The anticipatory frenzy over Pope Francis’ soon-to-be-released encyclical has turned media attention to the smoldering intersection of ecology, political economy, and privilege. People are paying attention to Catholic social teaching’s long-attested concern for the poor and vulnerable, and to its critiques of economies that benefit the few at the expense of the many.

What’s the upshot for what Benedict XVI aptly called “the energy problem”? Is the Pope going to say next week that fossil fuel-driven woes are moral problems that need political and economic remediation, pronto? This (multi-) million-dollar question is worrying many politicians, lobbyists, and corporate pundits who would like to believe that the Church should have nothing to say about energy ethics.

Catholic reflection on energy ethics focuses on justice, sustainability, and human dignity. These teachings are both recent and enduring; in fact, in 1981 a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops promulgated a prescient document, “Reflections on the Energy Crisis,” which formed the foundation for an approach to energy ethics recently advanced by a group of professors that included myself.

Spurred by oil and gas shortages that affected millions of Americans, in 1981 the Bishops linked respect for life—of humans as well as Creation—with the need to pursue energy systems that could power societies at home and abroad. They analyzed various types of energy sources of the “past, present, and future”—a rubric that roughly translates to: status quo fossil fuels, transitional energy sources or bridge fuels, and renewables. For each category the Bishops engaged moral principles, technological capacity, and political economy.

They were ahead of their time. “Reflections on the Energy Crisis” was issued well before the 1988 formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and even before John Paul II identified the ecological crisis as a moral issue in 1990. (That year, both John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher named global warming as an urgent problem for the international community.)