Sin-sational list getting longer?

Any whisper coming from the Vatican about any particular subject might as well be shouted from the rooftops. If the communique gets twisted or misinterpreted, there can be all sorts of reports made on the issue before it all gets sorted out.

Such was the case when a Vatican official recently gave his opinion about ”new sins of the modern era” to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

All of a sudden there were reports that the Vatican had published a new list of the seven deadly sins of modern times that included such things as economic inequality and genetic manipulation.

Soon, however, a wire report turned up, saying that an interview with Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, regent of the tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, (the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences) was misinterepreted in the media as an official Vatican update to the seven deadly sins laid out by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century. 

Too late — conversations and stories about the so-called new list of sins were already taking place.

For a quick update, the mortal sins known as the Seven Deadly Sins are gluttony, sloth, anger, envy, pride, avarice and lust.

Girotti, in the newspaper interview, said he could see sinful attitudes in relation to individual and social rights. Making his  list of new sins to watch out for are drug use, which he said “debilitates the psyche and darkens the intelligence”; abortion; pedophila; environmental pollution; social injustice causing the rich to become richer and the poor to become poorer; and genetic science manipulation.