Attention All Catholics: New Deadly Sins!

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Remember that old song "Son of a Preacherman?" It was sure right about one thing - being good isn't always easy... and it just got harder, if you can trust His Holiness the Pope about it.

Vatican Announces Seven New Deadly Sins

Vatican City (AHN) - In an attempt to give moral and ethical behavior more significance to current times, the Vatican has recently announced seven new deadly sins, published in an issue of the L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper.

The revision of the list comes after 1,500 years, with Vatican officials explaining that the new items address a global "secular" society bent on the concerns in the age of globalization. The sins are said to be an address to the "decreasing sense of sin" in the modern world.

"The sins of today have a social resonance as well as an individual one," said Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary. "In effect, it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins."

Mgr Girotti named the new mortal sins to be (1)genetic modification; (2) human experimentations, (3) polluting the environment; (4) social injustice; (5) causing poverty; (6) financial gluttony; and (7) taking drugs.

The sins were added, according to the Telegraph, to the original seven, which Mgr Girotti described has having "rather individualistic dimenion(s)."

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Comments? It's not every day that the Vatican changes something that's been around for a millenium and a half. I personally was rather surprised at listing "financial gluttony". Wasn't that already covered under avarice?

P.S.: Now that it's apparently ok to lie about marital infidelity, the Church has struck back Courts 1, Pope 1. Any bets for round two?

 

To me it seems like we have the seven deadly sins and the seven politically incorrect sins. This is a disgrace.

 

Snook: I agree that they are matters of political correctness, but I don't know how disgraceful this is.

1: Genetic modification assumes that we aren't good enough now. Is that not a matter of genetics, but of psychology in this case. No amount of genetic tinkering will fix that.

2: Human experimentation. The Jury is out on this one. On one hand, I wouldn't want people subjected to tests that would cause undo suffering, but for those who suffer from a disease, and there is a chance to improve treatment, I see nothing wrong with informed concent.

3: Pollution. I'm no treehugger, but it is clear that we are impacting the world. I don't think it's as extreme as the activists would have us believe, but it is there. I also believe that we can reduce pollution. We can't do as much as the activists demand, but we can make a difference. It's something society has to learn in order to survive.

4: Social Injustice. I don't know if anything can be done for this. For one culture to try to accommodate another culture within its borders, both will suffer. The host weakens their cultural identity as their ways are called "politically incorrect", and the new culture loses out as they are bombarded with our ways. The people on both sides of this divide adapt, forming a new culture closer to the middle ground between the two, but I question the true value of this. Sure I like some of the things they bring with them in the way of food and entertainment, but cultural relativism and morality don't always mix that well. This becomes a problem when the incoming culture wants something that the host doesn't want to give--like keeping their laws in our country. This leads to conflicts where the state cannot accomodate the immigrants, and some "oppression" will occur.

5: Causing poverty. So corporate executives and politicians are going to Hell? But inept or corrupt practices can have undesirable economic effects on these corporations who will move operations to get a better bottom line. In some areas, this means fewer jobs, and less money for the things people need, and poverty is the long term result of such problems...

6: Financial gluttony. Hoarding money means that it is not being spent, and thus the flow of money is restricted. While it is important to save for a major purchase, save for retirement, save for emergencies and to keep a few bucks available to be able to function, how much do we need? Keeping more than we need ultimately hurts business that relies on providing goods and services and charities that require our donations to help the poor and needy. It's a matter of perspective.

7: Drugs. These things cause more harm than we may ever know. They can take people out of the workforce, thus relying on social safety nets. Thay can make people reckless, and causing other problems (assaults, impaired driving, unplanned pregnancies, adultery) that affest the society as a whole. My personal choice to smoke a joint may seem to only affect myself, but what am I doing while I'm high? I'm not getting excercice, leading to weight gain over long term. Driving or cooking can be dangerous under the influence threaten myself and others around me. Getting the munchies leads me to crave things that are not healthy food choices, which causes malnutrition and further weight gain. These things can shorten our lives and tax the social safety net.

It sounds like a proposal to grow society as we move forward.

 

Makes me glad I don't consider myself Catholic anymore.

