Latino & Anglo RCs in Climate Change

Over at Religion News Service, Mark Silk calls attention to new research from the Public Religion Research Institute that shows Latino Catholics are far more concerned about climate change than Anglo Catholics. He gives the numbers and then asks a question that should make the bishops stay up at night: "It’s as if Hispanic Catholics and white Catholics belong to different churches. What gives?" As Silk notes, some of the disparity may be the result of knowing who will be impacted most by climate change, but I suspect there is something deeper going on here. I suspect that the disparity is one measure of the difference between a Catholic, relational, sacramental view of the world possessed by Latinos, versus a transactional, individualistic, Protestant view of the world that has crept into and shaped Anglo Catholicism.