English Catholics urged to divulge ‘eco-sins’ during Confession

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otjm said:
The leading countries contributing excess of carbon dioxide are India and China. China appears to be trying to do something about the matter if for no other reason than that other air pollution has become so bad in some cities that it is clearly causing widespread health problems.
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That stands to reason since China and India have vastly greater populations. Per capita China is doing quite well though and is set to lead the world in the electric car market.

In 2018, more electric cars were sold in China than in the rest of the world combined. The Chinese government has spent nearly $60 billion in the last decade to create an industry that builds electric cars, while also reducing the number of licenses available for gasoline-powered cars to increase demand for electric cars. And Beijing plans to spend just as much over the next decade.

No other country in the world has made anywhere near as big an investment or instituted as significant regulations. But then again, no country has the same potential payoff as China. If its bet succeeds, China can look forward to cleaner air, lower reliance on imported oil, and being a technology leader in a new high-tech industry.

China has 99% of the world’s 250 million electric two-wheelers. That’s nearly 100 times the total number of electric passenger cars in the world. Starting in 1999, Beijing designated electric two-wheelers that can’t go faster than 20 km per hour (12 mph) as “bicycles.” That meant they could be used without a license or registration and ridden in bicycle lanes. Next, it restricted the ownership of gasoline-powered two-wheelers in the central parts of cities.


While we cling onto a sense of entitlement to these status symbol SUV’s, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face in many areas.
 
Forgive me, everyone, but I have had enough of the rather unkind rhetoric towards England on this forum. My family is from England (my grandparents were English Catholics) and I have a great connection to and feel a great sense of loyalty towards Britain, as a New Zealander of English ancestry, and considering that my country shares Her Majesty the Queen as Head of State with the United Kingdom.

It is heart wrenching to see that, for example, a pastor in England was treated in such a horrid manner by homosexual activists, and I know better than many of you that grave sins against the moral law take place in England.

My English Catholic grandparents loved England, even though they moved to one of the African colonies in the '50s to escape the rather low-on-morale England of that era. They were very sad at what has happened there, as am I.

But so many of us love England, despite what has become of it. America is also, to an extent obsessed with political correctness, and the promotion of moral evils, as is most of the Western World. Please do not pick on England, when I daresay that in America the same evils and persecution of Christians and other people who hold to true morality still occur. England is not really any different.

So before you judge this great country which 90 years ago ruled most of the world (Canada, India, Hong Kong, large swathes of Africa, Australia, New Zealand and many more places), please remember that even America is in the same situation, and that so many of us (like myself) with strong ties to the United Kingdom, still love and are loyal to it despite the problems it faces. Do not forget that America was formed from British colonies.

Would any of you disassociate yourselves with America, because it has the same problems (e.g. it allows abortion and homosexual “marriage”)? No, I think not. So please do not judge Britain.

God Save the Queen!
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
I’m sorry, but this is about the sort of thing I’d expect from England in this day and age when it as a country seems to be obsessed with being politically correct.
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America is as well, and although the situation there is better with President Trump, America is also obsessed with political correctness. England is not unique.

Here is some information about some very good conservative Catholic politicians from England:


 
otjm said:
However, it is hard to have a discussion with someone who is full tilt emotion.
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Exactly! Which is why language like “blather” shuts conversations down. I denotes a lack of charity and a complete disrespect toward the positions of others.
 
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Sorry, I disagree with you. I use the term “blather” when what is being proposed lacks substance and is driven by emotion. If you would prefer, I could use the word “hype”.

I do not propose that any discussion of ecological matters is blather; but there is a very significant element of outright falsehood in conversations in the public square which I am referencing, and if you wish me to be specific, I am referring to the remarks recently of AOC that we have 12 yars to live. that is blather, and when it is being picked up by college age and post college age kids and driven further through the electronic media, then I call it blather. Or if you will, hype. I call the outright deceitful comments by national Geographic blather. That is a manipulative lie - a complete untruth driven by a highly emotional picture passed off as evidence; in a court of law that would be so shredded as to call the case by the side presenting it as hype.

I have learned to not even speak to the eco emotions; the response I have received is an emotional rant; and no, I did not use the term blather in the conversation. I used facts and triggered emotional avalanches.

