Is greenness next to godliness?

The Vatican certainly thinks so—in March it included polluting the environment in an updated list of seven deadly sins for an era of globalization.

That announcement inspired Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago Commissioner Frank Avila to adopt a new theme for “Avila Making a Difference,” his long-running public access cable show on CAN-TV 19.

“We’ve reached a place where we’re static, in terms of the environment,” says Avila. You’ve got environmental groups and you’ve got the politicians, and the engineers and scientists, all clashing on how to solve environmental problems. Maybe it’s time to bring in the religious folks.”

Avila, who produces the show with his wife Sherry, has woven in environmental themes for the last five years.

Past guests have included Fr. Thomas Loya, pastor of the Annunciation Byzantine Church in Homer Glen, whose congregation has restored 10 acres of land to a pristine, natural wetland.

On Tuesday Avila sat down for a discussion of the link between environmental degradation and poverty with Sister Dawn Nothwehr, a Franciscan nun and an associate professor of ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park. The taped segment will air some time in the next month.

Nothwehr says that among the core values shared by the all the world’s religions, the most universal is that “human persons are created with a special, inviolable dignity.”

From that, she says, the central question follows:  “What is it that we do to make that dignity real?”

The development of the world’s food systems dramatically illustrates how man-made environmental change impacts the human quality of life, says Nothwehr.

Overgrazing of lands in  Asia, comes from “pressures for us to have more,”  says Nothwehr.  Large-scale agribusiness,  driven by a global futures market and dependent on chemical fertilizers, is geared to “making profits rather than sustaining life.”

The Catholic Theological Union is a Roman Catholic graduate school of theology and ministry that encompasses 32 religious orders. A member of the Green Seminary Initiative, the school focuses on the ecological in both its housing — its building features a green roof and an energy-efficient heating and cooling system — and its curriculum,  which is permeated by an ecological perspective.

It’s a school where international students comprise 40 percent of the student body, so issues of poverty sometimes present themselves in stark form.

In her environmental ethics class that morning, notes Nothwehr, a Vietnamese student wondered how to talk about preserving the environment in the face of the famine that had forced his countrymen to eat the roots of plants.

“The question of how do we live out being ecologically of God’s creation is very different in a setting like that than we have to talk about it in North America,” says Nothwehr.

The Franciscan sister cites a long thread of church teachings emphasing the ecological.  The thread goes back to St. Francis of Assisi, who saw the beauty of the natural world as the supreme sign of God’s love for his creation, and up to current church doctrine.  Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI called Catholics to an “ecological conversion,” Nothwehr notes.

Nothwehr says that religious communities can address climate change and poverty in their traditional role as mediators who encourage dialogue.

Avila agrees. Take the current debate over whether to require the sewer district to disinfect the effluent that flows into the Chicago River, he says.

“No one’s agreeing with each other on how to best serve the environment, ” says Avila. “Maybe the religious groups, with the morals and the ethics, can help us think about what’s the best way to solve the problems in the environment.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect Avila's show appears on CAN-TV 19 and that Sister Dawn Nothwehr  is an associate professor  at the Catholic Theological Union. An earlier version listed a different channel number, a different spelling for Nothwehr's name and a different job title.

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