According to the Vatican, the typical groups of people that risk eternal damnation such as murderers, adulterers, thieves, over-indulgent people, and everybody else that fall under the seven deadly sins can now be joined by the following: drug dealers, the extremely wealthy, and scientists that deal with human gene manipulation.
The Catholic Church’s Catechism says that those who have sinned will be sent into the depths of Hell right after they die. Now, the seven mortal sins add onto the seven deadly sins. According to the Catholic Church, those who commit the seven mortal sins are just as condemned as those that commit the seven deadly sins.
To add onto: Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Hate, and Sloth, there is: Environmental Pollution, Genetic Manipulation, Excessive Wealth, Inflicting Poverty, Drug trafficking and Consumption, Morally Debatable Experiments, and the Violation of Human Rights.
In a sense, those modern sins look to be a mere extension of the seven deadly sins.
These new sins were placed as a means to energize more confessions. In short, this is to get more people to attend confessionals.
So far, 60% of Italians have stopped attending confession. Keep in mind that Italy is predominantly Catholic. On an unrelated note, the Italian court of appeals has ruled that married women in Italy can lie about extramarital affairs to police and/or in a court of law to protect their “honor.”
Humorously, those married women can lie to the police but confess to the Catholic priest.
“If people do not confess regularly, they risk slowing their spiritual rhythm,” said Pope Benedict the XVI. He said that people are losing the notion of sin. Benedict himself says that he confesses sins on a regular basis once a week.
The Catholic Church says the new sins lay in the ethics of science and the ecology. Archbishop Girotti listed those two as new types of sins. He did add abortion and pedophilia as two other sins.
But, he was quick to dismiss the cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests as minor happenings that have been exaggerated. He said that it was the mass media blowing things out of proportion to kill the Catholic Church’s credibility.
Father Gerald O’Collins, who used to teach moral theology at the Papal University in Rome, explained that one big point is that the priests that listen to confessions are not tuned enough to what are deemed the real evils. He added they need to know more about the social aspect of sin.
In a sense, it would look as if the Vatican is making a move to “fight” social injustice.
In a sense, the mortal sin of environmental pollution can be linked to the deadly sin of greed. Environmental pollution has been connected to greedy CEOs that just want extra money. There is the possible connection to lust as those same people lust for money.
Morally debatable experiments could be connected to the deadly sins of pride and lust. Too much pride as a scientist and a lust for knowledge could be used as a possible explanation for the link between these two vices and the newly added mortal sin.
Violation of human rights can be linked to the deadly sin of hate/wrath. One group violates the human rights of another group by unleashing wrath upon it.
These are mere examples of the links that can be made between the seven mortal sins and the traditional seven deadly sins.
On another note, in the United States, many that were born and raised Catholic or Protestant had dropped their faiths. They either dropped religion completely or converted to something else.
Asides the lack of people attending confession, the drop of membership is another problem the Catholic Church must deal with.
In short, those that fall under these mortal sins get to join those that fall under the seven deadly sins.
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