“Have you taken flights unnecessarily?”

From Non Veni Pacem:

Not the Onion nor Babylon Bee. This is The Telegraph UK.

 Gabriella Swerling, social and religious affairs editor 3 DECEMBER 2019

Catholics are being urged to divulge their ‘eco-sins’ during Confession as Bishops launch a new environmental campaign.

The lay-run campaign, called Journey to 2030, was launched last weekend in partnership with the Bishops’ Conference and the Ecological Conversion Group, a volunteer group for young Catholics.

The initiative aims to “create a sense of urgency towards our ecological crisis and those suffering from its ill effects” as well as promote confession of environmental sins.

As a result, it has created a toolkit for church leaders to help Catholics confess their environment-related sins and is sending out its resources to parishes across the country.

Before entering the confessional, sinners will be offered an environmental ‘examination of conscience’. This works like a checklist that people can go through before confession with prompts, such as ‘have you taken flights unnecessarily?’

Its website also offers resources for an ‘Advent Reconciliation service’, which invite Catholics to reflect on their own impact on the environment in the areas of diet, transport, clothes and electronics before Confession.

Catholics will be asked to consider whether their clothes are fairly traded, how many animal products they consume, and whether they overuse their mobile phones.

 

Forgive me Father, for it has been a very sinful year… I’ve flown 113,000 miles so far, and I still have two more trips left. I’ve stayed in hotels over 120 nights, and I ask for freshly laundered towels every time. I rent cars that burn gasoline. Oh and I attended a football game during my travels a few weeks back and there was a flyover with four military jets burning gobs of fuel it was so shameful to be part of it (along with rayciss giant flag unfurled on field Nationalism).

I have no idea if my clothes were fairly traded to me or not, and I feel like such a wretch.

I’m on Atkins, so I consume a lot of “animal products;” red meat and eggs are my faves. I have leather all over my house and in my car. Also, my car is old and only gets 15 mpg. Let’s face it, my carbon footprint is the size of Nebraska.

And yes, I do use my phone constantly, but it’s also great for pulling up my boarding pass so I don’t have to wastefully print one out like those Pharisees.