c. 1999 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ Roman Catholic bishops of the U.S. Northwest and Canada’s British Columbia are considering a pledge to help the Columbia River by eliminating the use of fertilizers and pesticides on the lawns of Catholic schools and churches while reducing the use of gold in church adornments.

The bishops made their proposal in a”reflection”released this week which aims to inject religion and morality into the sometimes bitter debate about the future of the Columbia River watershed.

In the statement, a first working draft for a proposed pastoral letter to be completed in 2000, the bishops also recommended limiting snowmobiles and off-road vehicles to”limited and legally constructed roads”while calling the well-being of salmon not only a sign of the ecological health of the river but also of the”spiritual vitality”of the watershed. “The spirit of what we’re trying to do is to call all of us to think out of the box a little bit and to get beyond current terms of the debate,”said Frank Fromherz, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Portland who served on the document’s steering committee.

Those terms largely have been polarizing: salmon vs. dams, water quality against logging interests or healthy riverbanks battling cattle-grazing rights.

In their 55-page reflection, accompanied by a poem, the seven Roman Catholic bishops attempt to interject a different way of looking at the river, in the context of an interconnected”common good.””This will call us to responsibility, to dialogue, to work together collaboratively,”said Bishop William S. Skylstad of the Diocese of Spokane who is heading the effort.

The reflection is unusual in that it addresses a specific environmental subject, the Columbia, a river the bishops see as”living water,”literally and spiritually, for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

When completed, the pastoral letter is expected to not only provide guidance to the largest religious group in Oregon and much of the Northwest, but also to spark discussion among environmentalists, scientists, business people and others in the region. “It could make a huge difference. It’s exactly the type of thing we need to see,”said Debrah Marriott, director of the Portland-based Lower Columbia Estuary Program.

John Harrison, information officer for the Northwest Power Planning Council, concurred. “This is so often a debate between biologists and economists who have an economic interest in the river, and you simply don’t know who to believe. “What has been lacking for the most part is this sense of morality religious leaders can bring,”said Harrison, who was speaking for himself, not the council.

The bishops sought input from Harrison, Marriott and a wide range of others invested in the watershed, which not only includes 1,200 miles of the river, beginning in British Columbia, but also encompasses the thousands of miles of its tributaries.

The reflection can, and probably will, be changed before it becomes a pastoral letter.

Steven A. Kolmes, director of the University of Portland’s Environmental Studies program and a member of the reflection’s steering committee, said he’ll challenge at least one section. “I can guarantee you that the pastoral, in the end, will not call upon a complete ban on fertilizers and pesticides because I’m not an idiot,”Kolmes said. He said that pledge was included as a concession to”chemophobic”people who do not consider what would happen if beetles attacked a church property’s trees without chemical protection.

The pledge to stop using pesticides is in a section on the responsibility to improve the ecosystem. The reduction of gold is mentioned as a way to encourage responsible mining practices. And the restriction on snowmobile use is cited as a way to not disrupt the habitat of forest creatures in the watershed.

The reflection is the latest example in a long trend toward the greening of religion, particularly Christianity, that took on some urgency with the first Earth Day in 1970.

In 1997, for example, Bartholomew I, sometimes called the”green patriarch”and spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians, declared that the degradation of the natural world is”sin.”In the Northwest, and across the country, environmentally conscious congregations have linked arms through groups such as The National Religious Partnership for The Environment and the Evangelical Environmental Network. “There is a paradigm shift, moving from an anthropocentric view of life _ that everything is created for the sole purpose of human beings _ to a view of life where we look at human life in relation to all creation,”said Carol J. Dempsey, a Dominican sister and assistant professor of theology at the University of Portland.

That view emerges in the use of the words”speciesism”and”sacramental commons”in the reflection.

Speciesism _ like racism, sexism and classism _ is called a sin in the reflection. It’s defined as a species seeing itself as superior to and independent of other species, dominating to satisfy needs and wants. The bishops use the term”sacramental commons”to describe the Columbia River watershed.

The language is significant because the seven sacraments, such as Baptism and the Eucharist, are the most holy Catholic rites and the term”sacramental”traditionally has been reserved for such things as holy water and blessed palms on Palm Sunday.

But the bishops, building on previous statements by Pope John Paul II and pastoral letters by other bishops, extend that concept to include the Columbia River. “The whole of creation,”the bishops say,”can be sacramental for the person of faith: the beauty of a mountain lake, a flowing river, a flourishing old forest all exhilarate us and lead our minds and spirits to acknowledge the presence of God.”

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