This weekend is the final weekend of The Season of Creation, the month-long interreligious observance, which calls attention to our moral responsibility to care for our common home, the earth. In Fr. Pawlikowski’s excellent homily on September 10, he reminded us that while there are many causes of the present climate crisis, what does the most damage to our environment is the burning of fossil fuels (which emit greenhouse gases). After Mass that morning, someone visiting from Detroit remarked that she has an electric vehicle, which she needed to recharge, and she was finding downtown Chicago very inhospitable to those with electric cars. Well, that got me thinking. We all know where to buy gas, even if we do not drive a car. Gas stations have excellent signage, are well lit, and occupy a lot of real estate at popular intersections. But where does one go to “buy” electricity? I had no clue. This seemed like an important question, if the movement away from gasoline powered vehicles is to gain steam.

If you live in a downtown high-rise, most (including the 311 Building) have charging stations for residents, but these are for the use of their tenants only. Where can travelers from Detroit go? I asked a parishioner who owns a hybrid vehicle to research this question. She discovered that several public garages not far from Assumption do offer public charging stations on a first-come, first-serve basis. Some levy an additional fee for EV charging; some only ask that you pay the parking fee. Greenway Parking Garage at 60 West Kinzie and the 640 North LaSalle Garage have multiple charging stations, as does Mart Parc Wells (at Hubbard and Wells). Unfortunately Mart Parc Orleans does not offer charging stations and has no plans to add them. Wolf Point Garage expects to add them in the next few months. The contrast between the way EV charging is marketed and the way gas is sold could not be sharper! There is also the fact that charging a vehicle takes a lot longer than filling the tank, and EV’s are generally more costly. Another concern we have to face is electrical capacity. If there were to be a massive switch to electric vehicles, would we be able to fill all those tanks. Rising temperatures are already stressing the electric grid in many parts of the country. Certainly the automakers’ awareness that electric vehicles are the wave of the future has played a role in their dispute with the United Auto Workers. EV’s will bring change to our way of life and inevitably some sacrifice. Fortunately “sacrifice” has been part of our religious vocabulary forever.

Another question I have been pondering is this. When Pope Francis began talking about ecological sin eight years ago and how caring for creation was integral to Catholic moral teaching, it was treated as an enormous step forward in the development of Church doctrine. Why was that so? Why did we not always think that caring for creation was a moral responsibility? Although humans have not always had the capacity to make our planet unlivable, we have certainly done a lot of damage to creation over the centuries.

In the Book of Genesis, God gave Adam “dominion over all living things.” This implies a sense of responsibility for everything that God made. What do we expect of someone who exercises dominion? Who are our model rulers?  Herod the Great? Atilla the Hun? While the Church may have said little in the past about ruling over creation, Popes and Bishops Conferences have said lots and lots of things about what constitutes a good ruler and what we expect of those who exercise dominion over us. So, really the teaching was always there; it was simply neglected. The connection was not drawn, and in this sense, it can be said that Christianity has contributed to the present climate crisis. As I look back on my own religious education and formation, non-human creation was just a backdrop to God’s interaction with humanity.

The Season of Creation quite properly ends on the Feast of St. Franis, October 4. St. Francis has become the patron saint of the environmental movement, not because he talked about ecological sin, but because in his rejection of material wealth, he rejected those things that insulate us from the rest of creation. He experienced in his daily life the basic interdependence between the human and the non-human. Francis’ simplicity of life also made him sensitive to the plight of the poor, who are often the first to suffer from climate change. Pope Francis plans to issue a new exhortation on the environment on October 4. He describes this forthcoming document as “an effort to put an end to the senseless war against our common home . . . . It is a terrible world war.”

                                                                                                       Fr. Joe