Doing what makes you come alive: inner work toward outer action

“Molly Burhans wants the Catholic Church to put its assets—which include farms, forests, oil wells, and millions of acres of land—to better use. But, first, she has to map them.” 

“Burhans has been a deeply committed Catholic since she was twenty-one. For a year or two, when she was in college, she considered becoming a nun. Later, though, as she grew increasingly concerned about climate change, her ambitions broadened, and she began to think of ways in which the Catholic Church could be mobilized as a global environmental force. ‘There are 1.2 billion Catholics,’ she told me. ‘If the Church were a country, it would be the third most populous, after China and India.’ The Church, furthermore, is probably the world’s largest non-state landowner.”  

“Burhans concluded that the Church had the means to address climate issues directly, through better land management, and that it was also capable of protecting populations that were especially vulnerable to the consequences of global warming.”