Who We Are

The Maryknoll Sisters Center for One Earth Community is a platform for welcoming individuals and communities to immerse themselves in evolving religious paradigms, scientific discoveries and transformational initiatives resulting in a deeper commitment to contribute to the flourishing of the whole Earth Community. Collaboratively designed programs such as virtual conferences, online webinars, and video programs enable greater accessibility. Resources created by other institutes and movements that contribute to creating the coherence needed to work together and amplify our transformative efforts will be shared through various mediums.

Our Mission

Our evolving consciousness of the cry of the earth and cry of the poor compels Maryknoll Sisters to partner with all seeking to work for justice and the thriving of all life in this one Earth Community. Trusting in the power of God to do new things, our institute seeks to explore and engage evolving paradigms and convergent efforts which sustain healing and liberating change in our world.

Programs for 2025

Important Information
Cost of the Program

There will be no registration fee required to participate in our programs.

However, voluntary donations will be gratefully accepted to support participation in our programs.

All programs are virtual only.

Focus of the Spring Mini-Course
God, Earth and Cosmos

John F. Haught, PhD

Our Awakening Universe and the Future of Faith

(A series of four presentations by John F. Haught, Georgetown University)

Haught invites us to see the universe not as complete, but as still becoming—a sacred drama unfolding over billions of years. He introduces a theology that embraces evolution as the medium through which God’s creative love is expressed. Haught sees God as the depth dimension of reality, the future horizon drawing creation forward in love.

Over the past two centuries, scientists have learned that the universe is still coming into being. The cosmos is a great drama of awakening. But to what is it awakening? Are there good reasons in the new scientific story of the universe, for the renewal of hope on Earth? In four sessions, the presenter outlines a response to this question, as developed more fully in several of his books on God, faith and hope in the age of science.

1. The New Cosmic Story and the Meaning of Faith
   May 20, 2025, 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)

From the perspective of physics, the universe is a process of heat exchanges and energy transformations. But does the universe also have meaning or purpose? The late president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, remarked that global irresponsibility in our times—moral, political, and ecological—stems from the widespread assumption that our universe lacks a purpose. Is he right about this? This session offers some possible responses.
Lerner, Richard. The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

2. What does “God” Mean in the Age of Science?
   May 27, 2025, 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)   

Darwin, Einstein, Lemaître and other scientific experts have altered our whole understanding of the cosmos. The universe now seems to be a long but still unfinished story. Does the new understanding of the universe make any difference in how to think about God and the meaning of faith? Two of the most important religious thinkers of the 20^th century, Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin, offer fresh ways of responding to this question. This session explores and compares their new ways of thinking about God.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Cosmic Vision of Teilhard de Chardin. Maryknoll: Orbis Press, 1922.
Rahner, Karl. What Is God? Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1986.

3. Life, Evolution, and the Meaning of Suffering
   June 3, 2025, 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)

What is it that makes life different from inanimate nature? What is the meaning of evolution? Given the long suffering of life prior to and after the origin of our species, can people of faith any longer make sense of the idea of a benign divine creator?
Haught, John F. Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.
McFague, Sallie. The Drama of Life. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010
Haught, John F. God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution. 2nd ed. Boulder: Westview Press, 2007. (First published 2000).

4. Teilhard de Chardin, Einstein, and the Meaning of Time: A Conversation
   June 10, 2025 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)   

Teilhard de Chardin and Albert Einstein had been living in the United States within miles of each other when they both died in the spring of 1955. If they had ever met and been able to talk about science, the universe, time, faith, God, and the meaning of life, how would the conversation have gone? This session, with the presenter as “moderator,” imagines a conversation between the two great scientists and religious thinkers as a way of thinking about the implications of science for faith and for our sense of God.
Lerner, Richard. God After Einstein: What Is Really Going on in the Universe? New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.

• Key Insight: God is not the designer behind the blueprint, but the Divine Future—the source of hope and meaning in an evolving cosmos.
• Contribution: A compelling synthesis of faith and science, grounding Christian hope in the ever-expanding story of cosmic emergence.

John F. Haught, Ph.D, (Catholic University, 1970), is Distinguished Research Professor, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He was formerly Professor and Chair of the Department of Theology at Georgetown. His area of specialization is systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmology, evolution, ecology and religion. He is the author of 24 books, including Teilhard de Chardin: The Cosmic Vision of Teilhard de Chardin (Maryknoll: Orbis Press, 2021) and God After Einstein: What Is Really Going on in the Universe? by Richard Lerner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). He lectures internationally on issues in science and religion. In 2008, he received a “Friend of Darwin Award” from the National Center for Science Education.

May 20, 2025, 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)

May 27, 2025, 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)

June 3, 2025, 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)

June 10, 2025 7:00 pm- 8:30 pm (EST)

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Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ

One Earth Community: Reflections on God and the Earth

This retreat will explore the gospel call to love God with all our heart and soul with a view toward seeing the living God as lover of the Earth, and the gospel call to love our neighbor as ourself with a view toward including nature as our neighbor. In conversation with S. Antoinette Gutzler MM, S. Elizabeth Johnson CSJ will probe these ramifications of seeing Earth as one splendid if threatened community. At this time of social and ecological peril, these reflections can inspire us to vigorous hope.