So as the song goes, “It ain’t me, babe”. I don’t appreciate being called an eco nazi when, for example, I bring up inconvenient facts such as the performance of light rail in Portland. You are right; that doesn’t help conversations when attacked; but I don’t go out in a conversation with the progressives and accuse them of blather in that conversation; I state facts, and then am attacked. And so, in a comment here I say they - the progressives (not posters) are blathering. I stand by my comment.
 
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Emeraldlady said:
That stands to reason since China and India have vastly greater populations. Per capita China is doing quite well though and is set to lead the world in the electric car market.
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While the electricity to charge all of those cars will come mainly from coal plants for quite some time, I will give China credit for having the foresight to build multiple nuclear power plants as their electric source of the future.
 
otjm said:
However, the “sky is falling” mantra makes all sorts of hysterical predictions of the end of viable life on the planet, with less than zero evidence
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catholic03 said:
Forgive me, everyone, but I have had enough of the rather unkind rhetoric towards England on this forum.
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I’m afraid some of my fellow Americans have a low opinion of the UK as well as most other European countries plus Canada. (Probably the same for Australia and New Zealand - especially NZ, which I think is more liberal.) Personally, I think we could learn a thing or two from Europe/the Commonwealth - healthcare, welfare, gun control, no death penalty, free/affordable college education - but I’ll get called a socialist/leftist/communist/liberal for saying so.
catholic03 said:
So before you judge this great country which 90 years ago ruled most of the world
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I think “most” is a bit of an exaggeration, but, sure, it was the largest empire in the history of the world and covered something like one third of the earth’s land surface. The really remarkable thing was the way the British managed to colonize places all over the world - hence being the empire on which the sun never set. Certainly Britain was the world’s richest and most powerful nation for a long time and its achievements in science and literature are extraordinary.

As a descendant of enslaved Africans I do have mixed feelings about the British Empire, but I give the British credit for abolishing the slave trade in 1807, committing the Royal Navy to patrolling the seas to intercept slave ships, and slavery itself in the British Empire in 1834 (by which time slavery was already illegal in Britain itself and had never been widespread anyway).
catholic03 said:
God Save the Queen!
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She seems to be a great woman. I think most of us respect her a lot.
 
I understand how many American Catholics feel. I am disappointed at what’s happened to the UK, and New Zealand.

But I am loyal to the Queen, my country and by extension the country of my ancestors. No matter how bad it gets in either countries, I will stay loyal. I guess I’d ask an American whether they would stay loyal to the US if it was as bad as the UK. They would say yes.

You are right, Britain abolished slavery long before America did.
 
catholic03 said:
I guess I’d ask an American whether they would stay loyal to the US if it was as bad as the UK. They would say yes.
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Yes, and possibly even more so. Britain has a great history and its people are rightly proud of that. But the United States is unusual in that our nation was founded upon a set of philosophical ideals. That is not to say that British people do not have ideals (and in many ways Britain has actually fulfilled its ideals better than we have), but Britain’s very existence isn’t based on those ideals. That is of course because Britain is a country that evolved over a period of about 1,500 years, whereas the United States is a country that was brought into existence on a specific date in history. The great principles of the British constitution, such as parliamentary sovereignty, are no less great for the fact that they evolved over hundreds of years rather than being thought up and codified at a specific point in time.

In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He concludes with the famous words, “… that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” That is as good a summary as any of our sense of purpose as a nation.

There is plenty wrong with the United States today, just as there always has been, but I believe that most Americans still believe that it is our purpose, our destiny even, to strive ever harder to fulfill the intentions of our Founding Fathers.
 
“Eco sins” Imagine that! A new category for the scrupulous to obsess over.

“Father, I threw away a fast drink cup after using it only once”
“Father, I really should have turned the kitchen lights off before I rushed to the bathroom”
“Father, I have committed the sin of having a carbon footprint”

We have gone from “I think, therefore I am” to “I exist, therefore I sin”

Rhetorical question: Have we lost our minds?
 
As a former electric car/ bus engineer, anybody figure out yet where we’re going to dispose of the used batteries from those things if one was in every garage? It’s a major problem.
 
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I avoid straws, as I don’t want to make this face \o/ in public.
 
Well, there is Voltaire: the problem with common sense is that it is not all that common.
 
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