Go green or go to hell: Vatican lists new sins

Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation.
   In keeping with modern times, the Vatican has updated the “deadly” sins with “social sins’’ that besides calling for a green conscience, include littering, excessive wealth and drug abuse.
   The guidance came at the weekend when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican’s No 2 man in the sometimes murky area of sins and penance, spoke of modern evils.
   Asked what he believed were today’s “new sins’’, he told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics. “There are areas where we absolutely must denounce violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control,’’ he said.
   The Vatican opposes stem cell research that involves destruction of embryos and has warned against the prospect of human cloning. Girotti, in an interview headlined ‘New Forms of Social Sin’, also listed “ecological’’ offences as modern evils. Pope Benedict has made several recent appeals for the protection of the environment, saying issues such as climate change have become gravely important for the human race.
   Girotti also listed drug trafficking and social and economic injustices as modern sins. He bemoaned that fewer and fewer Catholics went for confession—a study by Milan’s Catholic University has shown that up to 60% of the Catholic faithful in Italy have stopped going to confession.

 source: http://epaper.timesofindia.com