One Earth Community: Reflections on God and the Earth
Day 1: The Adventure of Creation
Day 2: Jesus and the Earth
Day 3: Spirituality and Ethics: Conversion to the Earth

Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ (Brentwood, NY) is a retired professor at Fordham University, where she was inducted into the university’s Hall of Honor. A native of Brooklyn, NY, she received her doctorate in theology from Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and taught there for one decade before moving to Fordham University. For over half a century her work as a theologian has included teaching, mentoring, research and writing, editing, and public lecturing to church and academic groups at home and abroad. A former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, she has authored numerous books and articles translated into over a dozen languages. Her most recent book, published by Orbis, is “Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth.” This will form the basis for the retreat on “One Earth Community.

A final note: Elizabeth grew up loving the Maryknoll Sisters, as her two aunts were members of the community: S. Virginia Therese and S. Regina Johnson (Thomas Marie).

Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ

June 18, 2025, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm (EST)

June 19, 2025, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm (EST)

June 20, 2025, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm (EST)

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Ilia Delio, OSF

Catholic Theology 2.0: How Science Is Changing Our Understanding of God, Self & World

Ilia Delio sees the universe as God in the act of becoming. Steeped in Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary mysticism, she reads the cosmos as a sacred web of quantum entanglement, a dance of energy and matter where everything is interrelated. Her God is not distant but dynamically present, breathing through the ever-new.

Dr. Ilia Delio, OSF, holds the Josephine C. Connelly Chair in Christian Theology at Villanova University. Her area of research is systematic-constructive theology, with a focus on evolution, quantum physics, and artificial intelligence, and their implications for Christian doctrine and life. She is the author of twenty-five books, including The Not Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole, The Hours of the Universe, which won the 2022 Gold Nautilus Book Award, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, and Consciousness, a finalist for the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize, and The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love, for which she won the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a 2014 Catholic Press Association Book Award in Faith and Science. She is also the founder of the Center for Christogenesis, an online spiritual and educational resource for the integration of science, religion, and culture.

“In my own view, Ilia Delio’s work presenting Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s vision shows us the most significant pathway we can travel toward a vibrant and beautiful Earth Community. With both passion of the heart and brilliance of the mind, Ilia presents a vision that combines science and spirituality. Her work is rare and precious achievement. She is one of the planetary leaders of our time. The more extensive the reach of her work, the better chance the Earth Community has for a beautiful future”. –Brian Thomas Swimme

Points to Explore over the Two Days:

• Why symbols and doctrines of Catholic theology are becoming obsolete.
• Why Catholicism has become too small to meet the needs of our dynamic cosmic life today.
• How can our core beliefs vitalize our lives? What do we need to let go of? What kind of inner disposition is required to co-create wholeness and unity?

July 1, 2025 7:00 pm- 9:00 pm (EST)

July 2, 2025 7:00 pm- 9:00 pm (EST)

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• Key Insight: God is Love at the heart of matter, the deep connectivity of all things, calling us into communion and creativity.
• Contribution: A bold reimagining of theology for the age of technology and planetary consciousness, where spiritual evolution meets digital emergence.

Together, the theologians gift us with a living, relational, evolutionary theology—one that suffers with the Earth, honors the cosmos, and leans into the Lure of Tomorrow held in God’s unfolding grace.

Focus of Summer Mini-Course

Unmasking Racism, Awakening Hope

We are living in an age of deep reckoning—a time when the soul of society strains beneath centuries of injustice, and yet, within that struggle, the seeds of transformation stir. In this course, we dare to listen, to learn, and to rise.

Anchored in two powerful texts—

Dan Horan’s

A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege (2nd edition)

and

Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas’s

Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter

We journey together through the tangled roots of systemic racism and the living hope that justice can be born anew.

Dan Horan invites readers, especially White Catholics, into the uncomfortable yet essential work of self-examination. His guide is not merely educational—it is pastoral, spiritual, and deeply personal. In a time when conversations about privilege are too often met with defensiveness or denial, Horan offers a compassionate yet unflinching mirror. His words challenge the silence of the pews and call forth the prophetic voice that must rise in solidarity.

Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, with the clarity of a theologian and the fire of a prophet, compels us to imagine a future grounded in resurrection hope. Her book is a cry from the heart of the Black experience and a theological insistence that the crucifixion of Black lives in America is not God’s will. Through her lens, we encounter a faith that refuses to be complicit and a vision that insists Black lives must matter—not only in the streets but in the sacred heart of our shared humanity.

Together, these texts serve as our compass and our call. At this crossroads of moral urgency and divine possibility, we are invited to interrogate history, confront our complicity, and cultivate a hope that is not passive but powerful—resurrection hope.

This course is not just academic; it is spiritual formation. It is an invitation to walk the path of justice, to listen deeply, to speak truth, and to act with courage. The work is not easy. But it is holy. And it needs to begin now.

