As if the seven deadly sins were not enough, a Vatican official has suggested adding a few more transgressions to worry about.
Such as drug use, genetic manipulation, pollution and social and economic injustices.
The informal list came out in an interview with Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, published Sunday in the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano. The Penitentiary is a Vatican body that grants absolutions and issues decisions on matters of conscience.
The archbishop pinpointed bioethics as a particular trouble spot because of its “violations of certain fundamental rights of human nature through experiments.”
Genetic manipulation is too fraught with uncertainties, he said. As for drug use, “It weakens the dark psyche and intelligence, leaving many young people outside the church.”
He also listed bad ecological practices and economic inequality, “in which the poor are getting poorer and the rich growing richer, fueling an unsustainable social injustice.”
A former undersecretary to Pope Benedict XVI when both men worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Girotti has spoken before of a “crisis” in the sacrament of confession, stating that 30 percent of all Italians don’t see a need for it.
He did not specify whether the newer additions would be venial — which are less serious — or mortal sins.
The interview was prefaced with an observation that the Penitentiary is a department “struggling to reassert its role even in an era where there is no perception of the same sin.” Still, the Penitentiary’s role is even more important because globalization has made the “social consequences of sin” far “broader and more destructive,” according to the archbishop.
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