John North Editor & Publisher

I confess that I was taken aback when the Vatican recently announced that it has updated its sin list.
For centuries, the so-called seven deadly sins included lust (everybody’s favorite), gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

Now, the Catholic Church has added modern sins, including pollution, mind-damaging drugs and genetic experiments.

What’s more, the Vatican is touting social justice, echoing the ages-old maxim that “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” Whereas for the past 1,500 years, the focus has been on the sins of the individual, today the focus on sin is shifting to social issues that are tied to globalization. In a sense, the Catholic Church is globalizing sin and, to me, that is a step in the right direction.

The renewed talk of virtues and vices was prompted by Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary and the pope’s chief lieutenant, who recently was quizzed by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano about what, in his opinion, are the “new sins.”

Girotti cited “violations of the basic rights of human nature” through genetic manipulation, drugs that “weaken the mind and cloud intelligence” and the imbalanace between rich and poor.

As has been well-publicized, the Vatican recently came out against human cloning.

Some critics have lambasted the Vatican for its seeming hypocrisy in condemning the use of artificial birth control, which has resulted in a population boom in Catholic nations that has further widened the gap that the church claims to decry between rich and poor.

Interestingly, the Vatican stressed that Girotti’s comments broke no new ground on what constitutes sin.

Nonetheless, the Vatican newspaper interview with Girotti resulted in the following listing of seven new deadly sins for the age of globalization, — polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug-dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice.

The obvious snarky thing to point out is that the Catholic Church should clean up its own house, when it comes to pedophilia. Indeed, Girotti acknowledged that that particular sin had exposed “the human and institutional fragility of the church,” though he claimed the mass media had “blown up” the issue “to discredit the church.”

But I think Father Antonio Pelayo, a Spanish priest and Vatican expert interviewed by The Associated Press, had a good point when he said that it is time for people to get over their obsession with sex and think about other ways humans hurt each other in the modern world.

“There are many other sins that are perhaps more grave that don’t have anything to do with sex — that have to do with life, that have to do with the environment, that have to do with justice.”

As for the environment, the Catholic Church, which traditionally viewed the physical world as fallen and unworthy, has changed its tune — a move I applaud. In fact, both Pope Benedict XVI and the late Pope John Paul II frequently expressed concern about the fate of the Earth.

While I think Girotti has made some valid points in his addition to the sin list, I think some of the original deadly sins should continue to receive emphasis.

Take greed, for example. It is pure and simple greed that has driven the subprime mortgage scandal in the United States. The wages of our national greed could very well lead us into a new Depression.

On a lighter note, so to (mis)speak, gluttony seems to be one of the originals that today’s super-sized Americans cannot get enough of. By the way, would you like fries with that?

Maybe the Vatican also should consider how well reverse psychology works with human beings — and that labeling a certain behavior as a sin only encourages some people to indulge in it.

Given the forbidden-fruit phenomenon, maybe instead of putting so much effort in condemning many anti-social behaviors, the Vatican should accentuate the positive by encouraging virtuous behavior.

There are also seven traditional virtues that are the opposites of the deadly sins, but, as you can see from this column, nobody cares too much about them. For the record, the virtues include chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, forgiveness, kindness and humility, but a column on these would never sell — unless these were pitched as, “m-m-m, sinfully virtuous.”