Let's quit giving ourselves permission to wreak havoc on God's good earth. We're not the only ones in whom God delights.

All Creation is Groaning." So begins the title of a lecture that Anne Clifford is to deliver as holder of the 2007-08 Tuohy Chair in Interreligious Studies at John Carroll University. Although the phrase comes from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans (8:22), Clifford would likely insist that creation is indeed groaning, and not just metaphorically: Consider global warming, she says, as well as pollution, species facing extinction, even the rusted hulks of abandoned steel mills dotting the city of Pittsburgh, where she has taught at Duquesne University since 1988.

Clifford has several great allies in her quest to bring the force of Catholic thought to bear on the issue of how we treat the earth. One is the Genesis story (what a shame, she says, that Catholics hear it at a Sunday Mass only once a year during the Easter Vigil). Another is Catholic teaching on the common good, which ought not be limited to humans, she claims, but should take into account all living things. And a third is the Catholic understanding of the sacramentality of nature: We find God "not only through the book of God's Word, but also from the book of God's created works."

Why is the environment a religious issue in the first place?
In most religions the natural world is prominently featured. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, treat creation in similar texts and incorporate elements of the natural world in their religious symbolism and prayers.

For us Christians, our Old Testament begins with the Hebrew Bible's Genesis creation accounts. But in the New Testament we also have the wonderful hymn from Colossians (1:9-23) where Jesus is spoken of as the firstborn of all creation in whom were created all things in heaven and on earth. Then in John's gospel (1:1-5) you have all creatures coming to be created through Jesus. Both New Testament texts harken back to the Old Testament and Proverbs 8:22-30. But perhaps the most important reason that ecology is a Christian issue is that the Divine Word is made flesh in earth's very elements.

What is it about this particular time that makes it more critical for Christians to be involved?
Christian belief in a Creator means we have to be concerned about global warming, a looming disaster that's already affecting our planet, especially Asia, where roughly 4 billion people-or about 60 percent of the world's population-live.

China is now creating more pollution, especially greenhouse gas emissions, than the United States. That wasn't supposed to happen yet, but its economy is booming. Right now people in China's northwest have plenty of fresh water because the glaciers are melting. In 20 to 25 years those glaciers will be gone, and the parts of China that are benefiting from all that drinkable water will likely have none.

Global warming is the major cause for the terrible drought in Australia. The indigenous people there are especially suffering because their wells are going dry. Weather extremes in Bangladesh are pounding its coastal regions. India is having terrible pollution problems, and it's affecting not only their air but also their water.

Many would be curious to know why you see protecting the environment as a women's issue.
The poor of the world, who are the most affected by problems in the environment, are often women who head single-parent households. So many issues that have to do with putting food on the table have to do with women. Violating the earth, therefore, is violence directed toward women and their children. Ecofeminists have drawn attention to this connection for some time.

There are women in India who, in order to get water and to forage for food, now must trek long distances instead of the few hundred yards they walked in the past. Africa lost many of its trees because people cut them down for firewood. Wangari Maathai, who received the Nobel Prize in 2004, worked with women's groups in Kenya and throughout Africa to plant more than 20 million trees to replace those that had been cut down, improving both the environment and women's quality of life.

Ecofeminism also looks at our sense of the sacred, which needs to be broadened beyond the image of a male, distant God removed from ecological concerns. We suffer the poverty of not bringing forward more feminine imagery for God, including the divine Sophia-Wisdom.

Although I wouldn't consider myself a Christian if I did not accept God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is a mystery that exceeds all names. In biblical wisdom texts we find images of God as a female Creator-Spirit.

Do we Catholics have a collective blank spot when it comes to linking our belief in God with how we treat the earth?
I think we do have a blank spot. There are some exceptions: Pope John Paul II drew attention to the environment in a World Day of Peace message back in 1989; the U.S. bishops published a pastoral letter, "Renewing the Earth," in the early 1990s. And more recently the International Theological Commission published "Communion and Stewardship." But the person in the pew is not hearing anything about ecology as a commitment to creation at Sunday liturgies.

A major contributing reason is the choice of readings for Sunday Mass. The first Genesis story, describing the seven days of creation, is read only on Holy Saturday, and a selection from Genesis 2 and 3, the second creation story, is read on the first Sunday of Lent, with a clear emphasis on the sin of Adam and Eve. At neither time would it be appropriate for the homilist to challenge the common notion that earth was made for human use.

Are you saying that our view is too human-centered?
Yes, and there are historical reasons for this. Beginning in the first six centuries of the church, humans were given center stage because we possess rationality and thus were believed to be the only creatures who could possibly image God.

But even in the Middle Ages, Christians gave attention to a broader cosmological richness. Thomas Aquinas wrote of nature, describing the various days of creation as God adorning the world with beauty. Therefore we can come to discover God through the sacramentality of the beauty and the goodness of creation.

Later, however, when it came to the battles between science and religion, religion virtually abandoned nature to scientists and became more concerned with personal salvation. That's still pretty much the emphasis. Creation, which in people's minds means nonhuman nature, became simply the stage upon which human salvation is worked out.

In effect we say, "We will use the earth for what we need to sustain our human life so that we can travel our personal spiritual journey to God." This is an oversimplification of course, but you get the idea.

In this country movements for so-called creation science and intelligent design have sidetracked us from looking at how theology and science can work together for the good of all of creation. We fuss about debating the literal interpretation of the Genesis story; we have Christians saying that evolution is a dangerous idea and that Darwin promoted atheism.

Darwin, however, when he wrote The Origin of the Species in 1859, said clearly that there was nothing in his book that conflicted with belief in a Creator, who could use the dynamics of evolution to create life.