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Seven modern sins
Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican’s number two man in the Apostolic Penitentiary, spoke recently about seven “modern” sins that might be added to the list of seven “mortal” sins. Lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy, and pride were first enumerated by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century, and made immortal in the most convicting film I saw in college. The new sins would make a far less interesting movie (in no particular order):
- “ruining the environment”
- “carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments” and/or “allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos”
- “taking or dealing in drugs”
- “social injustice which caused [sic] poverty”
- “the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few”
- abortion
- pedophilia
The archbishop acknowledged the Catholic church’s culpability on that last one.
Topic: Religion, WorldMagBlog
Keywords: catholic church, the-church
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back to top20 Comments to “Seven modern sins”
Did they really not know that pedophilia was a sin before now?
I would think that the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few comes under avarice, but Jesus didn’t say a wealthy person couldn’t be saved because he had money — just that it is harder for a wealthy person to see the need to be saved.
I can’t really argue with this new list, but it sounds rather “politically correct.”
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4.“social injustice which caused [sic] poverty”
5.“the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few”
If many of the people on this site are any indication, then number 4 would be “get a job” and number 5 would be, hey, it’s their money, leave them alone and “hate the gays” would be no less than number 2.
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Yes, it is harder for a wealthy person to be saved, but I think what many people often miss is how much harder. It may sound communistic, but the more I think about it, the more I come to believe that a Christian cannot in good conscience hoard any substantial amount of money. I simply can no longer justify personal wealth to myself when there are brothers and sisters in Christ in other countries with nothing at all.
I also think it’s interesting that every one of the sins on the new list are external manifestations and extensions of the original seven.
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“The schemes of folly is sin.” Proverbs 24:9
“Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Paul, Romans 14:23
“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” James 4:17
Sin is not just an item on a list or a label for undesirable or unpopular actions. It’s a spiritual cancer. It’s a condition that grows undetected within us. It may not hurt at first, but it kills in time. One of the most heinous aspects of cancer is that often people are unaware they have it until it is too late. But in its later stages, we feel its effects.
Our Christian walk begins with our honest confrontation with our sin–repentance. This means renouncing our sin as a personal condition and our sinful attitudes and deeds as well. But it also means turning to a new direction. It must be much more than living by a list, no matter how new or old that list is. We follow His lead, willingly, trusting Him as our guide.
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New sins! Just when I was finally getting a handle on the old ones.
Forgive me father for I have sinned; in my haste I put a polymer in a non-recycle trash can . . .
Could make confession much more interesting;)
Seriously, all of these are old sins, but I say Amen and Amen to Girotti reminding us of them.
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“If many of the people on this site are any indication, then number 4 would be “get a job” and number 5 would be, hey, it’s their money, leave them alone and “hate the gays” would be no less than number 2.”
You know, I don’t think I have a problem with any of these rules, except that they are often tied to a liberal social agenda. Not only that, but your tone suggests animosity and conflict right off the bat. First you accuse us of having no compassion for the poor, then accuse us of defending the rich – who must have stolen from the poor, and then make the baseless accusation that Christians hate gays.
Sounds like you have a poor understanding of the Christian position to me. If you imagine that you will bring us areound to your point of view with this manner of argumentation you are sadly mistaken.
I will agree that getting a job is a fine thing. One should always strive to support oneself, and pull one’s weight – and not steal. But that’s not what #4 is about is it? It is specifically directed toward those who would create poverty via social injustice. In other words it would be like owing your soul to the company store because the company paid you less than they charged you to buy groceries. The company was basically stealing labor from it’s employees. You know, that kind of injustice. I agree that sort of thing should be dealt with. Employers should be held accountable, and we certainly try to do that in this country. Not perfect but we try.
In my experience, it’s been the non-believing employers that treated me worst. My current employer, who is a christian, treats me as he would like to be treated. He does not follow the practice of many businessmen who only hire part time employees so they don’t have to carry benefits. He covers all of his employees, and has the best benefits package I’ve ever seen. He also cares about these folks, prays for them, and has helped numerous of us in many different ways. The door to his office is always open to any of us. I’ve worked in a lot of places, and most of my employers and bosses couldn’t give a rats patootie about your benefits, much less your personal problems, and were only concerned that their bottom line not suffer. Consequently some of those places were hell holes. Why does my employer do this? I think it stems from his belief system…
You know what though? He didn’t go hunting for any of us, we were looking for a job, and he hired us. The pope is not speaking of the injustice where a man won’t work in order to make a living and instead lives off welfare checks or panhandles… in that case the injustice is that he’s stealing from us the taxpayers. So yes “get a job” and pull your weight is good advice.
In the case of #5, accumulation of wealth by a few is not necessarily a product of #4, but could be. I think the example of my employer is a good one. He puts a lot of his profits back into the company and it’s employees. Most of the places I worked at didn’t do that. The owners lived high on the hog, and couldn’t care less about their employees… But I still think the decision to distribute wealth should be at the discretion of the owner – unless it’s ill-gotten as in the case of #4. But if the social vigilantes want to re-distribute the private wealth, simply because it’s a lot of money, I think they need to string themselves up… What part of not stealing from another is incoherent?
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I saw this earlier. It looked to me like something that belonged in The Onion. ^_^
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“social injustice which caused [sic] poverty”
This is interesting indeed. Looks like all the sustainable development colonialists are going to hell!
“the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few”
Clearly an indictment of socialist dictators like Castro, Chavez, Hussein, Arafat, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, et. al. who rob the people of their nations to set themselves up in the finest houses and keep the rabble at bay with guns and great rhetoric, such as the above statement.
Wow, it seems the leftist control machine has some repentance to think about.
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Cicero already said what I thought of: … every one of the sins on the new list are external manifestations and extensions of the original seven.
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#7 Galandriel,
It’s not good enough or funny enough for The Onion and too good for Jon Stewart. I’m guessing SNL
Simon Black would have a field day with this.
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“carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments”
Check this out:
Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.
The IPCC engaged in morally debatable scientific experiments? That’s probably putting it lightly.
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This is probably the most conservative Vatican in quite a while. I wouldn’t worry about a liberal/social agenda behind these sins.
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So Genocide did not make the list?
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I find a little odd that only pedophilia was acknowledged in teh churches history when it is safe to say that with the possible exception of abortion, not just individual catholics but the structure of the church itself has been guilty of or complicit in every single thing on that list since 1930.
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Interesting how the “old” sins are all sins of attitude or heart, and the new sins are all sins of doing.
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Yes, Galadriel, that’s more or less where I was hinting with my post. Props on your choice of screen name
Luke, come to think of it I am surprised that genocide is not on the list…or the slavery that is prevalent in much of the world.
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It seems to me that the original seven adequately act as a source or basis which the new list merely expounds or points to as example. Ruining the environment could be the result of avarice, anger, envy or pride and possibly even several of those in unison. Proper understanding of the original makes this update unnecessary except for those unable to connect the dots. And this new list seems rather shallow or an “oh yeah, that’s what I mean” compared to the original, but that’s not surprising considering the depth of our educational experience today.
I think Joel has nailed it. The root of all this is sin, acting as a cancer in all of us, revealed as a constant depravity most of which we are so comfortable with we don’t even recognize as a problem anymore.
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If the guy thinks these are ‘new’ then he didn’t understand the ‘old’ set of seven.
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KRM made an excellent point.
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One thing I didn’t understand; were these supposed to replace the old, or exemplify?
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