A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege by  Daniel P. Horan is a book that aims to help white Catholics understand and address racism and white privilege. The book explores the concepts of racism, white privilege, and their impact on individuals and society, particularly within the context of the Catholic Church. This includes addressing hard realities that White people have typically been able to avoid, which, as Horan shows from his own experience comes from to the blissful ignorance afforded White people by an ingrained system of racism in both United States and the Church. Horan uses personal reflection and candid critique to help readers understand issues like common-sense racism and systemic racism, as well as the Catholic Church’s teachings on racism. The book also offers practical guidance on how to become a better ally and combat racism in daily life.

Dan Horan

July 8, 2025 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

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How do we really know that God cares when Black people are still getting killed? How long do we have to wait for the justice of God? I get it, that Christ is Black, but that doesn’t seem to be helping us right now. These questions from her son prompted theologian Kelly Brown Douglas to undertake this soul-searching reflection. The killing of George Floyd and the ongoing litany of Black victims raised questions about the persistence of white supremacy in this nation, leading her to reflect on how a “white way of knowing” has come to dominate American identity and even to shape the consciousness of Christians. In exploring the message of Confederate monuments and the “Make America Great Again” slogan, she examines the failures of even “good white Christians” and struggles with the hope that “Black Lives Matter,” before reaching deep into her own experience and the faith of Black folks to find her way back to Resurrection Hope. The book ultimately calls for a transformation of American society, urging readers to confront the deep-seated racism that persists in the nation and to actively work towards a future where Black lives truly matter.

Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas

July 15, 2025 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

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Focus of the Fall Mini-Course

Marcus Mescher

In The Ethics of Encounter:

Christian Neighbor Love as a Practice of Solidarity

and

Paul Schutz

In The Theology of Flourishing: The Fullness of Life for All Creation 

Mescher, calls us to radical hospitality, to meet the Other not with suspicion but sacred recognition. He outlines an ethic rooted in solidarity, mercy, and mutual transformation—where encounter becomes the soil of justice. He invites us into an ethic of encounter—where solidarity, compassion, and mutual transformation are not idealistic dreams, but necessary practices.

Schutz, writing into the hope of what might yet be, envisions thriving not as personal gain but as communal flourishing, a theological reclamation of abundance and belonging in an age marked by fragmentation. He invites us to reimagine what it means to live well with and for others in communities where everyone has the chance to grow, to heal, and to live fully. He reframes thriving as a theological path—one grounded in justice, community, and the abundant life Jesus spoke of. His theology reminds us that justice and joy are not separate—that we are made to thrive together.

Together, these works converge at a profound intersection: the conviction that the sacred lives in relationship, that to thrive is to encounter, and that a just world begins wherever we choose to see the divine in one another. These books point us toward a faith that is not passive or private, but embodied and communal. They remind us that to encounter one another with love is to participate in God’s dream for the world. And to thrive—as Scripture teaches—is to seek the good of our neighbors, the healing of creation, and the coming of God’s Kingdom, here and now.

The Sacred Call to Communion

In a time marked by division and disconnection, two voices rise to remind us of the sacred call to communion:

This book presents an ethical framework for the culture of encounter that Pope Francis calls us to build. The book serves as a creative and constructive proposal for what it would take to build such a culture in an American context marked by rising individualism, racial tensions, class segregation, hyper-partisanship, and online echo chambers. In particular the work of well-known Jesuit Father Greg Boyle (Tattoos on the Heart) and his work with gangs in Southern California provides a case study for overcoming fear, hatred, and trauma in order to practice Christian neighbor love that seeks solidarity. Mescher’s focus on the strong divisions in contemporary U.S. society is an important one for understanding why he believes that encounter provides the antidote. He argues that moral relativism and social separation make us unable to see one another, to communicate with one another, to be in solidarity with another, across lines of difference. Genuine encounter, guided by an expansive view of neighbor love and informed by Catholic social teaching, provides a way out of this impasse and toward a more just and connected society.

Prof. Marcus Mescher

Sept. 14, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Sept. 17, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Oct. 01, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Oct. 08, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

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Proposing a groundbreaking theological approach to what it means to truly thrive, A Theology of Flourishing reframes Christian thought around the concept of abundant life for all of creation. Drawing from scripture, tradition, and contemporary theology, Schutz argues that flourishing is God’s fundamental intention for the universe. He treats flourishing as a theological category worthy of serious attention. Following in the footsteps of Denis Edwards, and others, he argues for a reorientation of the Christian imagination, linking creation–understood as a creature’s life-giving, grounding relationship with God–with the promised eschatological fulfillment of “all things” in communion with God. As a theological category, creaturely flourishing offers a vital resource for addressing social and ecological degradation and promoting intersectional justice from the standpoint of and within Christian faith. Suitable for students and scholars alike, this timely work confronts modern crises of injustice, inequality, and ecological destruction while constructing a fresh, hope-filled vision of Christian life for the well-being of all

Prof. Paul Schutz

Oct 15, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Oct 22, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Oct 29, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Nov 05, 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Learn More and Register Here