The Environment Is Still Not A Bread and Butter Issue for the American Catholic Church
After Pope Francis’ now famous Laudato si': On the environment and sustainable development was published this past May, I was actually eager to go to church the following Sunday, unlike the usual recalcitrant Catholic that I am. I wanted to see if the priests would have anything to say about it. Thus I went to Mass, sat through the service. At the end of it, the priest finally said, “The Pope has published a new Encyclical entitled: Laudato si': On the environment and sustainable development. It will be on our website for you to read.” And that was it. At first, I was stunned. The news cycle was making a big deal out of the Encyclical, so it seemed strange that the contents of it were barely mentioned. But I have come to realize that there’s a difference between Pope’s Francis’ passion on the issues of sustainable development and issues prioritized by the the American Catholic Church leadership. Hint: the environment has not been one of them. And especially within Church leadership in the US, it’ll likely take until the Second Coming before this changes.
How much can Pope Francis actually do to change different branches of the Catholic Church?
One of the most significant ways that organizations have shown their support for action on climate change and the environment has been through the divestment movement, which urges companies, foundations, and religious organizations to not invest in any kind of fossil fuel extraction. Catholic institutions in the US have investment portfolios, and many of them do invest in fossil fuels. According to Reuters, the Archdiocese of Boston had $4.6 million worth of energy stocks in 2014, which was around 6 percent of its total investments that year. The Archdiocese of Chicago has “under 8 percent” of it’s $1.65 billion portfolio in fossil fuels. The Diocese of Rockville Centre in Long Island has reported $6.3 million in energy company shares among its investments in 2013, representing about 8 percent of its equity investments.
Even after the release of Laudato Si’, only two American Catholic institutions – the University of Dayton, and Sisters of Loretto – have fully divested from fossil fuels, according to GreenFaith, an organization that promotes environmental leadership in communities of faith. For comparison, the Society of Friends (commonly known as the Quakers), a much smaller community than American Catholics, has 16 groups which have divested or have committed to fossil fuel divestment.
Generally, the areas where divestment campaign have been the most active is at university and college campuses. The success has been, at best, mixed at major Catholic universities. At Boston College, student activists from the divest group, Climate Justice at BC have staged protests and met with administrators to no avail. When asked about divestment, Boston College spokesperson said to The Heights, a Boston College student newspaper, “Quite frankly, it seems like the notion of divestment is just a very convenient way to absolve ourselves of our own responsibilities.” Recently, Climate Justice at BC has staged a march in support of Pope Francis’ encyclical, but to a low turnout. Georgetown University has thankfully taken a different route in response to calls for divestment, and a few weeks before the publication of Laudato si', it divested from direct investments in coal companies. But this addresses, of course, only part of Georgetown’s total fossil fuel investments.
A more sustainability-oriented sister if I ever saw one.
It’s not that the American Catholic Church doesn’t have its own guidelines on how to invest their portfolio; It's just that the environmental aspect hasn’t been thought of much until now. Most of the American Catholic Church’s investments are controlled by the bishops that head the 195 dioceses and archdiocese in the US. The organization that represents these bishops make up the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and in 2003, they published socially responsible investment guidelines. This was meant to have the Catholic fund managers consider the moral implications of their investments. Abortion, contraception, embryonic stem cell research, human rights, racial discrimination, pornography, weapons (particularly land mines), affordable housing, and environmental protection were the topics covered. Specifically, on issues of energy investment, the guidelines specifically say:
“USCCB investment policy will encourage policies and business that ‘undertake reasonable and effective initiatives for energy conservation and the development of alternate renewable and clean energy resources...[and offering] incentives to corporations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and assistance to workers affected by those policies.’”
While this is not an explicit statement for divestment, this does make it clear that the American Church should rethink its energy investments and look into investments that do not produce greenhouse emissions.
But the evidence that is available implies that this was not the case. Many Catholic organizations, take a position similar to Frank Coleman, who manages Catholic Responsible Investing for the Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), which has resisted calls to divest the fossil fuel share of its $6 billion fund. He is quoted in Reuters saying: "The Pope's intent was to say to people: there is an urgency on this issue, Divestment is a good way to raise the urgency. But it is not the be-all to end-all of solutions." This position makes sense for CBIS since in July 2014, it released a report, “CBIS & Catholic Responsible Investing” where the word “environment” is mentioned twice. It also does not identify fossil fuels as “products and activities that cause companies to be excluded from investment portfolios”.
What is of even more concern is the direct involvement of some archdioceses with gas and oil companies in the US. In the states of Oklahoma and Texas, some churches are even leasing drilling rights to oil and gas companies. Reuters reported that in one archdiocese, Oklahoma City, Church officials have signed three new oil and gas leases since the publication of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’. Specifically, the Archbishop of Oklahoma City gave the privately-held oil company, Comanche Resources, the rights to operate on 160 acres in exchange for 18.75 percent of the value of the oil and gas produced. In recent years, the dioceses of Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio have granted oil leases, but before Laudato Si’ was published.
But there is some hope yet! The archdiocese that has moved the most forcefully in the direction of acting on the words of Pope Francis is Chicago. The Archbishop of Chicago, Blaise Cupich (a recent appointment of Pope Francis’) has committed to making all 2,700 buildings in the Archdiocese as energy efficient as possible. Archbishop Cupich said, "While it is a considerable undertaking, we have to set an example that it can be done and must be done if we are to fulfill our sustainability goals.” But some of the most interesting news coming out of Chicago is that it is reexamining its $100 million plus worth of fossil fuel investments. With these kinds of institutional changes happening, it is possible that the Archdiocese of Chicago could become the first in America to divest—and this would be a really big deal.
Archbishop Cupich discusses Pope Francis' encyclical on the envrionment.
The point is, concrete change in the Catholic Church on the environment may start with Pope Francis, but it will definitely not end with him. The Church is not just the Pope; there are 1.2 billion Catholics, and there is a huge bureaucracy in the Church that is made up of archdioceses, universities, and charities. Like any huge organization, it will be slow to change. Especially since environmentalism has not been the cause of the typical American Catholic, we have got a long way to go until it is.
