Judiciary Committee Should Not Intimidate Faith-Based Organizations by Patrick Carolan

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee recently released a press statement that opened with: “Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Chairman Thomas Massie (R-KY) demanded information from more than 130 U.S.-based companies, retirement systems, and government pension programs about their involvement with the woke ESG cartel Climate Action 100+.”

The letter and the investigation are clearly an attempt to intimidate and harass organizations that are working to protect and care for our environment. The Judiciary Committee’s summary document refers to “a ‘climate cartel’ of left-wing environmental activists.”

Several faith-based organizations received the letter, including the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., the United Church of Christ, and the Quaker organization Friends Fiduciary Corporation, as well as JLens, a Jewish lens on investing. The list also includes Catholic organizations like Mercy Investment Services, Christian Brothers Investment Services, Loyola Marymount University, and the Sisters of Saint Dominic of Caldwell.

Two organizations that received the letters are Investor Advocates for Social Justice (IASJ) and Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment (SGI). IASJ and SGI are coalitions of faith- and values-driven institutional investors who view the management of their investments as a powerful catalyst for social change. There are over 30 faith-based institutions that participate in SGI. While the organization is interfaith, most of the members are Catholic communities. This includes close to 25 communities of Catholic Sisters. The Republicans’ anti-Catholic bias is on full display when they refer to Catholic nuns who have dedicated their lives to serving the poor, feeding the hungry, and caring for creation as a “woke cartel” and “a ‘climate cartel’ of left-wing environmental activists.” It is a move that is clearly an attempt by the Republican House to attack and intimidate Catholic and other faith organizations who are acting on their religious beliefs centered around Catholic Social Teaching—beliefs that Pope Francis described in his encyclical Laudato Si’ by utilizing the term “integral ecology” to refer to the path toward solving our environmental concerns.

In that 2015 encyclical, Francis called for immediate action against climate change. He stated that “highly polluting fossil fuels . . . need to be progressively replaced without delay” (§165). After Laudato Si’, the Vatican developed a platform which repeatedly and explicitly urged Catholic institutions to divest. The Vatican developed this ambitious seven-year plan, the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, to mobilize the church across the globe towards sustainability and the mission of caring for God’s beautiful and wondrous creation.

The Vatican then released a 227-page document, “Journeying Towards Care for Our Common Home Five Years After Laudato Si’.” The document includes an entire chapter on divesting and finance. It lists as one possible “line of action” the promotion of “ethical, responsible and integral criteria for investment decision making, taking care not to support companies that harm human or social ecology (for example, through abortion or the arms trade), or environmental ecology (for example, through the use of fossil fuels).”

These faith communities, including Catholic nuns and priests, certainly have not, as the Judiciary Committee’s summary document claims, “declared war on the American way of life.” Nor are they “attacking American consumers.” They are simply living their faith. They are following moral and ethical values set forth in Catholic Social Teaching and in our sacred writings. They are following the guidance of Pope Francis when he stated in 2014 that, on climate change, “there is a clear, definitive and ineluctable ethical imperative to act.” 

It is a blatant insult and mischaracterization to suggest, as the Judiciary Committee does, that these women and men who have dedicated their lives to living the gospel are part of some evil “woke cartel.” It is a gross violation of their religious freedom to attempt to intimidate them for following their beliefs. ♦

Patrick Carolan is a Catholic activist, organizer, and writer. He served as the Executive director of the Franciscan Action Network for ten years; he co-founded the Global Catholic Climate Movement and Catholics Vote Common Good. His writing and activism are centered on his understanding and belief through Franciscan spirituality of the connectedness of all creation and God.

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