit. It seemed like a good way to reflect some of the work and scholarship underway as a result of Pope Francis’ encyclical.

I hope you read the whole issue. But for starters, I highlight here five themes that emerged from the collection of papers and even now reflect much of what’s resulted from Laudato Si’ five years after its release.

    1. There is still resistance.

While Laudato Si’ is celebrated by so many inside and outside the church, there is still resistance to it….

    1. Work is being done in society.

Shulski’s essay is not just about political resistance but also about how politics can help….

    1. Work is being done in the church.

Creighton University is working to be carbon neutral by 2050. En route this goal, Jesuit Fr. Daniel Hendrickson, Creighton’s president, states in his opening remarks to the 2019 conference that the campus has received LEED Silver certification on new buildings and founded interdisciplinary academic programs to study environmental change.

You can read all of the articles in the Journal of Moral Theology here.