A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution, genetic manipulation and social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior. -AP
The new mortal sins were listed by Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti at the end of a week-long training seminar in Rome for priests, aimed at encouraging a revival of the practice of confession - or the Sacrament of Penance in Church jargon.
According to a survey carried out here 10 years ago by the Catholic University, 60% of Italians have stopped going to confession altogether. The situation has certainly not improved during the past decade. -BBC
Of course, any drug or gene therapy, or even genetic manipulation of lesser organisms that lets a believer live a little longer, or a little happier will still be alright; less need for miraculous intervention that way. And hey, they're still teaching abstinence and shunning condoms to control the spread of disease, so really we won't even need those treatments much longer.
Ultimately on the drug side of things, they're mostly referring to all those arbitrarily defined 'illicit' ones. But when you are based on the arbitrary, there's no problem with this kind of logic.
And then there will be all those forced into conflict by the declaration that the rich are sinners. Those that still believe God is speaking through George W. are going to need some extra medication to cope when they realize that as one of those rich people, he's one of the biggest sinners out there. But for no other reason. As an aside, I wonder what George himself confesses to sitting there in that vestibule.
I mean clearly the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are sinners, what with all their millions of dollars donated to curing disease though alternative therapies. Double whammy on those two, definitely destined for some lower level of hell when they kick the bucket.
In the end it still comes down to people who need some defined set of rules because their own moral conscience simply doesn't exist without it. And when there are people out there who think like this,
so you think if no one believed in any religion there would be no wars or fighting? i think it would be worse. i know if i didn't fear god's judgement i would have killed many many times.
cajunXLVII - FSTDT.com
some kind of indoctrination is certainly better than the alternative. I have a feeling though that through history there have been far more that killed in the name of their god, than those that have decided not to kill in the name of their god. Clearly the nature of that argument makes it unprovable, such is the problem.