The Vatican has announced some new "sins" to be added to the old sixth century list of pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and sloth. The additions are more socially responsible compared to the individualistic seven deadly trangressions of yore. Some are even environmentally friendly; others grapple with new advances in science and medicine. Whether one agrees with the Catholic doctrine and the revised list or not, it is refreshing to see an ancient religion trying to keep up with the times.
ROME, Italy (AP) — A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution and genetic manipulations as well as social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior.
Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti said in an interview published on Sunday by the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, that known sins increasingly manifest themselves as behavior that damages society as a whole.
Girotti, who heads the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican body that issues decisions on matters of conscience and grants absolutions told the paper that whilst sin used to concern the individual mostly, today it had a mainly a social resonance, due to the phenomenon of globalization.
Catholic teaching distinguishes between lesser, so-called venial sins, and mortal sins.
When asked to list the new areas of sinful behavior, Girotti denounced "certain violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments, genetic manipulations."
He also mentioned drugs, which weaken the mind and obscure intelligence; pollution; as well as the widening social and economic differences between the rich and the poor that "cause an unbearable social injustice."
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