The New ‘Hip’ Sins
Well, it seems that the good ol’ standard seven deadly sins of our parent’s day weren’t good enough for the new Pope. Nope, not good enough at all, so he added a few new ones to the list.
In case you didn’t see this article the new sins are:
polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice
The last one is sufficiently vague that I’m sure they will get quite a bit of mileage out of it for years to come while never quite condemning anyone who actually HAS caused a social injustice worth condemning like – oh, I don’t know – China, Darfur, Syria, Iran.
The other one that gets me is the “being obscenely rich” one. So, I guess then that the entire Vatican is going to go straight to hell because I will bet my left testicle that the hat Pope Benedict XVI wears in all of his public appearances costs more than my parents have ever earned in their whole life. So, they would qualify as ‘obscenely rich’ in my book then.
Next up is the sin of genetic engineering. So, this is a sin too. Using gene therapy to cure autoimmune diseases and using it to find a cure for ones like Huntington’s disease, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and cystic fibrosis which are all caused by a defective gene is now a sin?
It would be wonderful if the Catholic Church was as wise and knowledgeable as they claim to be, but the more that representatives of the church speak, the more out of touch with reality they show themselves to be. Abortion is a sin, but so is using birth control so you don’t GET pregnant. To the church, the only time I guess I should have sex with my wife is when we are going to have a kid. Doesn’t matter that we are being responsible in how we live our lives and have decided that we would not be able to properly raise a child at this time so we are waiting. No, according to the church I’m going to go to hell because I’m not adding another body to this world.
They used the same line in Africa too where the country is highly Catholic and AIDS is through the roof. Don’t use condoms, Africa, it’s a SIN. Well, thanks for the help in getting AIDS under control, we’ll call you if there are any other problems you can help us with, like confronting bastard dictators the way Pope Innocent did during WWII – his new name is Pope Gutless Bastard I.
I think the Catholic Church, as an organization, has no interest in helping people just become better people. Individual priests do, but the machine that is “The Church” is more concerned with power and control. They want a congregation that follows their word blindly because of the fear of burning in hell once you die. Fear is used to control you and then it is compounded by saying that a devout follower must confess his sins to his pastor – so now we have guilt and sin, what a nice control combination.
The saddest part about it all to me is that I have actually had people say to me “You’re such a nice guy, I hate to think of you burning in hell when you die” as a way to try and get me to convert and go to church with them. If I’m going to burn in hell because I don’t have a membership card to your club and not because of anything I did, then I would have to say that the God these people believe in isn’t one I would follow anyway.
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. – Thomas Jefferson
**UPDATE**
The wife made an interesting point. So now that the church is interested in saving the planet are they going to become just like all those pagan faiths that they spent many years trying to wipe out? Next thing you know the Church will refer to the planet as “Mother Earth”
