Seven Deadly Sins

The Pope can always be relied upon to raise a smile. He is bringing the seven deadly sins up to date.

Drug pushers, the obscenely rich, environmental polluters and “manipulative” genetic scientists beware – you may be in danger of losing your mortal soul unless you repent.

After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation. The list, published yesterday in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “securalised world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.

Oh, dear… Looks suspiciously like blatant bandwagon jumping from here. Trashing the environment may be designed to appeal, but has the uncanny effect of making the Church look even more out of touch and irrelevant than it already is; much like a middle aged man trying to get on down with the yoof. It just makes them look silly.

It holds mortal sins to be “grave violations of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes”, including murder, contraception, abortion, perjury, adultery and lust.

We don’t need the church to tell us that murder and perjury are wrong – we can figure that one out for ourselves, and the Church’s insistence on condemning contraception ensures that it is out of step with modern society. As with abortion, it is a matter of individual conscience – it is not for others to decide for us. The same goes for adultery and lust – if you play the game, then you must be prepared to pay the price.

The Pope also complained that an increasing number of people in the secularised West were “making do without God”.

That’s no bad thing. After all, we have seen for ourselves what the Catholic Church does when it has power – and it isn’t pleasant. Besides, plenty of us have grown out of fairy stories told by old men in daft frocks who talk to the sky and expect a response. I can easily make do without that which has no evidence to support its existence. Of course, if a god came down from the Heavens and said “here I am, chaps” and waved the odd thunderbolt about, I’d change my mind, but not before. I don’t need to believe in gods and I certainly don’t need the church – Catholic or protestant.

He said that hedonism and consumerism had even invaded “the bosom of the Church itself, deeply undermining the Christian faith from within, and undermining the lifestyle and daily behaviour of believers”.

Nothing wrong with a bit of hedonism, I’m partial to a spot of pleasure myself.

The original offences and their punishments
Pride Broken on the wheel
Envy Put in freezing water
Gluttony Forced to eat rats, toads, and snakes
Lust Smothered in fire and brimstone
Anger Dismembered alive
Greed Put in cauldrons of boiling oil
Sloth Thrown in snake pits

Ain’t religion a wonderful, caring thing?