Vatican Issues New Seven Deadly Sins
March 23, 2008
Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. These are the seven deadly sins as issued by the Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th Century AD, and further brought into the mainstream by Dante and St. Thomas Aquinas. After 1500 years, Bishop Gianfranco Girotti (head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences), has decided to issue a new seven deadly sins:
Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature
Personally, I find these new sins both ridiculous and inappropriate. The old seven deadly sins have been a mainstay of our culture because they were non-specific, politically neutral and referred to intent than actions. No one is going to dispute that greed and envy are positive spiritual actions. However, the new seven deadly sins are highly charged politically, open to misinterpretation, overly vague, and in some cases, flat out wrong.
Let’s walk through each poorly written sin:
Environmental pollution: even freegans pollute to some degree, so where exactly does this sin begin? While dumping toxic waste into a reservoir seems obvious, what about driving a car with bad gas mileage? Is driving a car with good gas mileage okay? Does 28.4 mpg constitute sin, while 28.5 constitutes virtue? Even breathing oxygen increases the amount of CO2. Have I lived a life of sin if my carbon footprint is anything other than neutral? Or am I virtuous as long as I drive a hybrid and carpool to work? The Pope travels all across the world, burning up fossil fuels? Is he a sinner?
Genetic manipulation: so we probably shouldn’t clone a master race of super soldiers. But what about using genetic research to cure disease? Is using stem cells to treat Parkinson’s a sin? I believe Michael J. Fox would disagree.
Accumulating excessive wealth: what person has done the most good for mankind in the last five to ten years? Hard to say, but Bill Gates would certainly be in the running. The Gates Foundation has significantly improved the lives of tens of thousands of individuals. Has he been a scourge on mankind? Is the world worse off because he accumulated ridiculously excessive amounts of wealth? Only Steve Jobs would agree with that. Plus, aren’t most Bishops pretty wealthy?
Inflicting poverty: what exactly does “inflicting poverty” constitute. I don’t exactly break the bank as a teacher, but I have two TV’s and four computers. Do my spending habits inflict poverty (I could sell my TVs and give the money to the homeless)? Or do I need to go the Robert Mugabe rout and bankrupt a nation in order to commit this sin?
Drug trafficking and consumption: what exactly constitutes a drug? Heroin is a drug. But so is Aspirin. Is my uncle, a Merck employee, going to hell if he doesn’t confess his sins for helping to develop drugs that reduce cholesterol? Or is just drugs that are illegal? Does that mean it’s a sin to smoke marijuana in New Jersey, but not in Amsterdam? Or is the Vatican going to issue a list of drugs that are sinful?
Morally debatable experiments: so is any experiment that requires extra scrutiny by an ethics board sinful? If we have to debate the ethics of something, is it a sin? Does this mean we can only exercise the scientific method in non-controversial areas?
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature: not sure what this means, and it seems a little obvious, but I’ll let this one pass. At least it’s not condemning Bill Gates (who actually funded some of the computers at my school).
If you want to live your life by a set of rules someone you’ve never met came up with, I suggest using Gandhi’s seven deadly sins:
*Wealth without Work
* Pleasure without Conscience
* Science without Humanity
* Knowledge without Character
* Politics without Principle
* Commerce without Morality
* Worship without Sacrifice
Whoever wrote this is needs to learn how to think for themselves and move past how the media reported this bishop’s remarks. The bishop in question happens to be a (relatively minor) official, but this was *not* an official statement, but it was an INTERVIEW. It in no way represents a new Vatican view, as has been insinuated in some outlets (displaying pictures of Benedict, who did not make the comments in the first place). While he happens to list seven things, they were not originally intended as “modern deadly sins” as was so widely reported to sex up the article. Look it up. It was simply another message (*and by no means the first*) urging the faithful in examining their consciences to consider sin beyond the ramifications for oneself. Sin has a social dimension, which is not news, but it does need to be emphasized for each day and time. So this was not meant at all as the only seven rules for you to live by, or list of things that if you do you will go to hell.
