Vatican lists "new sins," including pollution

By Philip Pullella Posted Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:00am PDT

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Modern times bring with them modern sins. So the Vatican has told the faithful that they should be aware of "new" sins such as causing environmental blight.

The guidance came at the weekend when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican's number two man in the sometimes murky area of sins and penance, spoke of modern evils.

Asked what he believed were today's "new sins," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics.

"(Within bioethics) there are areas where we absolutely must denounce some violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control," he said.

The Vatican opposes stem cell research that involves destruction of embryos and has warned against the prospect of human cloning.

Girotti, in an interview headlined "New Forms of Social Sin," also listed "ecological" offences as modern evils.

In recent months, Pope Benedict has made several strong appeals for the protection of the environment, saying issues such as climate change had become gravely important for the entire human race.

Under Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, the Vatican has become progressively "green."

It has installed photovoltaic cells on buildings to produce electricity and hosted a scientific conference to discuss the ramifications of global warming and climate change, widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels.

Girotti, who is number two in the Vatican "Apostolic Penitentiary," which deals with matter of conscience, also listed drug trafficking and social and economic injustices as modern sins.

But Girotti also bemoaned that fewer and fewer Catholics go to confession at all.

He pointed to a study by Milan's Catholic University that showed that up to 60 percent of Catholic faithful in Italy stopped going to confession.

In the sacrament of Penance, Catholics confess their sins to a priest who absolves them in God's name.

But the same study by the Catholic University showed that 30 percent of Italian Catholics believed that there was no need for a priest to be God's intermediary and 20 percent felt uncomfortable talking about their sins to another person.

(Editing by Keith Weir)

I don't believe in the idea of 'sin', but I do agree that it was high time a very influential institution like the Catholic Church (nowhere more influential than in my own fair country) took notice of much more serious forms of abuse than having sex before marriage or using condoms - especially since the continuing rape of the Earth could result in the extinction of the human race. 

I'm not a catholic. I don't really care about this.

I care for real about environmental issues. "A" church (instead of "the church"; get rid of those conquered/slave habits, T) won't do much for environment, unless you count praying, wich, again, won't do much.

The T wrote:   As Raffaela said, the same idiotic institution that bans condoms and thus promotes aids and over-population and that bans gyas and thus becomes a segregating machine totally against what their Mentor said, has finally done something kind of intelligent.   It's a start...

Apparantly the gap between the rich and poor is also a moral disgrace. Perhaps the Catholic church should auction off some of it's vast assets in an act of Christian kindness, to help feed the worlds poor.

21st Century sins..

It was a great day, when the people of Eire stuck their fingers up at the church, went and bought some condoms and had some fun. Look at the place now; booming! Long gone are the days of nuns running everything and kids being threatened with eternal damnation for missing mass. Thats how my mother described Ireland as a child. Sounds like hell on Earth to me..



Edited by Blacksword - March 10 2008 at 17:47

Gamemako wrote: //EDIT: By the way, the passage-quoting isn't serious.

That would be a good thing.

As some people have mentioned, it's a sign of a very entrenched, conservative institution, finally turning its attention more openly to matters that people of any faith can get behind. It's a good sign, and a step in the right direction.

CNN.com wrote: Girotti said the Catholic Church continued to be concerned by other sinful acts, including abortion and pedophilia. He said Church authorities had reacted with rigorous measures to child abuse scandals within the clergy, but he also claimed that the issue had been excessively emphasized by the media.

Father Antonio Pelayo, a Spanish priest and Vatican expert noted that it is time for both sinners and confessors to get over their obsession with sex and think about other ways humans hurt each other in the world in which they live. "There are many other sins that are perhaps much more grave that don't have anything to do with sex - that have to do with life, that have to do with the environment, that have to do with justice," he told AP Television.

Translation: we are pushing environmentalism to detract from the attention we receive when we transfer pedophiles into parishes full of fresh meat.

I'm also digging people condemning the wealth gap from a palace wearing robes.

Come on Vatican, stop sitting around trying desperate PR move! Take some action. Tell Catholics to do something about Darfur. Better yet, donate some of your vast resources to fixing the problem. Combined, you can really do some good. Meeting with scientists is a great start to understand something being readily dismissed by some high-ranking Christians in America, but looking at those quotes it feels like a cheap distraction from the Church's most pressing issue. Don't guilt Catholics into change; encourage it. How hard is it to say that keeping God's world clean is one of the best things you can do, instead of throwing people in hell for driving an SUV? This may or may not yield any real change, but it does have some promise.

cuncuna wrote: I care for real about environmental issues. "A" church (instead of "the church"; get rid of those conquered/slave habits, T) won't do much for environment, unless you count praying, wich, again, won't do much.