The Vatican Goes Green

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Jun 15, 2005
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http://green.yahoo.com/news/nm/20080310/hl_nm/pope_sins_dc.html

Vatican lists "new sins," including pollution

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.
I'll believe it when the Popemobile goes hybrid.
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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I am not sure you posted everything they said

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3517050.ece

Drug pushers, the obscenely rich, environmental polluters and “manipulative” genetic scientists beware – you may be in danger of losing your mortal soul unless you repent.

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. The list, published yesterday in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “securalised world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.

The Catholic Church divides sins into venial, or less serious, sins and mortal sins, which threaten the soul with eternal damnation unless absolved before death through confession and penitence.

It holds mortal sins to be “grave violations of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes”, including murder, contraception, abortion, perjury, adultery and lust.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell”.

Although there is no definitive list of mortal sins, many believers accept the broad seven deadly sins or capital vices laid down in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and popularised in the Middle Ages by Dante in The Inferno: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride.

Christians are exhorted instead to adhere to the seven holy virtues: chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, said after a week-long Lenten seminar for priests that surveys showed 60 per cent of Catholics in Italy no longer went to confession.

He said that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation”. Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an invididual matter, it now had “social resonance”.

“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.

Bishop Girotti said that mortal sins also included taking or dealing in drugs, and social injustice which caused poverty or “the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few”.

He said that two mortal sins which continued to preoccupy the Vatican were abortion, which offended “the dignity and rights of women”, and paedophilia, which had even infected the clergy itself and so had exposed the “human and institutional fragility of the Church”.

The mass media had “blown up” the issue “to discredit the Church”, but the Church itself was taking steps to deal with it.

Addressing the Apostolic Penitentiary seminar, the Pope said there was “a certain disaffection” with confession among the faithful. Priests had to show “divine tenderness for penitent sinners” and admit their own failings.

“Those who trust in themselves and in their own merits are, as it were, blinded by their own ‘I’, and their hearts harden in sin. Those who recognise themselves as weak and sinful entrust themselves to God, and from Him obtain grace and forgiveness.”

The Pope also complained that an increasing number of people in the secularised West were “making do without God”.

He said that hedonism and consumerism had even invaded “the bosom of the Church itself, deeply undermining the Christian faith from within, and undermining the lifestyle and daily behaviour of believers”.

Eastern Catholics do not recognise the same distinction between mortal and venial sins as the Western or Latin Church does, nor does it believe that those people who die in a state of sin are condemned to automatic damnation.

The original offences and their punishments
Pride Broken on the wheel
Envy Put in freezing water
Gluttony Forced to eat rats, toads, and snakes
Lust Smothered in fire and brimstone
Anger Dismembered alive
Greed Put in cauldrons of boiling oil
SlothThrown in snake pits

Source: The Picture Book of Devils, Demons and Witchcraft; Ernst and Johanna Lehner







Environmental destruction is a sin, perfect, but how the fuck you declare this a sin and in the same time declare contraception a sin???
 
Jun 15, 2005
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Environmental destruction is a sin, perfect, but how the fuck you declare this a sin and in the same time declare contraception a sin???
I understand what you feel is a lapse in logic, but there's a difference between driving an 8 cylinder SUV all the time, and trying to stop conception.

I myself, have used rubbers and had my lady in the pill; but still understand the difference above.
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#5
try to understand that there is also a difference between 50 people driving smarts and 5 people doing the same

and it's not only the CO2 emissions, it is also food, housing, heating, water, air travel, etc.
 
Mar 9, 2005
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Strange that - social and economic injustices and the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few are now considered sins. Now, tell me if I'm wrong here, but hasn't the church been the cause of significant social and economic injustices over the past two thousand years? Hasn't the vatican also accumulated significant wealth during that time? Ah, I see - now that the church has lost most of it's power and money and can no longer control the population to such a significant extent (and thus can no longer be the perpetrator of social and economic injustices), it's now a sin to perform such acts.

If genetic manipulation is a sin, then I've already got one foot in hell. It's no surprise though, the church has always been scared of science - anything that can shed light on reality and further push back the requirement of God to explain the universes internal workings is extremely dangerous. After all, what if scientists end up finding more evidence supporting evolution whilst performing such genetic experiments? Humans were playing God long before Moses was conceived - scientific advancement is simply a natural progression for our species.

The church can take their new sins and shove them up their tight arses. I don't need a bunch of self-righteous tossers telling me what's morally reprehensible based on their outdated paradigm.
 
Aug 15, 2003
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#7
Polution Going out from us is wrong just as it is putting it in ourselves. Doing things in vain and vanity are already sins aren't they? My response to this is i try and put things where they belong either on the earth or the body by good judgement.