The Catholic Church has proposed seven new deadly sins:
Environmental destruction
Genetic Manipulation
Amassing unreasonable wealth
Causing poverty
Drug dealing
Using drugs
The list seems sensible enough since these actions cause pain and suffering to others. Naturally some of them are vague (what is unreasonable) but as a lawyer I know that it would be unfair to complain too much about that.
My beef, besides the whole church organization (all organizations exist to amass power), lies a bit with Catholic Church talking about unreasonable wealth – isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? Actually my main beef is with the last one. I am not pro-drugs but it lies in the lack of definition of drugs.
Which drugs? Naturally narcotics, but what about abuse of prescription drugs? What about the discussion on hard and soft drugs? What about coffee, tobacco & alcohol? Their abuse, and sometimes their production, cause pain to the individual and others. Actually it would be kind of strange if the Church were to try to claim that wine was a deadly sin.
The list is published in L’Osservatore Romano and was created to help people in the confessional. Naturally the old seven deadly sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride) still apply so this actually means that there are fourteen deadly sins.
Update: Read more about this at Times Online
Update 2: Obviously I could not count as I only added six new sins when there were supposed to seven – there seems to be some confusion online as to the actual content of the list – I am not sure if it is actually a list or rather groups of social ills but there seems to be a general consensus on this…
Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature