Try a Fatima-Focused Lent

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ncregister.com/daily-news/try-a-fatima-focused-lent

As penances and sacrifices go, Father Scanlon said we should be mindful that while we might give up steak, there’s always shrimp, advising more meaningful penances. “At Fatima, she didn’t call for us to ‘recycle,’” he said.

 

[JPUSC]

As penances and sacrifices go, Father Scanlon said we should be mindful that while we might give up steak, there’s always shrimp, advising more meaningful penances. **“At Fatima, she didn’t call for us to ‘recycle,’” he said.

“We need ‘adult’ penances,” he added, suggesting that the faithful exercise their responsibility as Christian voters to write to legislators about the harms of pornography, same-sex “marriage” and abortion.** And asking the pastor why he hasn’t had homilies about what the Church teaches about marriage — “that’s effective penance,” Father Scanlon said. “Do things to support chastity and purity against porn — that’s what we have to do.”

It’s not an easy penance, but the reward is great: “Anybody persecuted for standing up for the teachings of Christ has won. They have great grace from God.”

Pope Francis: Global Warming a ‘Sin,’ Man Can Atone by Recycling and ‘Car-Pooling’

In his message for the “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation” Thursday, Pope Francis said that human-induced global warming, as well as a loss of biodiversity are “sins” against God, which must be atoned for by planting trees, avoiding the use of plastic and paper and “separating refuse"…

During this Jubilee Year, “let us learn to implore God’s mercy for those sins against creation that we have not hitherto acknowledged and confessed,” Francis said, while proposing that Christians need to undergo an “ecological conversion.”

Now is the time to “acknowledge our sins against creation,” the Pope said. “Inasmuch as we all generate small ecological damage,” we are called to acknowledge “our contribution, smaller or greater, to the disfigurement and destruction of creation.”

“Let us repent of the harm we are doing to our common home,” he added.

If our ecological conversion is real, Francis said, it will lead to concrete ways of thinking and acting that are more respectful of creation.

Among these are “avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other practices.”

In his message, the Pope also applauded “a growing global political consensus” regarding the environment, praising the adoption of “Sustainable Development Goals” as well as last December’s Paris Agreement on climate change, “which set the demanding yet fundamental goal of halting the rise of the global temperature.”

Apparently the pontiff’s prayers have already been heard, since scientists are now forecasting that 2017 will be a cooler year than 2016.

google.com/amp/www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/09/01/pope-francis-global-warming-sin-man-can-atone-recycling-car-pooling/amp

The Pope’s 10 commandments on climate change

1. Think of future generations.

1. Embrace alternative energy sources.

1. Consider pollution’s effect on the poor.

1. Take the bus!

1. Be humble.

1. Don’t become a slave to your phone.

1. Don’t trade online relationships for real ones.

1. Turn off the lights, recycle and don’t waste food.

1. Educate yourself.

1. Believe you can make a difference.

google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2015/06/18/world/pope-10-commandments-climate-change/index.html

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

Pope Francis
americamagazine.org/faith/2013/09/30/big-heart-open-god-interview-pope-francis

 

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