Seven New Deadly Sins? Not Exactly.

This just in from the Don't Believe Everything You Read Department here in the News Room. The headlines proclaimed Seven New Deadly Sins: Are You Guilty, Vatican Introduces More Ways to Sin, Vatican updates its Thou-Shalt-Not List and Recycle or go to Hell, warns Vatican. The Church Times wrote,

After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation

while the Associated Press said,

In olden days, the deadly sins included lust, gluttony and greed. Now, the Catholic Church says pollution, mind-damaging drugs and genetic experiments are on its updated thou-shalt-not list.

The Catholic News Service gives the skinny with its rebutal New sins? Hardly. which says,

It’s always amusing to work in our newsroom on days like today when other news outlets are misinterpreting — or purposely hyping out of proportion — a story involving the church. Today’s case in point, if you have not heard, is the interview a Vatican official gave to the Vatican newspaper on the social impact of sin in a globalized society....

The amusement is in the phone calls that come in on a day like today, like the call I took from one Catholic communications official trying to track down the story because she had heard from a local reporter who thought that the addition of new sins to the existing “list” was one of the biggest stories of the year, something akin to an addition to the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty.

The original story came from an interview with Bishop Gianfranco Girotto for the March 8 issue of L'Osservatore Romano. The bishop was attempting to show how sins are not merely of an individual nature, but that there are also social sins as well—the sins "we" do, beyond what each of us does individually. As the Catholic publication America put it

a headline that reads "Seven New Deadly Sins" is undeniably sexier than a headline saying, "Vatican Official Deepens Church's Reflection on Longstanding Tradition of Social Sin."

For less sensational reporting on the article that touched off the idea of Seven New Deadly Sins, here is the text of a Catholic News Service Report,

New forms of sin have arisen in the area of biotechnology, economics and ecology, and many involve questions of individual rights and wider social effects, said Bishop Gianfranco Girotti.

Bishop Girotti is an official of the Apostolic Penitentiary, an office that deals with questions relating to penance and indulgences. He made the comments in an interview March 8 with the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

Bishop Girotti said the sense of sin in today's world should be even more acute than before, since the effects of sin are often widespread.

"If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has an impact and resonance that is above all social, because of the great phenomenon of globalization," he said.

"In effect, attention to sin is a more urgent task today, precisely because its consequences are more abundant and more destructive," he said.

Among the "new sins" that have emerged in recent times, he pointed to genetic experiments and manipulation that violate fundamental human rights and produce effects difficult to foresee and control.

He said other areas where sin has a social impact include drug abuse, which affects many young people; economic injustice, which has left the poor even poorer and the rich richer; and environmental irresponsibility.

Forget the hype of trying to add more sins to the Thou Shalt Nots of The Ten Commandments or even to the Middle Ages teaching of the Seven Deadly Sins as sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride. I think that there have always been both individual and group sins. Mob violence is just one sign of this, with the behavior of Death Camp guards being another. There are no new sins in one sense, just new ways that we live into the old sins. Sin is missing the mark set by God. The Internet or a globalised work force may offer new ways to lust or steal, but they don't really offer new sins. That's my take anyway. What's yours?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9