Regarding stem cell research, the Michael J. Fox argument is used, which brings us back to the ‘06 election cycle. If you haven’t noticed, very few people are talking about the stem cell issue right now. Why? Because just about every company/research outfit that has worked on embryonic stem cells has folded not due to lack of funds but lack of any tangible results and promise in that direction. Other sources of stem cells have provided many incredible results, but to date embryonic stem cells have not. If you do the nitty gritty research, a lot of the ‘06 stem cell ads were funded by people with a vested financial interest, as they were positioned to be the ones to receive federal funds. So if we want to be skeptics, pure humanitarian concern is not the only motivation. But that is another issue. The larger issue, of course, is … what is it that is often said about ends and means? Should we round up people suffering from these various diseases and cut them apart so as to find a solution more quickly? Would that be morally palatable? Well, it could save lives… but at what cost to our humanity?
This entry parses each quoted word and completely misses the point. The official in question is head of the penitentiary, *so these are meant to prompt each individual to probe their own actions so as to make a better confession.* This is not a set of universal commandments! Is that so hard to understand? So your hypothetical meanderings completely miss the point that if you do drive a 12 mi/gal vehicle and you could get yourself and your stuff/family around just as easily in a 30 mi/gal vehicle, maybe you should rethink your choice of vehicle. This is not meant to define black and white as much as a guide to the gray that is the moral life. Each individual faces unique circumstances and (shocker!) church officials actually realize that. We should push beyond an individualistic notion of sin and realize that societies as a whole can do bad things. Apparently, you may be thinking about these issues. Bully for you. Not everybody does, and that was why the statement was made.
The whole dualistic saint-sinner schtick featured here is tired, as the Church may have pushed that for a while but is decidely different in its approach to sin and the moral life in general nowadays. The inclusion of “excessive wealth” is not meant to consign Bill Gates to the netherworld. There is no doubt that he has done tremendous good with the money he has accumulated, but things are a bit more complicated than that (how he got it, and not all things he has done with the money have been peachy keen in the Church’s eyes), and the Church is not claiming competence to judge his eternal destiny as much as give him something to reflect on should he enter a confessional. Beyond guiding the individual realm of conscience, of course, the Church has a role to be a prophetic voice so that people seeking to make decisions will think about the ramifications of their decisions for their society at large, with their wallets and with their votes.
In sum, this was not meant as a replacement list or even a list of modern additions as if to say there are 14 deadly sins now. In fact, I have not even seen a direct quotation from the source to say that these seven specifically (and no others) were to be deliberately enumerated as “deadly.” Many of them are not really “new” either, but have been decried as sinful for a while. The comment here is right in that these do not resemble the “original” deadly sins, but fails to see beyond that to what it is trying to communicate. No wonder so few priests actually talk about sin anymore from the pulpit, given how this has been so misinterpreted. I can’t believe how many people I have heard spouting off that this bishop’s statement “damns” people for littering or being wealthy. The whole flipping point is to prompt people to think critically about their behavior and amend it. That is a distinct mission of the Church in general and of the penitentiary office in particular. Not judgment per se; that is ultimately Christ’s job. Thank God.
First of all, its not true that the Vatican issued new sins. A search on the offical Vatican website turns up nothing, and there is this article to ponder. http://www.zenit.org/article-22029?l=english
Secondly, in order understand sin from the Vatican’s point of view, its important to understand the Catholic definition of sin. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14004b.htm
To sum it up, in order to sin, you must have knowledge that what you do is a sin, and you use your free will to sin. Also, if your not sure if driving a car that only gets 20mpg is a sin, you can always pray about it, and talk to a priest or two for guidence. Nothing is black and white.
Thirdly, why cant sins be political? The Catholic Church, along with every other church, has every right to be political. Essentially, every issue that the Church grapples with is political in the end.
Jim, well done! You basically said what I was thinking, but couldnt articulate. (I am by no means a good writer.)