Concern for the environment has been part of the fabric of William Dinges’ life since he grew up in a farming community in Kansas and worked on a wheat farm when he was young.
“As a young person, I spent a lot of my time on tractors, horses and combines,” he said.
And for more than three decades, he has been actively engaged in environmental and ecological issues. Dinges, who earned a doctorate in American studies at the University of Kansas, is a professor in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America, where he teaches an honors course in religion, ethics and the environment.
Since Catholic University, like other educational institutions, has closed its campus in accordance with government mandated restrictions on preventing the spread of the coronavirus, Dinges has been teaching his classes online, via Zoom classroom.
On April 21, the day before the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Dinges noted in an interview that CUA’s honors program offers classes examining the scientific, religious, economic and public policy dimensions of ecological issues.
He believes the environmental crisis is “fundamentally a moral, spiritual crisis of the highest order, and we as people of faith have something to bring to that table.”
Dinges helped found an EcoMinistry group at his parish, St. John the Baptist in Silver Spring, Maryland, to raise awareness on environmental issues. Over the years, the group has sponsored workshops and speakers, and every three months, its members pick up trash along a mile and one-half of New Hampshire Avenue. He’s also a member of the Archdiocese of Washington’s Care for Creation Committee and has been involved with ecumenical groups like Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake and Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light.
“To me, this environmental crisis is the ultimate ecumenical and interfaith opportunity for our time… (because) it’s ultimately a moral crisis that raises questions about who we are as human beings and what are our responsibilities as human beings,” he said, adding that reflects God’s call in Scriptures for people to be good stewards of the Earth.
After the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in April 2020, the next month marks the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ landmark 2015 encyclical on the ecology, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” and Dinges thinks its important for Catholics to contextualize Earth Day in light of the pope’s teaching in that document.
“It’s really important for us as Catholics to recognize this care for creation is integral to who we are as a people of faith,” he said. “It’s not a side issue or a peripheral issue.”
Laudato Si’ – Latin for “Praise be to you” – is the first line of a canticle by St. Francis of Assisi praising God and all His creation. Dinges said that encyclical by Pope Francis, which builds on earlier Church teaching by Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, “brought concern for the environment to the forefront of Catholic teaching.”
Dinges said a core message of Laudato Si’ is Pope Francis’s concept of integral ecology, that environmental issues and other social issues are interconnected.
In the encyclical, Pope Francis noted, “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.” (#139)
The pope pointed out that climate change and pollution, in addition to damaging ecosystems, often have the most dire effects on the poor, impacting their economic possibilities, their health and access to safe drinking water, and endangering the world that future generations will live in.
Dinges sees the world transitioning into an ecological age that will require a transformation of consciences, and he believes the message of Laudato Si’ needs to be integrated into the liturgical life of parishes and into the spiritual life and the actions of parishioners.
“Catholics need to hear this in clear unambiguous words from the pulpit,” he said. “we need to learn how to ‘pray green.’”
In coming months, the Archdiocese of Washington’s Office for Social Concerns will be working with members of the Care for Creation Committee and others to devise an action plan for parishes and individual Catholics to integrate the teaching of Laudato Si’ into their everyday lives. The Archdiocese of Atlanta, led by Archbishop Wilton Gregory before he became the archbishop of Washington, developed a Laudato Si’ action plan.
“We need to be cognizant of the fact that as Catholics we have much to offer in terms of ameliorating this environmental mess we’re in,” Dinges said.
Bob Simon, another member of the archdiocese’s Care for Creation Committee, says it’s fitting that this spring marks twin anniversaries for both Earth Day and Laudato Si’.
“It’s great the 50th anniversary of Earth Day is happening (around the time of) the fifth anniversary of Laudato Si’. I think the confluence of those two things is a real opportunity and invitation for Catholics to focus on the Church’s big moral vision underpinning ‘Care for Our Common Home,’” he said.
The moral vision of that encyclical, he said, offers insights for things that can be done by Catholics on an archdiocesan, parish and personal level to address the environmental crisis the world is facing.
Simon, who has a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a member of St. Camillus Parish in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is a retired federal worker. He retired in 2016 from his position as principal advisor to the director of Energy, Transportation and Resources at the White House Office of Science and Technology, after having served as a staff director of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and earlier work at the U.S. Department of Energy and at the National Academy of Sciences.
Simon remembers the first Earth Day in 1970, when he was a 10th grader at a high school outside Philadelphia that had an ecology club. As a Catholic, he has witnessed the Church paying increasing attention to environmental issues over the years, and he thinks that parishes are key places for Catholics to learn about the “moral vision the Church has that puts together care for the environment with care for the poor and care for life.”
“That’s what Pope Francis calls integral ecology,” Simon said.
St. Camillus Parish reflects that vision with its Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Committee. Over the years, the parish has sponsored Earth Day fairs, offering practical advice for how people can protect the environment in their daily lives.
“Parishes can be trusted sources of information on how to respond to the climate crisis we face,” Simon said, adding that he believes that just as Christ brought truth to the world, so too should His followers seek the scientific basis of environmental issues and act on them.
“We have to be on the side of truth,” he said.
One of Simon’s favorite quotes from Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ is, “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”(#217)