 

(2) human experimentations,

There goes the girlfriends job then. She runs first-time-in-man healthy volunteers medical drugs studies.

 

How ridiculous.

Genetic modification? I really, really, really fail to see the problem. So if we can cure a genetic disease by a bit of tinkering, is that really a horrible thing? WTF?
I don't personally have a problem with tinkering for 'betterness', though I can see the other side of the argument for that one. But against genetic modification in general? That's just bizarre.

Human experimentation? Yeah, so how do they think we're going to get any meaningful results in a range of sciences without experimenting on humans? 'Human experimentation' is such a broad term anyway - are they against psychological experiments? Medical? By the wording, I would assume they're against all of it, which is also just bizarre.

Pollution? I can see this one, though codifying it as a 'sin' is amusing. As if we aren't punishing ourselves enough by polluting things - now we have the sky daddy to smack us down when we die for it.

Social injustice? They seem to be shooting a bit broad on this one, but besides that it doesn't actually say much it's not that bad an inclusion.

Causing poverty? Another broad, possibly meaningless one. It would be nice if they explicitly said who they were talking about here - I can only assume capitalists? Much ambiguity to be had here.

Financial gluttony? Heh.

Drugs? Another 'wtf?' one. Another sweeping term that covers things I really would hope they don't mean. I would assume they mean the 'bad' drugs ... but I still have problem seeing this as a 'sin' in the Catholic sense of things.

Seriously, the original seven deadly sins were much better thought out. I might not agree with them as a guide to living life, but I can see where the author was coming from on that one. This is just nutty overly broad fluffy nonsense. The original ones are concise and can be pretty well applied to all these ones anyway.

Well, at least they're making themselves less and less relevant by pushing meaningless sentiment instead of their original and dangerous beliefs...

 

Heh, well, at least most of them are somewhat understandable. Poorly worded, though. Does this mean that taking an aspirin will now curse your soul to eternal suffering?

 

Poorly worded, indeed! The thing that made the original Seven Deadlies so powerful, IMO, is that they are natural human behaviors taken to extremes. People have to eat to survive, but not to the point of gluttony. Without a degree of passion people wouldn't care about anything, but not to the point of vanity or anger. Sex is required to keep the species alive, but not so much that it takes over other aspects of life... you get my point.

The thing is, none of these ideas are new. The Vatican is justsorely behind the times in pointing out specific instances of behaviors that should be restrained, or channeled and prevented from running rampant.

I'm with Stefanina on this one.

 

The thing about the original list was that the sins were pointed enough that you knew what they were getting at, but also general enough that they could cover a wide range of things. The individual items on the new list, however, seem pretty narrow in focus (and, as has been mentioned, several were already covered under the original list). They might as well have just made a list of “Specific Things the Catholic Church Frowns Upon”, expanded it from seven points to several thousand, and left it at that.

 

Sweet. Now Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt can get to work on the sequel.

Kevin Spacey will return from the dead and kill 7 people by:

1) Giving a newborn an extra thumb.
2) Testing the latest cosmetics on someone.
3) Stealing a guy's Hummer and running him over with it.
4) Passing a black man over for promotion at work.
5) Stealing everyone's money...
6) ...and keeping it, all Scrooge-like.
7) Starting a crack house.

Get the popcorn ready.

 

Good one, man.

 

Fantastic. I work with bacterial genetics, so this means I've been committing a deadly sin for the past 5 years. And here I thought my work would maybe help our understanding of bacteria and take us one microscopic step towards finding new cures and antibiotics. Instead I find I'm condemned to hell. But that's alright, God works in mysterious ways.

@DR:

 

DR, you are a sick puppy.

Now that we have that out of the way, I think this is just an example of how a religion that has been around for a long time is trying to ensure that the "modern" population understands / believes that the relgion is still relevant. I expect a barrage of explanatory material to come swarming out of the Vatican over the next several years.

 

Hmmh, if there's a holy virtue for each deadly sin, what are they for these, then?

