Animated by Catholic social teaching, especially Pope Francis’ Laudate Deum and the U.S. bishops’ climate advocacy, each bishop should enact a science-based diocesan decarbonization policy. Such commitment engages faith and reason to advance the church’s evangelical mission.
Archbishop Thomas Zinkula of Dubuque, Iowa, and Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago are leading the way. Catholics should engage in synodality and encounter their bishop to advocate similar episcopal leadership….
The Holy Father is leading by example and has committed the Vatican to become net-zero carbon. The Vatican’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform invites dioceses to similarly decarbonize….
Cupich committed the Chicago Archdiocese to purchase renewable energy credits this year equivalent to the power consumed by the 2,000 buildings across the archdiocese’s 400 parishes, schools, cemeteries and offices. Although renewable energy credits do not guarantee that a given entity will itself be directly powered by renewable energy and thus avoid greenhouse gas emissions, and while the annual commitment might not be renewed in the future, this step helps expand the renewable energy pool.
No other U.S. bishop has made any such diocesan commitment.
I have argued that the near-total lack of U.S. Catholic decarbonization commitments is a failure to faithfully live the church’s evangelical mission. It is a social sin of omission — a failure to do the right thing — that compromises Catholic moral commitments, including to protect human life….
Bishops are the preeminent stewards of the church’s evangelical mission, which requires ecclesial social justice that embodies Catholic social teaching. Faced with the climate crisis, Catholics should encounter and inspire their bishop to recognize that faithfully and credibly living this mission invites exercising the episcopal administrative office to prioritize, enact and fund a science-based diocesan decarbonization policy.
Millennial 