The environment is a key platform of the papacy of Francis and his encyclical will form a significant part of his legacy over decades if not centuries. So why has Laudato Si’ not taken root in the US as it has in the UK and elsewhere? Could one reason be the polarisation of society and Church where climate change has itself become so politicised? Yet the lack of engagement with Laudato Si’ is not along Democrat-Republican lines, it seems to cross the political divide. At the root of it is how to bring the common good into debate in a society that, across all parties, is fundamentally libertarian, whether in regards to economics or personal morality.

In this podcast, Michael Sean Winters and Sebastian Gomes talk to Tablet assistant editor Ruth Gledhill about a conference Michael helped organise on the encyclical, and from which Sebastian, of America magazine, put together a video which has some of the answers and may contain clues as to how we can all continue to progress this cause as we engage this month of September with this year’s Season of Creation. The radical new direction that is being brought to “The Way Forward” gatherings is bringing bishops, theologians and lay leaders together around the table.

This podcast emerges from the third such gathering at the University of San Diego in February 2024. The aim is to foster honest dialogue within the Catholic Church and to promote the path set out by the Second Vatican Council and Pope Francis. In this year’s meeting the focus was on implementing Francis’s landmark encyclical on care of the earth, Laudato Si’. Watch the video here.

This second video is from the second “Way Forward” initiative in 2023, on synodality. 

Michael Sean Winters is a columnist with the National Catholic Reporter and he is the U.S. correspondent for The Tablet. He is also a fellow at the Center for Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University. His articles have been published by the New York Times magazine, New Republic, America, and other publications. He is one of the organisers of the Way Forward gatherings. The first was at Loyola University Chicago, and focused on Pope Francis and the ecclesiology of Vatican II. The second was at Boston College and focused on synodality. The most recent gathering was at the University of San Diego and focused on Laudato Si’. In addition to the Center for Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University, the gatherings are co-sponsored by the Boisi Center at Boston College, the Center for Religion and Culture at Fordham University and the Hank Center at Loyola Chicago.  Sebastian Gomes is Executive Editor of Audio and Video at America Magazine, the Jesuit media organization based in New York City. He directed the film on “The Way Forward” conference on Laudao Si’, that took place in San Diego in February 2024.

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