The picture isn’t relevant. It’s just my attempt to add some perspective to the issue. The three shiny dots are (from bottom to top) the moon, Venus, and Mercury. 

 

I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and offer up my two cents about the updated deadly sins – better late than never right?. That’s a lot of clichés.

 

First of all, does anyone else find it funny that there’s a link on the homepage that says ‘Vatican Secret Archives’? Anyway. Here are the new mortal sins, as listed by the BBC:

 

Environmental pollution

Genetic manipulation

Accumulating excessive wealth

Inflicting poverty

Drug trafficking and consumption

Morally debatable experiments

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

 

And here are the original, or traditional ones:

 

Pride

Envy

Gluttony

Lust

Anger

Greed

Sloth

 

I applaud that the Catholic Church wants to use its power to improve the world. And good on them for looking beyond individual failings to problems that whole societies are facing. But wouldn’t it be even better to stop doing these things, rather than confess to doing them? The consequences of polluting the world are more far-reaching than personal damnation. We, and our descendants, have to live on this planet. (Until our space programs are better that is, and even then, I suspect someone will want to preserve the mother-planet.) My point is that saying ’sorry’ to God doesn’t make it all better. If God forgave you in the form of cleaning up an oil spill, maybe. But as it is, if you think pollution is a bad thing to do, don’t do it! And if you do, forget asking for God’s forgiveness and clean it up! I suppose you could do both, and I suppose most people would, but the idea that confession somehow rights the wrong is simply not true. One wonders whether this is about reducing the amount of sin in the world or about increasing the number of bums in confession boxes.

 

Also, Holly raises the point that, well, you can read it yourself here.

 

Something I’d like to know is, who picked these new sins? They sound more man-made than divinely inspired to me. If God is perfect and unchanging, why didn’t he warn us about these sins earlier? What about Uncle Joe who died last month without receiving absolution for being excessively wealthy? Or does it not count as a sin until the official announcement? And why didn’t God inform the other denominations too? On the other hand, if the mortal inhabitants of the Vatican came up with them, what weight to they carry? And how can we tell the difference between God-given and Bishop-given anyway?

 

Whoever it was, they did a good job. Who of us hasn’t committed, however indirectly, one of these new sins? You are reading this right now on a computer that, really, you don’t need. Excessive wealth much? (I’m not saying excessive wealth isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it is by definition.)

 

(Just as an aside, I am aware that some of the points I’m making may not apply, depending on whether some assumptions I’ve made are true or not.)

 

About the sins themselves: I fully support inflicting poverty, drug trafficking, and accumulating excessive wealth (depending on the definition of excessive) being on the bad list. Environmental pollution too, although that one is a bit more context-dependent.

 

The others I’m not so sure about. Genetic manipulation covers all manner of…activities. It’s what happens when a guy breeds his mare to a champion stallion in order to get a talented foal. God is going to have to give us some specifics. I’m assuming what he had in mind was something along the lines of putting pig genes into humans to cure diseases, or preventing the genes for horrific childhood diseases being activated (if these are crap examples, I’m sorry – I know bugger-all about genetics), but that’s a debate for another day.

 

Morally debatable experiments. Again, the Devil’s in the details… I think if would be difficult to find an experiment that didn’t have some tiny element that could potentially be debated. Slavery is morally debatable, in the sense that one could debate it. But that’s being pedantic. The fact is, there will always be someone who disagrees. Especially on topics like stem-cell research, cloning, etc. This shouldn’t preclude progress. I’m not sure I used the word preclude correctly there. Oh well. If we are going to advance in science, we are going to have to start doing things without everyone agreeing. Not without a lot of thought of course, but ignoring potentially ground-breaking science because the morality involved is complicated, difficult, or challenging to religious positions would be a waste.

 

What haven’t I mentioned yet? Oh. Violation of fundamental rights of human nature. I’m going to leave that one out. Partly because it’s late and I’m sleepy but mostly because I don’t know what the fundamental rights of human nature are or even if there are such things (is that bad?).

 

I understand Bishop Girotti mentioned a few other things as well, including abortion and paedophilia. Paedophilia I think requires no discussion. Abortion I’m saving for a later post.

 

The seven traditional sins aren’t perfect either. In a nutshell, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, I don’t have a problem with any of them. I’ll try to elaborate on that in another post.

 

On sin in general… I find the whole concept of sin unjustified, in terms of truth, and these new ones are no better than the original seven. If someone is going to claim I risk eternal damnation every time I overeat or sleep in, I want a more convincing reason to believe them than any I’ve heard so far. Especially if they’re telling me I must ask forgiveness for sin I was born with.

 

Hell? Eternal damnation? Really? First, the so-called mortal sins are none of them deserving of this extreme a punishment. Or so our legal systems judge. If we really thought lust was that bad wouldn’t it at least be a finable offence? Second, I have a real problem with the idea of Hell, specifically the idea of it being forever. If eternal damnation is fictional (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), that’s really, really, really mean. There must be an awful lot of people who are living in the belief that their friends and family are in Hell and will be forever. There must also be a lot of people who are scared shitless of ending up there. It scares me just thinking about it. I take issue with Heaven too, but I’ll save that for another time.

 

Finally, a question: how many mortal sins have you committed today? I’ve done all seven of the traditional ones. I’m doing pretty well on the new ones though. No morally debatable experiments in my basement. Actually, I don’t have a basement.

  

 

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.  Shakespeare