It's a good thing I can e-mail this article to Liguorian, because my wife and I don’t dare leave our fourth-floor condo. The “elevator man” is in the building. Well, that’s who he said he was when he rang the intercom and asked me to buzz the front door open. Home invaders always have a smooth line that gets them in the door. That Acme Elevator truck sitting outside and yesterday’s “Elevator Maintenance Tomorrow” memo didn’t fool me either.

As a student in formation for the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Detroit in the early 1980s, I had courses in social ethics, Church history, Scripture, and systematic theology. I heard guest speakers on such diverse topics as nuclear weapons and economic justice. But in all those four years I never heard one lecture addressing creation care as a moral charge.