[I]t was reassuring to know that far away, whales swim untroubled in Baltic waters, and monks in arcane time zones chanted ceaselessly for the salvation of the world. – Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

It is a snowy Friday evening and I am in a tiny, 100-year-old cabin off a dirt road in Manitou Springs, Colo., watching 20-something Colorado College grads in sweaters and boots prepare food for a Shabbat potluck, or “Shabbat-luck,” which they host every week to welcome in the Sabbath, even though only three of the 20 or so people in attendance are Jewish.

Everyone is giving hugs as people stream in with homemade squash pies, zucchini chocolate cakes and chiles rellenos to share. Ruthie Markwardt, 27, my host, picked the chilis she is cooking. Ms. Markwardt shares this modest home with her boyfriend, Barack Ben-Amots, as well as three other roommates. Through their eco-conscious living, food donation, teaching and music, they are young people committed to trying to repair a distressed world. The windowsill in the kitchen is covered with succulents and candles, gourds and dried flowers, an Our Lady of Guadalupe and a piece of honeycomb. It feels a little like a home altar, and the hospitality I have received is radical and good. Ms. Markwardt and Mr. Ben-Amots, who teaches middle school, are turning this land into a community garden and educational farm.

Even though this is my first Shabbat, the ritual feels immediately familiar and profoundly human: lighting candles, singing songs, blessing and sharing bread, blessing and drinking wine. As we eat, after prayers, Ms. Markwardt, who has long blond hair, bright blue eyes and a nose ring, starts telling me about when she “first fell in love with seeds.” She spends some of her days picking vegetables at Hobbes Farm, others working for a community nonprofit called Concrete Couch, a group committed to community gardens and public art made from salvaged material. Ms. Markwardt teaches people skills that their great-grandparents once knew, like how to can peaches and tomatoes so they can eat locally all year round, or how to use tools so they can build and mend things. It is about rejecting what Pope Francis calls the “throwaway culture.”

It’s a beautiful instantiation of living the Gospel, although Ms. Markwardt and the other environmentalists in attendance are not Catholic. They are predominantly “nones,” people who claim no particular religious affiliation. Yet they are clearly living the call of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’,” right down to the pope’s desire that we rediscover the Sabbath (No. 237).

What Has Changed
I have come here because it can be difficult to find this sort of ecologically minded conversation among Catholics in my social circles. My sister Mia Alvarado taught a class on “Laudato Si’” at our Colorado parish in 2018, but it was sparsely attended. My impression is that, even now, many Catholics in the United States do not have a sense of urgency around this issue, nor have they heard about it from their pastors. Catholics also are sharply divided along political lines when it comes to the issue of climate: Eighty percent of Catholic Democrats say that humans are a cause of global warming, while 78 percent of Catholic Republicans say humans are not to blame.

But the impacts of climate change are already being felt, and the extreme weather that accompanies it is devastating communities’ lives. Last summer the temperature reached 108.6 degrees Fahrenheit in France, 108.7 in Germany. Hundreds died. My cousin in Houston was rescued from her flooded home during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 by canoe. These days, we frequently read headlines and wonder if it is already too late. Headlines like the BBC’s “Climate Change: 12 Years to Save the Planet. Make That 18 Months” urge us to act, but they do not erase feelings of helplessness nor quell fears of the futility of our small actions. Few thought climate change would arrive so quickly. More and more friends tell me, “I’ve given up hope. It’s liberating.” Or, “We’re doomed.”

Even among those who understand the urgency and consequences of climate change, resistance, to many, seems pointless. We are accustomed to religious fundamentalists saying that we live in the end times, but now we also see articles about a “climate apocalypse” in The New Yorkerand The New York Times. The authors of pieces like these, who often do not have children, seem almost proud of their acceptance that the end is near. As if the end of human life on earth will be a relief. (No more striving for that next promotion.) Many of us, especially those of us with children, cannot accept this. How could we, when it will be our children and grandchildren who will face the long-term effects of our actions?

In the more than four years since “Laudato Si’” appeared, there have been worthy local efforts to respond to its call. The California bishops have laid out a climate action plan; many parishes have formed reading groups and invited speakers on climate change, switched to LED lights and installed solar panels. On a larger scale, the Global Catholic Climate Movement was founded as a network to connect hundreds of member organizations around the world. It also has a youth arm, called Laudato Si’ Generation. These initiatives offer some hope, but it is hard to say whether the people in the pews are getting the message. I have been a Mass-goer my entire life and I do not recall a single homily about caring for creation, nor has my parish made even small symbolic changes like reusable coffee mugs after Mass or changing to a more eco-friendly thermostat. A priest I work with this year told me, “I haven’t read ‘Laudato Si’.’ Should I? I don’t believe in climate change.”

A student I know told me, “China doesn’t care if you compost or use a clothesline or fly less or work for political change.” In other words, your little good deeds are as straw before flame. And perhaps he is right. The world is warming much faster than almost anyone predicted, and the combination of political, economic and lifestyle changes needed to reverse course seems unlikely to occur. Still, as Willa Cather wrote in her 1925 novel The Professor’s House, “We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don’t think you help people by making their conduct of no importance—you impoverish them.”