Is burning your trash a mortal sin?

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I know that polluting is a sin. My grandma burns her trash because she thinks that getting a garbage truck is too expensive and it possibly (I don’t know if they do) might not go out that far to her farm. She usually doesn’t burn plastics and recycles items, but one time after a family reunion party we had to burn her trash and there was too much plastics in the trash bags (my family just threw the plastics away in the trash bags) so we just burned all the trash including the plastics because it would have been incredibly difficult and we were in a hurry. Would that be a mortal sin of pollution??
I’m pretty sure it’s not, but I just want to make sure.
 
No, catholicboy, it is not a mortal sin to pollute. It is not a mortal sin not to recycle.

And don’t let those greenies who worship the mighty planet tell you otherwise!
 
I grew up on a farm and we burned everything in a big old oil barrel, called the “burning barrel”. It was fun watching the plastics melt! Once a year, we went to the back of the farm where we would burn branches, fallen limbs, leaves, and other waste too big to fit into the “burning barrel”. My parents still burn much of their garbage, but do have a recycling truck come by now for plastics and the usual stuff.

We have a fire pit in our back yard, and I love to throw handfuls of leaves on it in the fall (shhh, don’t tell anybody, though!). 😉

Ever watch a dried Christmas tree burn? 😃
 
OOOOOHH!!!
i see now
what i didnt see was that what they meant by polluting or environmental polluting its only a mortal sin if you own a company that mass pollutes that environment!!!
even though i keep seeing those websites that say “vatican says failing to recycle is a mortal sin”
my family doesnt recycle (i dont think the recycle truck comes out to where i live and well we just find it easier to just throw it away than having to collect everything and bring it to a recycling center) but i dont know about the recycling thing. my catholic grade school recycled everything after a while for some reason a long time ago (probably because of my 5th grade science teacher) but i dont know if my new catholic high school does even though i’ve never seen recycling bins in there, but they might do it.
 
No. Pollution might be considered a venial sin, but it wouldn’t be a mortal sin unless it was raised to the level of something like Love Canal in New York, where a company knowingly and illegally dumped massively cancer-causing chemicals in the ground, and then built a subdivision over it. This kind of pollution could actually injure or kill people.
 
reginacaeli said:
And don’t let those greenies who worship the mighty planet tell you otherwise!
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You’re going over the top with your “conservativeness”. The Catholic Church also cares about God’s creation; it’s not just the “greenies”. But in answer to the original question, it may not be a mortal sin.
Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, said after a week-long Lenten seminar for priests that surveys showed 60 percent of Catholics in Italy no longer went to confession.
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He said that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalization.” Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an individual matter, it now has “social resonance.”
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“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbor’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.
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foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336330,00.html
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JPUSC said:
You’re going over the top with your “conservativeness”. The Catholic Church also cares about God’s creation; it’s not just the “greenies”. But in answer to the original question, it may not be a mortal sin.
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I thought so… makes no sense to me otherwise. Any anti greeners better wake up and get with it. I like living on Earth. How about you? 😃
 
Back in the " bad old 1970’s & 80’s" I used to burn the residue from logging operations. The process is called “slash buring”. It was perfectly legal and considered a process to eliminate a fire hazard. Picture, if you will, 160 acres of logging debris being ignited within 20 minutes. We used a helicopter with a very large torch slung underneath it. We’d batch our our napalm (gasoline/diesel/alumigel) and pump it out of the torch from about 100 feet above the ground. The fuel was ignited as it came out of the nozzle.

The object was to burn it fast enough to send the smoke column about 20,000 feet into the air.

Sorry, guess I got carried away with this. But it was a lot of fun.
 
I think it less a sin to burn the trash (plastics excluded) than to bury it in a landfill where things will never biodegrade, just sit there forever.

I too live ruraly and I always burned the trash, but have been in a drought, which seems to be ending. But they won’t end the perpetual burn ban in the county, so I have to pay $80 a month to have someone come and and tote it away!

I think the trash company is in cahoots with the county commishioners.
 
Pollution, an offense against God’s creation, is like lying, an offense against the truth. The gravity of any individual offense or habit of offending depends on the seriousness of the offense.

Also, the simple act of incineration does not constitute pollution, per se. Think about it: the state of the environment hasn’t gotten to the point that it is a sin to build a fire anywhere for any reason!

I have relatives who, because of where they live, would not cause the same environmental impact by a backyard burn that I would in my neighborhood. Where I live, air pollutants are already exceeding the capacity of the area that they blow into. Where my relatives live, the air pollutants are sparse and may disippate safely. Your grandmother’s fire might be fine in her back lot, while the same fire might be a sin in your own backyard.

Also, your grandmother might have some invincible ignorance going on in this area, rather than just stubborn refusal to change when she can see that she should. Even if she were polluting at a level that would be serious enough to be a mortal sin, she would still have to be capable of comprehending the gravity of what she’s doing. Of course, that is true with every mortal sin…and this is always assuming that the person is truly open to seeing the truth. Stubborn refusal to see the truth when one could is not a mitigating factor!

