BETWEEN THE PEWS AND THE PLANET: UNDERSTANDING LAY CATHOLIC ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM

Abstract

Despite scholarly and popularly recognized potential for mobilization, the U.S. Catholic Church

has done little to act on climate change. Previous research found that U.S. Catholic leaders have been silent and denialist on the issue, but little attention has been paid to Catholic laity – the rank-and-file Catholics in the pews. This paper draws on ethnographic observations and interviews in one small midwestern diocese to examine how lay actors within a diocese make and constrain space for social change. Examining a case study of “Creation Care Teams” and a “Care for God’s Creation Ministry,” I find that lay Catholics’ environmental activism lends itself to an overall strategy of organizational submission, which at times prioritizes the negotiation of legitimacy within the diocese over the group’s actual objectives. Considered in conversation with organizational sociology and research on internal reform movements, this paper interrogates how insiders try to change powerful organizations from the bottom up, how institutions resist change even in the face of pressure from their members, and how well-meaning strategies for internal reform may actually reinforce an organization’s status quo.