Anyone that is a self-respecting and time honoring Catholic knows and respects the seven deadly sins. These are sins that seem to permeate every aspect of deviant human behavior, from over-eating to a domineering sex drive.
To keep in line and in the groove with an ever- expanding world of technology and globalization, the Pope has offered an additional seven deadly sins to help all people of the world see their way past the “dark” in the world and into the “light”.
The original seven deadly sins were offered in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and were popularized by writers that range from Dante and his Inferno to Andrew Kevin Walker and the film “Se7en.” The original seven deadly sins were as follows: Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth and Wrath.
These are all sins that any person with even the slightest bit of cultivated humility or dignity knows are harmful to themselves and the world around them, even if they aren’t religious.
Wrath is a perfect example of a wrong that is committed by people in the world almost everyday and, in most cases, will inevitably lead to harm and injury to the world around them.
People get mad and frustrated at one-and-other without resent or question. In the best of situations it is only words that are exchanged in a moment of heated retort. In the worst of circumstances, situations that involve anger and human solution ends in bodily harm or possibly even death.
This is a “sin” or a wrong that as relatively civilized human beings we should be able to recognize why almost every working body of religion or religious institution in the 21st century acknowledges this negative chemical side effect. It is a fundamental flaw in our evolutionary make up and as such has been marked for deletion, yet some people feel that it is still easier to hate than to love.
Sins like wrath and lust are time honored because history and the human role in it have justified such reputation. However, the new seven deadly sins bring to light unusually new ways to get to hell, and in a hurry.
The new seven deadly sins, bringing the tally total to fourteen, are as follows: Environmental Pollution, Genetic Manipulation, Accumulating Excessive Wealth, Inflicting Poverty, Drug Trafficking and Consumption, Morally Debatable Experiment, and Violation of Fundamental Rights of Human Nature.
There are contradictions written all over these new sins. Of the new seven, four are cross-bearing paradoxes that self-righteously put any good persons mind to shame.
Genetic manipulation and debatable experiments are one in the same. Altering things at a genetic level would be viewed by any Christian fundamentalist as a debatable experiment. Even a person that chooses not to carry the stigma of a particular religion on their back or believe in the logistics of evolution would see stem cell research or even cloning as a curious in the least.
Also if American culture and insight have taught us anything it is that the accumulation of excessive wealth is the same as inflicting poverty. When there are so few that have so much it is inevitable to cause so many to have so little. This is an economically statistical truth that we simply can’t get around in this country. When someone like Bill Gates is worth up to $51 billion and the country as a whole is in debt it is not hard to understand what it is to cause obscene poverty. Sometimes it’s hard to blame the poor for being poor, sometimes it easier to see the rich for what they truly are.
Beyond the rudimentary imperfections that these new sins seem to profess they are also flawed at face value in that even the most pious of worshipers would incidentally trip over them from time-to-time.
Environmental pollution is something that is just unavoidable in this day-and-age. If you are in fact devout to the Catholic faith and you hold these new sins to be true then that means you can’t drive to work, you can’t litter, you can’t even have garbage. Environmental pollution can range from accidentally dropping a piece of paper on the ground to sending more carbon-monoxide in the air by having to use ones car to get to work on time.
Drug trafficking and consumption is a sin that is worth at least one laugh and one whisper. No drugs mean more pain for human beings. If you have a headache you can’t use aspirin or any sort of pain reliever to deal with it. No, instead you just have to do your very best think of something that doesn’t have to do with unwarranted mental pressure.
Drug trafficking is an activity that everyone knows to have many negative effects but some positive effects on society as well.
We know that if it wasn’t for the drug trafficking during the early 1980’s the U.S. would never have been able to support it’s covert activities around the world and the Iran-Contra may have never existed.
This would have been a major loss considering that the communist king pin we all know as uncle U.S.S.R. would probably never have fallen if it wasn’t for the U.S. government allowing drugs to enter our country and our veins, in effect using the funds gathered from that drug trafficking activity to support the proxy wars that the US government conducted.
Luckily sins only affect people on an individual basis. Governments are not effected and despite how many sins a unified governing body may break, only people go to hell, not governments, this should be a load off many American minds.
So if you are part of the 36 million plus citizens that produce 1.5 ton of waste every year in the state of California or someone that has cancer and must use drugs to deal with the healing or with the pain, if you are just one of those prying minds or backyard scientists that do “debatable experimentation” on small helpless animals, well then hell is in wait and you better think again.
Now that we have the list and it has been updated to suite the needs of all the sinners in the world, all we have to do now is check the list then check it twice. Don’t break more than three holy laws in a day and hit the confessional at least once before midnight of Dec 21, 2012 and you should make it to the upper echelon of the true believers that are told how to live and inadvertently told how to die.
“Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light,” said poet John Milton. It codifies the human ability to do good deeds and at the same time have the ability to sin in the lives that we lead.