PS Why is this thread in Traditional Catholicism? Is pollution thought to be an “Novus Ordo sin” or something? 😉 😃
 
catholicboy2 said:
I know that polluting is a sin.
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That’s just not true. If polluting was a sin, turning on your gas furnace or starting your car would be a sin. Working in a steel mill, paper mill or coal fired power plant would be a sin as well. All of those activities are definitely polluting.

Disobeying governmental regulations in regards to outdoor fires or other anti-pollution measures is a different idea entirely and could be a sin- but it would be a sin of disobedience and not of polluting.

In many localities, burning trash is definitely legal- and it might well be at your grandmothers.
 
Kielbasi said:
That’s just not true. If polluting was a sin, turning on your gas furnace or starting your car would be a sin. Working in a steel mill, paper mill or coal fired power plant would be a sin as well. All of those activities are definitely polluting.

Disobeying governmental regulations in regards to outdoor fires or other anti-pollution measures is a different idea entirely and could be a sin- but it would be a sin of disobedience and not of polluting.

In many localities, burning trash is definitely legal- and it might well be at your grandmothers.
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Perhaps it should be worded that gratuitous and/or irreparable pollution are sins.

At any rate, the Vatican has let it be known that the Church teaches that pollution is a sin, in and of itself.
reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL109602320080310

I would not be surprised if the Pope’s next encyclical, which is due to come out within the next month, deals with this issue.
 
catholicboy2 said:
I know that polluting is a sin. My grandma burns her trash because she thinks that getting a garbage truck is too expensive and it possibly (I don’t know if they do) might not go out that far to her farm. She usually doesn’t burn plastics and recycles items, but one time after a family reunion party we had to burn her trash and there was too much plastics in the trash bags (my family just threw the plastics away in the trash bags) so we just burned all the trash including the plastics because it would have been incredibly difficult and we were in a hurry. Would that be a mortal sin of pollution??
I’m pretty sure it’s not, but I just want to make sure.
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emmm…as someone who leans a bit on the green side, would I say its un-ideal? Yes. A venial sin? …idk maybe, depends on the full situation. A grave matter? Certainly not.

Expenses might constitute extraordinary circumstances as well

im relatively new here, please correct me, users, if you have a better assessment =)

I suggest consulting the Catechism where applicable =)
 
EasterJoy said:
Perhaps it should be worded that gratuitous and/or irreparable pollution are sins.

At any rate, the Vatican has let it be known that the Church teaches that pollution is a sin, in and of itself.
reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL109602320080310

I would not be surprised if the Pope’s next encyclical, which is due to come out within the next month, deals with this issue.
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I hope to God that Pope Benedict does more towards fixing up the badly leaking and sinking ship that is the Roman Catholic Church, rather than wasting time and effort appeasing the Church of the Blessed Environment.

No, I didn’t say it was ok to go around ruining the environment. I’m a farmer, and know about caring for God’s gifts. But we should be more concerned with the state of the Church.
 
603304529 said:
I hope to God that Pope Benedict does more towards fixing up the badly leaking and sinking ship that is the Roman Catholic Church, rather than wasting time and effort appeasing the Church of the Blessed Environment.

No, I didn’t say it was ok to go around ruining the environment. I’m a farmer, and know about caring for God’s gifts. But we should be more concerned with the state of the Church.
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I don’t think the Holy Father is an appeaser, frankly. I do think that he does not want to leave Catholics unaware of ways in which they might offend or please God, regardless who might be pleased or displeased by it.

You know about caring for God’s gifts. Some of us live under circumstances where it is possible to be utterly unaware of that. Some do not think of the earth as God’s gift. They don’t know that caring for the earth has anything to do with the Christian religion. If people think that care of the earth and honor for the earth’s Creator have no connection, that has a lot to say about the state of the Church, too. Some people will reject the Church and others will neglect their Christian duty, and both because they are ignorant about what the Church teaches.

As someone who looks to the Lord for everything the earth gives you, and looks to the way you farm and keep your land for future generations as part of your service to God, you may find this depth of ignorance hard to imagine, but it does exist.

OTOH, if you’re saying that back-yard burning does not have the same level of gravity as procuring an abortion, I won’t argue with you. But people should be made aware that abuse of God’s gifts in nature can also rise to the level of mortal sin.
 
ConflictedBoy said:
emmm…as someone who leans a bit on the green side, would I say its un-ideal? Yes. A venial sin? …idk maybe, depends on the full situation. A grave matter? Certainly not.

Expenses might constitute extraordinary circumstances as well

im relatively new here, please correct me, users, if you have a better assessment =)

I suggest consulting the Catechism where applicable =)
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So, when the next pope is elected, the ballots maybe should be composted? 😃
 
Americans seem a lot more ready and gung-ho to pollute than Europeans, which is a shame because North America was an unspoilt wilderness… once. I would say recycling or even landfill is preferable to burning, because that releases all kinds of toxic substances into the atmosphere – which is not really ‘loving thy neighbour’.
 
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