Hooray! New sins! I knew I wasn’t feeling guilty enough these days. Let’s take a look at the list:
- Environmental pollution
- Genetic manipulation
- Accumulating excessive wealth
- Inflicting poverty
- Drug trafficking and consumption
- Morally debatable experiments
- Violation of fundamental rights of human nature
I would like to assume that most Catholics knew these were ethically sketchy* before the Pope told them so, so this leads me to state the Pope is a little behind the times. It’s been a while since anyone outright encouraged these things. This list is interesting because it’s basically secular; it has more to do with the world Catholics are living in than with Christian dogma itself. I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t mention anything about climate change in his sermons. But God is slowly catching up, though having the new improved sins issued by an Archbishop “at the end of a week-long training seminar for priests” doesn’t quite have the flare of burning them onto stone tablets in the desert, but I guess I’m old-fashioned that way.
I think these new sins are going to cause some interesting discussion among the Catholic community- after all, not coveting your neighbour’s wife is somewhat more straightforward than not polluting, because in a sense all of us in the first world pollute. Humans consume just by being alive. Ultimately there’s a lot of grey area here. Most Catholics don’t sell drugs or conduct genetic experiments on a day-to-day basis, it seems more like these rules are intended to tell Catholics what to support rather than how to live. In a complex world filled with too much information, the Vatican is staking out territory but not giving any answers. How does an individual inflict poverty exactly? And are members of the Bush dynasty on their way to hell with their excessive wealth? These new edicts suggest a sense of responsibility and compassion* which is quite a departure from the cut and dried scenario of being born a sinner and petitioning for salvation. Hell’s going to get mighty crowded- I’m looking at you Hummer owners!
*Although “morally debatable experiments” and “Genetic manipulation” are a whole other can of worms
