Siena prof boosts 'eco-spirituality'

If you turn off the water while you're brushing your teeth, Dr. Riobart "Rob" Breen admits, you're not saving much water.

But, if you tell 20 friends about that practice and get them to copy it, and then they bring the idea to their parishes and tell others, a small change starts to have a larger impact.

And if those friends and parishioners then get interested in environmental issues and attend a lobby day at the State Capitol to talk to politicians about them, a few drops of saved water can become a flood of change.

Action of faith

Dr. Breen teaches environmental policy and politics at Siena College in Loudonville.

He is also the founder and director of the Franciscan Ecology Center in Syracuse, dedicated to environmental education, advocacy and service work, especially with young people.

His goal, he said, is to get young Catholics and others to integrate "eco-spirituality" into the practice of their faith while they're still young enough to have healthier habits instilled in them.

Getting started

A native of Troy and lay Franciscan with a background in youth ministry and faith formation, Dr. Breen was doing graduate work in Arizona when he became passionate about environmental issues.

He discovered that, although the Catholic Church in other countries routinely did environmental advocacy, the U.S. Church had not mobilized to the same extent.

However, when he began working in Syracuse, he found that the Franciscan clergy and women religious, and the lay Franciscans there had "a real openness" to addressing environmental issues.

Beginning

In 2003, Dr. Breen founded the Franciscan Ecology Center as an outlet for teens, young adults and adults in the Syracuse Diocese concerned about the environment.

The center sponsored the Franciscan Earth Corps for college students and Franciscan Earth Clubs for high-schoolers, combining spiritual growth with environmental service projects.

"This is great, to put together nature and Catholicism!" students told Dr. Breen, who noted that they had never before heard about the Catholic approach to the environment.

But Pope John Paul II was "a radical environmentalist!" the professor said, citing statements in which the late pope said Catholics are obligated to care for creation.

Mobilizing

Students' service work through the FEC has ranged from community gardening and restoring stream banks to protecting wildlife habitats and removing invasive vegetation.

They take camping trips and go on retreats with an eco-spirituality theme, and work with parishes, schools and others on boosting sustainability.

The focus is on "getting people, out of their faith, to mobilize on these issues," Dr. Breen stated. "We have an obligation to be in solidarity."

Local issues

Not long ago, Dr. Breen joined the faculty at Siena College. Although he keeps a field office in Syracuse, he has turned much of his attention to developing similar environmental groups in the Albany Diocese.

To that end, at last month's Spring Enrichment in Albany, he led a session for catechists on "local environmental issues and the Catholic call to ecological stewardship."

Several dire environmental problems in the Capital District were highlighted. In speaking with The Evangelist, Dr. Breen listed the pollution of the Hudson River, the growing amount of mercury in the water and soil, the use of road salt and lawn pesticides that are toxic to plants and even people, the release of depleted uranium along the Patroon Creek in Albany, a radioactive spill along the Mohawk River years ago by the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory about which little information is available, and general "illiteracy" on environmental issues.

"We grow up in a web," Dr. Breen stated. "Anything we do to the ecosystem, we do to ourselves. Bad environmental decisions" especially affect the poor and marginalized, since they're most likely to live in polluted environments and least able to leave.

Solutions

There are many steps Catholics can take to work toward change, said Dr. Breen, from halting the use of pesticides on lawns to switching lightbulbs to energy-saving fluorescent bulbs. Volunteer opportunities -- such as doing restoration work on areas like parks -- are always available, as well.

"When you've got [many] people working on" such projects, you can make a huge difference in the world, he noted.

Most crucial, he said, is educating oneself on environmental issues to become a better advocate for creation. Dr. Breen himself said he had traveled the bicycle trail along the Hudson River "hundreds of times as a student," but never knew that the Krammakill Creek, which winds through Siena's campus, also traverses a golf course, an old dump, a housing development and the former Al Tech Steel plant -- all of which have runoff pouring chemicals into the creek.

The Krammakill Creek empties into the Hudson River.

Body of Christ

"We're Catholic. What can we, as a body of Christ, do" to protect our world? asked Dr. Breen. "What can we as a community do?"

In the fall, he will start a branch of the Franciscan Earth Corps at Siena. At least two Catholic high schools in the Diocese are also interested in starting Franciscan Earth Clubs for their students.

Environmental studies students at Siena have already started advocating for change. In April, they held a Global Warming Awareness Day on campus, walking from there to Albany for a rally at the State Capitol. This summer, they are "adopting" Camp Scully, the Diocese's summer camp for underprivileged children.

At the camp on Snyder's Lake in Wynantskill, they will create walking trails, build lean-tos in the woods for bird observation, and incorporate environmental education into campers' activities.

"We cannot count on [the older generation] to change their habits," Dr. Breen asserted. "If we instill the right way of doing things [in young people], they can do it."

(Dr. Breen recently made a personal decision in caring for the earth: He traded in his Jeep Wrangler for an electric scooter. Now, he says, "I say to the students, 'You're just coming from the dorms, and you drive your car?'" For examples of why environmental issues are so crucial, he said Catholics need only look to the Bible: God took humans out of the Garden of Eden and into the outer world, saying, "This is where you will toil;" later, God reaffirmed this through a covenant with Noah -- a covenant involving God, people and the earth. "Those three parts," he stated, "are absolutely essential." The Franciscan Ecology Center was created through a nonprofit organization called "Anam Duan," from Irish words meaning "the lifesong that binds people, communities, cultures, the environment and all life." Learn more about the FEC at www.anamduan.org, email [email protected] or write to PO Box 3125, Albany, NY 12203.)

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