Speaking to a group of lawyers on Friday, Pope Francis said that the Catholic Church is contemplating the introduction of “ecological sin” to the compendium of Church teaching.
“We have to introduce, we are thinking about it, in the catechism of the Catholic Church, the sin against ecology, the sin against our common home, because it’s a duty,” he said.
The pope’s words came just weeks after the conclusion of a bishops’ summit on the Amazon focused on the environmental threat to the region.
Francis was speaking to the 20th world congress of the International Association of Penal Law, held in Rome Nov. 13-16, under the scope of “Criminal Justice and Corporate Business.”
Harking back to the recently concluded Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, during which the bishops condemned the “sins against the environment,” Francis on Friday denounced the “ecocide” that corporations are “usually responsible for,” urging lawyers to guarantee these crimes don’t go unpunished.
By ecocide, he said he meant the “massive contamination of the air, of the land and water resources, large-scale destruction of flora and fauna, and any action capable of producing an ecological disaster or destroying an ecosystem.”
The loss or the destruction of ecosystems of a specific territory, Francis said, is a fifth category of crimes against peace, which should be recognized as such by the international community.
Full story at Crux.
I’m done. What Luther left unfinished, Francis is completing.
He’s gone into the deep end. What nonsense.
I’m getting more and more perplexed with our Pope every week. Instead of proclaiming the Good News of our Divine Creator and the sanctity of human life, the Pope instead sinks into this morbid obsession with ecocide and the evil that is us, the good people of this earth. He could have chosen to joyfully encourage us to continue as good stewards and to have reverence for God’s creation. However, with this new heavy-handed proclamation of an ecological “sin”, he displays a palpable contempt for all of us. I have never been more depressed with my Church’s leadership and having to listen to Pope Francis’s morose rhetoric, and I find it as an affront to all Catholics of good conscience.
The Holy Father is very clear. If one destroys our earthly home for whatever reason and leaves it unable to support succeeding generations – one has sinned. Makes perfect sense to many!
It only makes sense to mindless liberals, who think not recycling is the same as abortion……but then again liberals think abortion is a sacrement
Thank you JA
Greed, waste, sloth, gluttony have always been sins.
Don’t be greedy and hoard more than one needs for emergencies.
Don’t waste. Give excess fruit from your backyard trees to friends and food pantries.
Don’t be slothful. If one drops trash on the ground or puts waste from factories in rivers, clean it up. It is ones job.
Don’t be a glutton. Eat smaller portions and miss a meal a few times a week.
“Everything We Needed to Know We Learned in Kindergarten” is a title of a book.” Read it on line. Ecology is the same thing, just on larger scale.
Good post Anne TE.
Wasting of our environment is indeed a cardinal sin, as the Holy Father is contemplating.
Greed is the hording of things for our own personal use that are best shared, such as our air.
Waste is what we do when we burn the things that were deposited in earth millions of years before Adam and Eve were born.
Slothfulness is he sin of those who are too lazy to open their eyes to what is going on around them in their name.
Gluttony is the sin of those of us who would rather take in more of the commodities of the world than we need for our own sustenance.
I really do not think anyone hoards air, unless they are suffocating someone to death.
Taking coal out of the ground is another matter. We need other sources of energy, but even that cause problems. When corn is used to make fuel — which gets burned up just as coal does and requires watering — the price of corn for food goes up, and many poor people want cheap corn. In all this, it is most difficult to figure out what would be a mortal or venal sin or no sin at all. It is best left alone for each person or country to decide. No pope has all the facts.
By the way, this is from a man who told the youth to “Go out and make a mess.” As a mother and grandmother that was very upsetting to hear. It certainly did not teach the young that neatness and orderliness are virtues.
Clarification: “the man” I meant in this post was Pope Friancis. He was the man who told a group of youths to “go out and make a mess”.
i just hope a leftover pachamama doesn’t end up this year’s manger scene in st peter’s square
Not to worry, Bishop McElroy thinks San Diego is in the Amazon and bought all the leftover pachamamas. He is thinking about ordaining some of them. I saw a food truck idoling in front of the chancery with a pachamama hood ornament. BTW, “Nacho Pachamama” serves great huevos rancheros.
Love your “idoling” comment, and Bishop McElroy needs to watch out for the Mexican priest who burned a Pachamama idol in effigy. He’s having none of it. It’s Our Lady of Guadalupe and none other for him.
“Bless me Father for I have sinned.’..I did not separate plastic stuff from regular garbage two times this month…”
Well, I tried. Yes, I really tried, but I was just too tired and warn out from picking up all the messes from Pope Francis’ kids that I just threw all that good used paper in the trash since my legs would just not make it to the recycle bin. I was about ready to go over to the Vatican, knock down some of the Vatican guards, grab Pope Francis by the nose and make him pick it all up.
I do hope you all know this is an Eye of the Tiber type of post (Not to be taken literally.) Don’t want some Swiss Guard knocking on my door.
so if we make the planet uninhabitable — which God created for us — where shall we live? We have to be good stewards of God’s gifts.
That is stating the obvious, Mike. The Pope is preaching to a choir of his faithful Catholics. Issuing in the new “sin” of ecocide seems to be a diversion from the grievous and very real sins of clerical malfeasance, to which Pope Francis seems to be oblivious.
We can only sin against persons and the environment is not a person. Waste and abuse of creatures are already sins, because we deny resources to others by the first and treat God’s creation with contempt by the second. If the Pope doesn’t mean one of these, then he seems to mean something not in accord with Catholic tradition.
So if I torture my cat, that is not a sin?
That’s clearly an abuse of creatures -not because the cat has rights, but because God didn’t create the cat for you to treat it that way.
So what is it, with the Pope, and Argentinians? It was mystifying why Argentina rescued Nazis after WW2. Why was that? What was the motivation? So finally, recently, the solution came with a blinding flash. Argentinians hate the US. They hate us so much that they will even ally with the most evil people, the Nazis, the world has seen. Anything that will damage the US. Anything that will eliminate the US, as world leaders. Yes. It’s that bad. That’s why the Pope is seen hugging a Jihadist who hates Christians, and other Muslims. And why the Pope is friendly with China. It’s all about those evil wicked Americans! So what if Christians are being persecuted and killed worldwide. The Pope will ally with Muslims and Communist China, because, the Pope, like everyone else in Argentina, believes those evil Americans must be punished and then, the world will much better….
Ok, Joe,I have beaten up on poor Pope Francis enough. I suppose a lot of this has to do with the Falklands
Although I voted for President Reagan the second time, I just wanted the whole Falkland situation to go away. It caused too much dissension here with some rooting for England and some rotting for the Argentinians. Maybe the solution would have been to put the llamas (Argentinians) on one side of the island and the sheep (the British) on the other, but I would have not wanted my grandsons to go there to fight. We have too many groups in this country who suck us into their wars.
i can think of one group in particular that
sucks us into their wars
Me too: Lawyers.
Let us hope and pray that the Pope’s addressing sins against the environment will specifically include damage to the water supply, the environment and human persons caused by synthetic hormones/artificial contraceptives in the water.
Amen and amen. The environmentalist never ever mention that, nor do they mention all the harm it does to women’s bodies, which also leads to an excessive use of medication to cure the body. No, no that is taboo for them, nor has Pope Francis ever mentioned it in his encyclicals as far as I know.
*sigh*
I remember when the phrase “Is the pope Catholic?” was a joke.