As we reflect in the Easter and Pentecost seasons on the glory in Christ’s resurrection and ascension, we remember that His redemption reconciled us not only to God and to our fellow men, but to all of creation. Many Catholics ignore or forget that third reconciliation.
Today, we must reclaim it.
It is not that faithful Catholics lack zeal for God's creation. We rightly pour our energy into defending life from abortion and IVF, and into recognizing the dignity of the poor. But on ecological teaching, many have gone silent — and the secular left has rushed to fill the void.
Those who shout loudest about the Earth often treat humanity with contempt, parroting anti-natalist rhetoric that frames human life as the enemy of nature. The absence of action has come at a cost.
We need a theologically grounded, pro-human, thoroughly Catholic approach to the environment—one that recognizes the dangers of left-wing environmentalism while still upholding our God-given mission to care for the Earth.
This is personal for me. A few months ago, I started a Catholic organization called Vita et Terra, Latin for “Life and Earth,” to help awaken authentic environmental consciousness among Catholics so that, together, we can become true stewards of God’s creation.
Ultimately, our duty to creation as Catholics is grounded in three principles: life, stewardship, and conservation.
1) Life
Above all, we must proudly proclaim the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. That means opposing abortion, euthanasia, and any ideology that treats people as disposable, as well as rejecting the lies of the secular environmental movement that treats people as a problem that must be solved to heal “Mother Earth.” Families are a gift, not a problem.
Further, our care for human life leads us to care for the environment.
Lead in water, cancerous pollutants, PFAS chemicals linked to infertility, pesticides linked to birth defects—these are not abstractions but direct threats to people.
A truly pro-life movement must fight the toxins that harm mothers and their unborn children and prevent environmental degradation that leads to suffering and pain.
2) Stewardship
Man was given “dominion” over the Earth (Genesis 1:26-28), and God’s first commandment to mankind was to “dress and keep” His ground (Genesis 2:15).
Instead of exploitative destruction of the Earth on the one hand or pagan-infused worship on the other, this is a call for responsible dominion.
Stewardship is rooted in the Catholic principle of subsidiarity. Communities know their land better than a distant government.
Private property and time-tested practices such as responsible hunting, fishing, and regenerative agriculture have often conserved more habitat than top-down federal mandates.
Hunters and anglers fund wildlife management through licensing fees and have restored wetlands and forests for generations. These practical, traditional ways of keeping the Earth are much more effective than bureaucratically imposed ideology.
3) Conservation
We inherit the Earth first from God and then from our ancestors. It is our obligation, then, to hold the Earth in trust for our children.
We fight real pollution—industrial waste, excessive carbon emissions, forever chemicals, contamination that harms both people and wildlife—but we refuse climate alarmism. Conservationism must serve people, not undermine us.
These principles of life, stewardship, and conservation offer Catholics a foundation for engaging with environmental issues without ceding ground to anti-human environmentalists.
They also give environmentalists a source of hope and a reason for their efforts.
In 2023, a study found that more than a quarter of conservationists are “mentally distressed,” trapped in secularist themes of doom and despair.
Their ideology gives them no reason to believe that humanity can successfully tackle a “climate apocalypse” and no reason why they should even care to protect the Earth in the first place.
Catholicism, on the other hand, offers hope and purpose.
Not only do we have the power to protect the Earth as God’s chosen stewards, but we have a duty as well, because it is what God has called us to do. Our robustly God-centered, pro-human vision gives us faith in our capacity and reason for optimism.
We Catholics already carry the pro-life banner with courage. It is time to extend that same courage to the rest of God’s creation.
Clare Ath is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Vita et Terra, a conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit that champions care for creation.