 

The article is a bit misleading. Acts don't suddenly start being sins or mortal sins just because someone (mortal) said so. A mortal sin is a knowing and willing violation of a commandment in a serious matter. All acts described are able to be mortal sins if they are knowing and willing (enough awareness, enough consent) and serious enough. The sins may be "new" in the sense that they weren't officially addressed before - which is not exactly true here - but not in the sense that they weren't sinful before (they were and the objective gravity of the sin was the same). Social injustice, monetary greed, causing poverty - those existed already in the Old Testament. Someone must have misunderstood the Monsignor.

 

Environmental pollution - Doesn't mention if this includes needlessly sending smoke up into the atmosphere when a new Pope is appointed.

Genetic manipulation - Yeah, I think we all know what you mean by that.

Accumulating excessive wealth - Not sure if this includes having billions of pounds worth of property in the form of churches filled with gold across the globe.

Inflicting poverty - What, like having billions of pounds whilst others starve?

Drug trafficking and consumption - Does that include paracetamol?

Morally debatable experiments - Doesn't the word 'debatable' mean 'open to debate'? So an experiment that is definitely morally wrong is ok, but those where you have to ask the question are outlawed? I see..

Who decides what's debateable anyway?

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature - What, persecution of homosexuals, denying rape victims the right to an abortion, that sort of thing?

I'd like to add another:

Out of touch and ludicrous institutions making up pointless moral codes, whilst people in their own number shag small boys and are protected by the very institution that claims to be so bloody righteous.

 

...Well I guess even religion has to update itself every once in a while

 

Well, all us car drivers are doomed for eternity.

 

I agree with Rally when she pointed out that these were poorly worded. Curing a disease is not a bad thing, but altering genetics to create a "master race" is what I read that to mean. And the last group to use the term "master race" may be more dangerous that we want to go here in the alleys. I also think that Stem Cell research needs to be clarified. Destroying a potential life for a cure would be a mortal sin to them, but if there is a way to get stem cells that does not require this, then I don't see a problem with that.

I look at it as active pollution, ranging from littering to dumping hazzardous materials in areas where it would cause great suffering to thousands, if not millions. Again, going back to Rally's post, we need to drive, but can we use cars that pollute less. Economic factors should be included too. We can't all afford hybrids or a brand new car. Also look at our needs. I just can't see my father delivering firewood in a Prius. How do people drive hybrids anyway with their head that far up their @$$? We need energy, but can we find cleaner sources of energy that will meet out needs?

I took this to mean harmful drugs, like the illegal variety or abuse of legal ones, like taking too much of a drug to get high, or taking alcohol to excess.

DR: Good one.

Exactly the point. You don't make a new proclamation of such magnitude without trying to help the faithful take it into their daily lives.

I see your point about them in the bible, but for all intents and purposes, but for the majority, that line fits. You see them in the bible, but it's harder to recognize some of this in the modern era.

Good one. Seriously, they would argue that it is a necessary ordinance to the tradition of the church, but I would disagree. The Mormons recently lost their prophet, but rahter than such a sign like the Catholic church uses, we used the Internet to spread press releases too announce it to the world.

Looking back to the Bible, there was a parable of a master that entrusted a certain amount of gold to each of three servants. Two were industrious, and doubles their amount. The third hid his gold and was able to return it at the end. The first two were praised, the third was fired. It's not how much you have, but how you use it.

Hmm, Maybe like having governments take more tax money than they need so that politicians can siphon off a bit for themselves?

First, the doctrine establishes marriage and family as sacred, thus any alternative form of relationship is a mortal sin. The church can't come right out and accept a mortal sin. Secondly, While I am staunchly pro life, I know enough to shut up in cases of rape, incest or extreme jeopary to the mother...

Moral codes only lose relevence when the people preaching them ignore them. That said, I do not like how they protect those that sexually abuse those in their stewardship. Further, I have theological issues with forcing those that would serve as priests or higher to remain celebate. I've seen a scripture in the New testament that goes so far as to call that a false doctrine...

Sex serves more of a purpose than just that, and is a powerful desire. But from a religious standpoint, it must be controles, and within the bounds that God has set--within the bounds of holy matrimony to a spouse that is acceptable before God (not a close relative, of the opposite gender, of the same species, properly available to enter the covenent of marriage).