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Laudato Sí: From Vision to Practice

This seven-week course offers an in-depth exploration of Pope Francis’s ecological encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Guided by Santa Clara University Professor Paul J. Schutz, participants will engage the realities of social and ecological injustice—what Pope Francis names “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor—and consider how Pope Francis’s proposal of an “Integral Ecology” might ground practical action for intersectional justice rooted in the Catholic faith. Each week, participants will discuss one of the encyclical’s chapters. The seventh week will discuss concrete strategies for translating vision into practice, so that faith communities might foster the well-being of what Laudato Si’ names a “splendid universal communion” of all God’s creatures.

Paul Schutz, PhD., is an assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department at Santa Clara University. He received a B.A. in English, Music, and Film Studies from Boston College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Fordham University in the Bronx, NY. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and ecology, with an emphasis on how contemporary scientific knowledge grounds and informs humanity’s relationship with the natural world and other-than-human creatures. In his work, he proposes an ‘ecopolitical’ theology oriented toward the flourishing of all creatures according to their own kind. A longtime liturgist and musician, his work also addresses the potential of Christian worship and biblical accounts of creation, life, and love for cultivating a robust praxis of ecological and social justice.