Nuns view land as a sacred trust

They have owned remote convents, willow-shaded hospitals, and schools and orphanages on green campuses. For decades, nuns have been little-noticed stewards of the land.

Now, a group of nuns at a Plainville nature center is pushing to preserve properties owned by nuns and other religious groups, arguing that protecting open space is a worthy pursuit, even for those focused on a higher plane.

The Dominican nuns at the Crystal Spring Earth Learning Center have formed the Religious Lands Conservancy Project, a partnership with the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition.

Sister Christine Loughlin, one of the nuns running Crystal Spring and a driving force behind the new project, said preserving the environment is a natural evolution of the more traditional missions of nuns.

"If you look at sisters in the United States, the tradition we come out of is teaching, nursing, and social work," she said. "But we've always responded to the needs of the time, and certainly one of the needs of the time is learning about the living systems of the planet."

Loughlin said she doesn't want to see religious groups "sell their land for a one-time gain. What we're attempting to do is find ways to address religious congregations owning land and talk about how that land is protected."

Bernie McHugh, coordinator of the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, said religious groups are "becoming more and more aware of the positive role they might play" in land conservation.

It's not clear how much open space is owned by religious groups in the state. The state coalition in early December received a $35,000 foundation grant to identify such sites.

It's a task that has proved somewhat tricky. McHugh said land conservation advocates believe substantial tracts are owned by religious groups -- from summer camps owned by Jewish synagogues to forests owned by Buddhist groups to coastal retreat houses owned by Catholic women's groups.

But nobody tracks such information. And it may take some detective work to find the properties because owner names on municipal records can be misleading, McHugh said. Crystal Spring itself, for example, is owned by the Literary Society of St. Catherine of Siena, Kentucky.

"How in the world would you know that's a community of Dominican nuns? The 'St. Catherine' might tip you off that it has something to do with religion, but you might look at it and think there's some book club in Kentucky," McHugh said.

While Loughlin speaks to the orders about the spiritual rationale for environmental stewardship, the Land Trust Coalition speaks to them about legal and financial practicalities.

"It's a mutually beneficial partnership. Religious communities don't necessarily speak secular language very well, particularly on things that at their root are legal. And most land conservation people don't know how to talk to religious people, who are talking from their mission and spiritual operation," McHugh said.

Proposed land sales by the Archdiocese of Boston, which is seeking to bolster its finances, have been in the news recently. But the partnership hasn't gotten involved, because the archdiocese doesn't own the kind of open space the group is trying to protect.

Tovis Page, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University's Religion Department who is studying religion, environmentalism, and feminism in the United States, said nuns have been in the forefront of the effort to protect land owned by religious groups.

"There's an increasing awareness that part of their mission is to preserve their land for future generations," Page said.

The number of Catholic nuns in the United States is dwindling, and the ranks of nuns are aging. The orders are under financial pressures to care for the aging nuns. At the same time, urban sprawl and exorbitant housing prices have put a premium on land the orders own, making it a temptation to sell.

"For the last 100 years, we have built and established our places in beautiful, natural settings. . . . But religious congregations are in a historical moment; communities are at a moment of transition," Loughlin said.

Despite 21st-century pressures, Loughlin said, nuns and other religious groups must realize "there's really no separation between social justice and ecological justice."

Crystal Spring uses its 42 acres of garden and woodland along with programs in organic gardening, ecological spirituality, cooking, music, and the arts to teach people how to "live in harmony with the whole Earth community," the sisters say on their website.

The benefits of the partnership can already be seen in its first potential victory: conservation restrictions that could be placed on 20 acres of land owned by a religious group in Stoughton.

Loughlin learned about the group's desire to protect its land through her contacts in the religious community. McHugh then connected the group with a lawyer, who worked pro bono, as well as the Natural Resources Trust of Easton, which provided guidance on conservation issues.

"This would not have happened without our help," McHugh said. McHugh credited the sisters at Crystal Spring for helping get the whole project off the ground.

"They're pretty far out front in terms of their environmental thinking," he said.