From: Ian blenkharn@ianblenkharn.com
Category: Miscellaneous
Date: 10 Mrz 2008
Time: 13:28:37 +0100
Remote Name: 217.43.109.211
Failing to recycle plastic bags could find you spending eternity in Hell, the Vatican said after drawing up a list of seven deadly sins for our times.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/10/eavatican110.xml
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.
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,”
Good to see that the Church is moving with the times, though I'm minded to consider a bandwagon effect. Concerns regarding environmental protection, and thereby the best possible approach to waste management, are highly commendable and there is no reason whatsoever why the Church should not play its part.