Climate Change as Religious, Ethical, and Political

Interfaith Reflections with Emphasis on U.S. Catholicism 

Presentation by Daniel R. DiLeo, Ph.D.
4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Quad 264, Saint John’s University 

Dr. Daniel DiLeo will explore climate change as a religious, moral, and political issue with focus on the Catholic tradition. He will begin by describing how Judeo-Christian ethics generally and Catholic social teaching specifically are responses to relationship with God and thus essential to the fullness of faith. Next, Dr. DiLeo will outline the existential threat of climate change. He will then present religious communities’ theological, ethical, and political responses to climate change and conclude by suggesting why these teachings have not been embraced by the U.S. Catholic Church in ways commensurate with the climate crisis. 

Daniel R. DiLeo, Ph.D., is assistant professor and director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at Creighton University. Since 2009, he has served as a consultant with Catholic Climate Covenant of which the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Relief Services, and Catholic Charities USA are founding members. His research focuses on Catholic social teaching and climate change and in 2018 he published the edited volume All Creation Is Connected: Voices in Response to Pope Francis's Encyclical on Ecology (Anselm Academic). Dr. DiLeo earned his Ph.D. in theological ethics with a minor in systematic theology from Boston College and wrote his dissertation on Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ and public theology. 

Program sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning at Saint John's University
and the Nicholas and Bernice Reuter Professorship in Science and Religion,
with funding provided by the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota