7 Deadly Sins (Updated Version)

kev_s88

so what think ye about the new Seven Deadly Sins as announced by the Pope?? am interested to hear your input


1. genetic modification
2. causing poverty
3. obscene wealth
4. experimentation with humans
5. taking drugs
6. polluting the environment
7. causing social injustice

i know im picking on one sin here but how can the Cathoilc Church (one of the richest organisations in the world) attempt to justify "obscene wealth" as a sin of which they themselves are one of the biggest commiters?

Andy-Pandy

I am definetly hell bound now.

:eek:

spadder

headline grabbing nonsense.

super_furry

How do the men of the Catholic Church have the right to decide what God sees as a sin? It just seems of abitrary. And 'obscene wealth'? How guilty are the Catholic Church of that?

Bottle_of_Smoke

bono's not going to like this.

Anyone got the official statement, absoloutly everyone pollutes the environment

On bbc it's more pushing than taking drugs.... alter wine included?

THis is the most hypocritical & hilarious list I've seen in ages

heyjude

super_furry wrote: »

How do the men of the Catholic Church have the right to decide what God sees as a sin? It just seems of abitrary. And 'obscene wealth'? How guilty are the Catholic Church of that?

Yes, surely many of past popes enjoyed obscene wealth, does that mean that their sainthoods will be reviewed ? And if 'polluting the enviroment' is a mortal sin, then surely Pope John Paul II who flew to more countries than any previous Pope is especially guilty of this (will this prevent his canonisation or do these sins only apply to the laity ?), besides if causing pollution is a mortal sin, how is the Pope going to travel to Germany, next time he wants to visit ? Do you think he'll take the train ?

'Polluting the enviroment' is so arbitrary anyway, for technically anyone that lights a fire or burns anything or disposes of plastic or uses electricity that wasn't produced from hydro electric or a wind power is also guilty.

Interesting that all this was announced just before the annual exodus of government ministers to all parts of the world. Apparently Willie O'Dea will be the only government minister in the country on St Patricks Day. Is this an example of us casting the sinners out :rolleyes:

PDN

heyjude wrote: »

Yes, surely many of past popes enjoyed obscene wealth, does that mean that their sainthoods will be reviewed ?

I doubt it. Plenty of past Popes broke the last list of 7 with impunity, so i don't see how it should be any different with this new list.

Carolus Magnus

Beware, this is long.

i know im picking on one sin here but how can the Cathoilc Church (one of the richest organisations in the world) attempt to justify "obscene wealth" as a sin of which they themselves are one of the biggest commiters?

I'm hearing this a lot recently in the wake of these new sins being announced, and quite honestly I think people are forgetting two things. First of all that the Church had horrible debts until very recently (if it has a surplus it's meagre.) Second of all, it can't bloody well liquidate the assets it has, because they're historical artefacts held in security. I suppose you're all for peeling the likes of this off the walls and selling it to a private collector.

Not to mention the fact that the Vatican is a state. Of course it's going to be dealing with exponential amounts of cash, and spending exponential amounts of cash in turn. When you've got 1 billion followers I guess you're going to have some pretty big outlay, perhaps?

We can of course, discuss the fact that there are many wealthy Catholics of the Yeatsian 'greasy till' variety who are rewarded as 'Knights' of various Catholic orders. But then again, weren't avaricious men always sinners? And this is a point I'm going to take up near the end.*

Yes, surely many of past popes enjoyed obscene wealth, does that mean that their sainthoods will be reviewed ?

None of that was the property of any Pope. Some had wealthy families with private estates, such as Leo X (Giovanni de Medici), but there have been decrees forbidding the alienation of Church estates stretching back to the 5th century. All Popes die with few personal effects to dissemble. You need only take a look at the will of John Paul II.

Here: http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/testamento-jp-ii_20050407_en.html

I might dare to suggest that 'obscene' does not automatically equate to 'large'. If you have justifiable (that is the operative word) expenses then your income, it follows, needs to be as large doesn't it?

Some people here would be the first to complain if the Church insisted on paying for nothing. After all, that might not be a million miles away from stealing. I just don't know where this image of the Church being akin to a dragon sitting atop a pile of gold in its lair in Rome comes from.

There have been plenty of bad Popes, such as those that raised indulgence money, as far as I'm aware none of them are saints. Julius II isn't, Alexander VI isn't, the infamous John XII isn't either. And so on and so on. We can get in to the implications of those men for Petrinity another day, but that debate has already been had by the distinguished German scholars such as Schatz and Ullmann.

Of the Popes who are saints, including the first 12 or so of the early church who were granted blanket sainthood, we can't even verify whether they were self-consciously 'bishops' of Rome let alone what they got up to. The Liber Pontificalis sheds no light on the subject. After that, you have Leo, Gregory and so forth and I'd like to see you produce the evidence. Especially seeing as Gregory was O.S.B. I presume you're familiar with the Rule of St. Benedict? It has a number of vows, amongst them poverty.

Anyone got the official statement, absoloutly everyone pollutes the environment

And I think the Church teaches already that we all sin, most days. Why is this particularly shocking or offensive to the senses? The Pope himself seeks absolution weekly. I mean, come on, if you're going to attack this because it's too Catholic . . .

'Polluting the enviroment' is so arbitrary anyway, for technically anyone that lights a fire or burns anything or disposes of plastic or uses electricity that wasn't produced from hydro electric or a wind power is also guilty.

Pardon me, but you know as well as I do that that's bull**** in the same way that you could say the 5th commandment is arbitrary and as a result we can't even slaughter animals or go to war as soldiers. We can all try not to actively or wilfully pollute the environment, or be more conscious of our impact I think is what they're trying to get across here. Particularly illegal dumpers or industry heads operating very low standards. You're not going to hell because you flicked the light switch on, there are degrees with these things.

How do the men of the Catholic Church have the right to decide what God sees as a sin? It just seems of abitrary. And 'obscene wealth'? How guilty are the Catholic Church of that?

* I think the Church feels it has apostolic autocritas to promulgate teaching based on scripture and the theological writing that arises thereof. Most importantly, consider a few things:

1. This list of sins appeared in L'Osservatore Romano, it did not appear in a Bull, encyclical or as an ex cathedra statement.
2. The sins have a huge area of overlap with the existing seven

Might we deduce from that then that as one poster said already, this may be just to grab headlines or to reinforce the sense of contemporary 'sin'? From what I've read of Benedict's commentary on this, in conjunction with an Italian report on confession, then this was his intention. If anyone has a copy of Humanae Vitae, then they'll know that since 1968 this, for example:

genetic modification

Has been on dodgy ground, along with abortion and contraception. Why on earth is everyone so surprised? Nothing on this list is something that has suddenly been made a sin. Fair enough if you disagree with it. I certainly disagree with a lot of it (particularly contraception), but there should be no shock. Neither should there be the blindest bit of concern if you've rejected Catholicism. I think this is an announcement for Catholic ears by their leader. I'm sure he'd like people other than Catholics to take something away from it, but nobody's living in a theocracy here.

And related to the above, I've also heard people moan that the above makes modifying rice to include Vitamin A and prevent blindness in the third world a sin. Of course it does not. That's a benign use of genetic modification. They referred to human genetic modification as a sin - that is altering the DNA of humans by splicing it with those of animals or embryonic stem cell research.

There's been a lot of guff and hot air expended over this, like there was over the Regensburg address, and Dominus Iesus before that, and the La Sapienza University controversy most recently. Most of it was born of misunderstanding or downright, even wilful ignorance.

---

In Regensburg they claimed he was inciting Muslims to violence and inhibiting religious dialogue . . . by quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor who claimed that Islam was a violent religion, which he did precisely to show that historically the two faiths haven't had a great ecumenism and that as a result they needed to progress past the east-west dichotomy. Muslim clerics are visiting the Vatican very shortly (or they might already have done so.)

Over La Sapienza they again took the quote out of context about Galileo's trial 'being fair for the standards of the time.' Unless you suffer from a heavy dose of presentism, then it was, but even then he wasn't justifying it he was again quoting someone else: a historian, and proceeded to say that in spite of that the interference of the Church in areas of science was misguided and wrong. Galileo had a statue unveiled to him in the Vatican a week ago outside the place where he was held in custody before the trial. La Sapienza students apparently didn't want a Pope on campus, in spite of it being a Pope who founded the university in the 1300s, because Benedict hates Galileo and thus all science. Riiight.

On Dominus Iesus, he said that the Anglican communion was not that of a full Church because it was not united with him and thus it was not linked to Peter and ultimately not linked to Christ. Well, holy 'effing ****e, break out the brass band, but do you think that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope aren't leading separate denominations because that's the unspoken status quo? Both sides you'd hope remain distinct because they believe they have good theological reason to do so, and then everyone complains because Benny mentions 'Hey, we're Catholic y'know, here's why'

robindch

PDN wrote: »

Plenty of past Popes broke the last list of 7 with impunity, so i don't see how it should be any different with this new list.

Agreed. Our friends at http://www.jesusandmo.net seem to have their finger on the Vatican's pulse:



Strange, though, that pedophilia didn't actually make it onto Gianfranco Girotti's list of deadly sins. After the church's recent troubles, I'd have thought it would be top of the list.

Carolus Magnus

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/03/11/more-sin/

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iMkHLSmqxTMGQ3qBlc0wLqgvKaNAD8VAPUOG0

'Vatican officials, however, stressed that Girotti's comments broke no new ground on what constitutes sin.'

"As far as I can tell, in an interview Bishop Gianfranco Girotti commented: “If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that’s especially social, rather than individual.” And he gave some examples (although I admit to being a little unclear about how they are social in a new way). But it doesn’t seem that he gave seven examples. And, frankly, I can’t even tell if he intended his examples to be of mortal sins."

I suspected as much. I said as much. Something's gotten garbled on the news wires, but frankly the thing seemed have a distinct lack of doctrinal imprimatur or even embellishment anyway and comparing it to the driver's ten commandments as the AP article above does, seems to be the most sensible context to place the announcement in. We hardly crow about how there are now 20 commandments.

Edit: The fact that the OP started off by saying it was the 'Pope's announcement', is exemplary of the confusion reigning over this apparent 'list'.

BrianCalgary

Locking it because it is becoming a Catholic Bash. Not cool.

Cartoon in bad taste Robin.