The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) has marked the release of Laudate Deum with a newsletter story on CTSA's fossil fuel divestment. Before you read the story, please take a moment and recognize those who helped make this achievement possible, especially:
- Erin Lothes Biviano, past chair of the ad hoc Fossil Fuel Divestment Review Committee (since re-named the Climate Justice Committee), who has led CTSA's divestment discernment since 2013.
- Executive Director Mary Jane Ponyik.
- President Kristin Heyer and past Presidents Francis Clooney and Christine Firer-Hinze.
- Matthew Shadle and Julia Brumbaugh, current Committee members.
- Nancy Rourke, past Committee member.
- John O'Shaughnessy, CFO for the Franciscan Sisters of Mary.
- Treasurer Patrick Flanagan.
- Thomas Massaro, Gina Wenzel Wolfe, and John Carr, who together produced the 2017 Abbreviated Fossil Fuel Investment Report.
CTSA Goes “All In”
By Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities Staff
https://shorturl.at/iCFQ2
The Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) may have a modest endowment compared to that of universities, but they recently went “all in” when it came to following the Pope Francis’ lead on attending to the world’s climate.
The largest association of Catholic theologians in the world, the CTSA noted that there was no shortage of vendors offering to invest their endowment of less than $1 million in ways that met various social justice criteria, but few that “allowed us to provide 100% fossil fuel exclusions,” explained Kristin E. Heyer, president of their board of directors.
In 2022, the CTSA committed to divest from fossil fuels in fidelity to Laudato Si’, the Pope’s 2015 encyclical on care for the natural environment. Subtitled “On Care for Our Common Home,” the encyclical emphasized God’s gift of the world for our use and God’s extraordinary trust of placing it our collective care.
That commitment led to an extensive search for a firm that would offer the fullest range of ways to assure that “CTSA budgets going forward will reflect our commitment to the biosphere, its diversity, health, and sustainability,” noted Rev. Patrick Flanagan, CM, CTSA treasurer. “We recognize that a budget is a moral document that reflects who we are called to be.”
We finally found a firm that “allowed us to maintain and go beyond our ethical investing status quo,” Heyer noted. “They will use USCCB exclusionary screens and provide customized shareholder engagement opportunities, Catholic values proxy voting, and broad asset diversification. Our new firm will also offer positive screening for Catholic values, and, most directly relevant to our committee’s charge, will provide fossil fuel exclusions to enable our divesting from the Carbon Underground 200.”
The Carbon Underground 200 is a list of publicly-traded companies considered to have the greatest negative impact from profiting on their coal, oil and gas reserves.
“100 percent of our invested funds are now subject to these investment standards,” said Flanagan. “I am so grateful to be part of a learned society like CTSA that is so faithful Pope Francis’ 2015 papal encyclical, Laudato Si’. It is an historic moment in the life of CTSA.”
That commitment is all the more prescient in light of the Pope’s newest apostolic exhortation, “Laudate Deum,” released on October 4th, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. The document calls even more strongly for immediate action in light of the quickly worsening climatic conditions and obvious effects on some of the world’s most vulnerable populations.
“What is being asked of us is nothing other than a certain responsibility for the legacy we will leave behind, once we pass from this world,” the Pope enjoins, and then pleads further. “In conscience, and with an eye to the children who will pay for the harm done by their actions, the question of meaning inevitably arises: ‘What is the meaning of my life? What is the meaning of my time on this earth? And what is the ultimate meaning of all my work and effort?’”
