SEPTEMBER 2022
wave that coincided with wildfire smoke—real health impacts of climate change. On a human level, we know that we can’t exist outside of our common home. We are part of it. We should care about climate change, on the one hand, because we need our common home in order to continue existing. Te issue is integral to our faith and always has been. Laudato Si’ addresses integral ecology and concern for our common home and calls us to retrieve aspects of our faith that have always been there, to recognize that this issue is part of our faith and not something separate from it. Consider the creation story in Genesis, when human beings are granted dominion over the birds of the air and the creatures of the earth. It’s worth noting that is one of several depictions of human beings’ relationship to the world, and as Pope Francis acknowledges in Laudato Si’, we’ve often misused and misunderstood the word “dominion” to mean “domination.” If we look at the word in its historical context, someone who exercised dominion at the time that story was being told was someone appointed by a ruler to ensure that the ruler’s will was carried out in faraway lands. If God is the ruler and human beings have been given dominion, then our role is to ensure that God’s will is being carried out, and God’s will for creation is that it flourish. Looking to our faith tradition, we recognize that, from the very beginning, we have been called to nurture this creation, of which we are a part, toward greater flourishing.
Furthermore, in Catholic social tradition, we learn about the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, which calls us to pay attention to those who are suffering the most, as Jesus did. Te climate crisis impacts those who are already vulnerable and, generally, those who have been historically the least responsible for contributing to the crisis. Our faith calls us to listen to and take seriously the leadership of those communities, who have been spending decades, and sometimes generations, formulating responses to this issue. Tere’s wisdom there. How can we listen?
ND: What does this mean for pastoral musicians? What can we do regarding the care of creation?
Anna: I’m so glad that pastoral musicians are thinking about this because the arts reach people at the heart- level. Tis is an issue of ecological conversion, and we
“ Music creates ‘containers’ for people to feel things, for people to pray and relate to God in different ways than they might on a day-to-day basis.”
need music for that. How can we infuse our worship to that end? Music creates “containers” for people to feel things, for people to pray and relate to God in different ways than they might on a day-to-day basis. Feeling is a very important part of this work. Ecopsychologist Joanna Macy says that part of our response to the climate crisis has to include making room for our own grief. Music can be a container for grief, a container for retrieving messages that have been part of our faith all along but have been under-emphasized or sometimes completely misinterpreted. An album just came out called Climate Vigil Songs that’s made up of climate-related praise and worship songs. Te album is a project of Porter’s Gate, which is a Christian music collective that includes Catholic artists and artists from other Christian traditions. Tat project is an example of pastoral musicians taking this moment and asking, “What’s our role? How can we show up?” Music can be a vehicle for ecological conversion that helps people understand that this issue is related to our faith. Music can be a container for us to access and connect with the courage and other virtues that we need in this moment.
In addition, I would point pastoral musicians to the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, which is a seven-year initiative, a toolkit released by the Vatican in 2021. Te platform calls on the global Church, and on all people of goodwill, to embrace the spirit of Laudato Si’ and incorporate it into our work at every level of the Church across seven themes that were distilled from the encyclical—for example, Hearing the Cry of the Earth, Hearing the Cry of the Poor, and Ecological Spirituality, to name a few. I would suggest that
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