News Items

The Forum regularly posts news articles of interest here from a variety of sources and news outlets. You can check back here or view the most recent ones from the homepage. We also archive these articles here, for those doing research, with news going back to 2006. Use the menu on the right to explore the archived articles.

News

June 22, 2015
By Ruud Lubbers
Earth Charter International

In 2015, the U.N. will agree on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change will offer nations the opportunity to make a choice for Our Common Future. Pope Francis has just gone on record with Laudato Si’; the Encyclical Letter on Care for Our...

June 21, 2015
By Barrie Dunsmore
Rutland Herald

This past week Pope Francis inserted himself directly into the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Whether or not that was the intent, it is a clear consequence of the pope’s new encyclical on the environment — because this document puts him on a collision course with the Republican Party.

Could the Pope’s climate change encyclical change the world?

By Stephen Bede Scharper
Toronto Star
June 21, 2015

Twenty years ago, I taught a course on religion and the environment at the University of Notre Dame.

When people heard this, they would often scrunch up their faces and ask, “What does faith have to do with ecology?”

In the past few years,...

June 2015
By Gary Braasch
World View of Global Warming

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” warns Pope Francis. “Bring the whole human family together,” he urges, “redefine our notion of progress, move forward in a bold cultural revolution.”

 

June 20, 2015
By Justin Gillis
New York Times

For an earnest young Christian named Ben Lowe, revelation came on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in Africa. A relentless warming of the lake was reducing the catch of fish, the people were going hungry — and he had learned of scientific evidence that...

June 19, 2015
By Bartholomew and Justin Welby
New York Times

June 19, 2015
By Dave Pruett
Huffington Post

“We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are between stories.”Father Thomas Berry

June 18, 2015
By Sam Mickey
Becoming Integral

The new encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On the Care of our Common Home, contains many references to “integral ecology,” including an entire chapter by that title.