Thread: Vatican says pollution is also a sin

Vatican says pollution is also a sin
It tells Catholics that harming the environment is a modern-day transgression requiring urgent attention.


By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 14, 2008

VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican keen to show its green side has added pollution to the realm of "new sins" that today's Catholics must confront and avoid.

In this age of expanding globalization, the Vatican is telling followers that sin is not just an individual act but can also be a transgression against the larger community.

An offense against God, said senior Vatican official Msgr. Gianfranco Girotti, "is not only stealing or coveting another man's wife, it is also destroying the environment."

Polluting was just one of several sins Girotti decried as products of modern circumstances that must be addressed urgently. Others include gene manipulation (such as cloning or stem cell research), drug abuse and becoming too wealthy, as well as practices more routinely condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, such as abortion.

Girotti is with the Apostolic Penitentiary, the church office that deals with sins and penance. He spoke in an interview last weekend with l'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, after a symposium for priests on how to stop the decline in confessions among Catholics.

Under Catholic teaching, a believer atones for his or her sins by confessing to a priest and receiving absolution from him.

"If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has an impact and resonance that is above all social, because of the great phenomenon of globalization," Girotti said.

"In effect, attention to sin is a more urgent task today, precisely because its consequences are more abundant and more destructive."

The mention of the environment reflects growing interest by Pope Benedict XVI in saving the planet. Last summer, officials announced the installation of 1,000 solar panels in the Paul VI Audience Hall, the main auditorium in Vatican City. The city-state has joined a reforestation program to offset its carbon emissions. And at a youth festival with the pope last year, participants were given prayer books made with recycled paper.

"Before it's too late," Benedict told the gathering of several hundred thousand people, "we need to make courageous choices that will re-create a strong alliance between man and Earth.

"We need a decisive 'yes' to care for creation and a strong commitment to reverse those trends that risk making the situation of decay irreversible," he added.

He has repeated the theme in major speeches and homilies.

The Catholic Church is not alone in giving new attention to degradations of the planet and other environmental trouble. The Southern Baptist Convention this month announced plans to fight global warming, and the California diocese of the Episcopal Church recently appointed its first canon for environmental ministry.

For the Vatican, going green is a relatively new phenomenon. Church hierarchy had been divided, and many priests saw ecology as a concern of rich, developed countries, not the poor regions of the world. But scarcity of resources and natural disasters are hurting the poor, others have pointed out, making care for the environment a moral responsibility for all the faithful.

Girotti's discussion of "new sins" (though many were not exactly new) was also an attempt to appeal to the modern Catholic and show the relevance of church teachings and guidance in the globalized world.

"The Vatican's intent seemed to be less about adding to the traditional 'deadly' sins [lust, anger, sloth, pride, avarice, gluttony, envy] than reminding the world that sin has a social dimension and that participation in institutions that themselves sin is an important point upon which believers needed to reflect," Father James Martin, acting publisher of the Jesuit magazine America, said in a blog he operates.

"In other words, if you work for a company that pollutes the environment, you have something more important to consider for Lent than whether or not to give up chocolate."

wilkinson@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 0621.story

So, tell me how does the Vatican feel about the more than 25 million tons of garbage currently left strewn around our desert lands at the border by illegal aliens? How does the Vatican feel about the 8 pounds of garbage, on average, each illegal alien dumps (not to also mention their bodily functions) onto our desert environment during their invasion? Well, jeez…I guess that would just make them sinners, wouldn’t it?

So not only do we have illegal alien criminal lawbreakers, we now must add the sinner tag: criminal lawbreaker sinners to the definition of an illegal alien.

Jeez, can’t an otherwise law abiding criminal lawbreaker sinner illegal alien catch a break???

Well then, breathing is a sin I guess since the EPA declared CO2 as a pollutant! The world gets a little more insane each day.

Most people don't even know that CO2 is necessary for life and they think that global warming has to do with stopping "pollution", when it's all about stopping a life-sustaining gas that feeds plants and in turn keeps us all alive.

The very pillar of global warming has been disproven, but the media will NOT report this news. It was first reported in Australia and it "shocked" the scientists, so I guess they are trying to figure out their next move.

Just in from the Vatican---Galilleo is worng. He must do penance for his SIN!!!!
"Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's opposition to this view resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting the advocacy of heliocentrism as potentially factual, because that theory had no decisive proof and was contrary to the literal meaning of Scripture."


Right on, Vatican!!!!

The Pope needs to get a clue.Pollution,Starvation,lack of water,loss of forest all are connected to overpopulation.

I believe we are nearing a point of no return in regards to population.A point when even if some birth restrictions are put into place it will already be too late.

We are destroying millions of acres of farm land world wide monthly and turning them into concrete jungles when more farming not less is necessary to feed the burgeoning population.

Someday the Pope and the rest of the world will understand this,but it will be toooo late.

It's hard to stomach the arrogance of the West burning food for fuel. By 2020, the ENTIRE corn crop would be required to meet the govt. mandates. The whole thing needs to be scrapped NOW! We've been talking about overpopulation for decades. We weren't supposed to survive past 2000 according the the book "Population Bomb." Immigration is the only thing accounting for the population growth of the Western World.

As long as third world's religion believes they shouldn't use birth control, it's hard to imagine a way to slow it down, but the enviro wackos are happy to see people starving or dieing from disease because, it's a way to control population and they have said as much.

An offense against God, said senior Vatican official Msgr. Gianfranco Girotti, "is not only stealing or coveting another man's wife, it is also destroying the environment."




Pollution is now a sin so says the Vatican?

Good. I hope they remember that the next time they decide to put the Pope into a pollution causing plane to jet halfway around the world in order to meddle in the affairs of our government!!!

Playing with little children is a sin as well.... your oppolgy is not excepted

Here's some pictures of the trash and some explanation.

This is sad for the beauty of the desert and sad for the people who get taken advantage of out there because their countries won't take care of their own people ..... They pawn them off on the United States. We all know, and feel, that we here are broken and going down the tubes quicker than you can say, "Bush Regime."

http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002160.html

"Under Catholic teaching, a believer atones for his or her sins by confessing to a priest and receiving absolution from him."

So, tell me... are all these illegals going to bow down before priests and ask for forgiveness for the pollution of the Southwest, receive absolution, and then go on their merry way?