March 10, 2008, 3:01 pm
Seven More Sins, Thanks to Vatican
By Mike Nizza (as seen on www.nytimes.com)
Lust, gluttony, greed and the rest of the seven deadly sins gathered in the
6th century will have to get used to a modern companion. A Vatican official
has articulated seven new categories of sin "due to the phenomenon of
globalization."
"While sin used to concern mostly the individual, today it has mainly a
social resonance," Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti told L'Osservatore Romano,
Vatican City's local paper. Bloomberg News parsed his remarks into a
clip-n-savable list:
1. Bioethical" violations such as birth control
2. "Morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty
The message, according to a leading scholar on Catholic thought talking to
BBC News, was meant as a reality check to priests "not sufficiently attuned
to some of the real evils in our world." There is more to life than
following the Ten Commandments, it would seem.
The seven deadly sins served another purpose, too: inspiring artists from
Bosch to Balanchine. Can anyone picture a similar renaissance fueled by
this new list. Or has it already happened?
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