Conquer Club

And so the old men bickered on.....well here's the report anyway

The Vatican has extended its list of mortal sins to include 21st century issues such as genetic experimentation, pollution, social injustice, drug abuse and excessive wealth.

Published in the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano the extended list was revealed at the end of a week long refresher course for priests on the sacrament of confession.

According to the Roman Catholic faith a mortal sin must be confessed to a priest and if not absolved or forgiven, will lead to a person's soul being condemned to Hell after death.

Traditionally mortal sins are those which are a breach of the Commandments - murder, adultery, stealing and lying to name but a few.

The new sins were revealed by Gianfranco Girotti, bishop in charge of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican Department which deals with the forgiveness of sins.

Monsignor Girotti, 70, said: ''The reference for sin is the violation of Man's relationship with God and his fellow Man.

''Today there are various new sins which concern the rights of the individual and society and above all these are in the field of bioethics.

''Within this there are several fundamental violations of nature taking place - experiments, genetic manipulation, which are very difficult to control.

''Socially there is the field of drugs which weaken both intelligence and physically, leaving many youngsters outside the ecclesiastical (church) circuit.

''Then elsewhere socially we have inequality of wealth with the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer, this in turns feeds an ever growing social injustice.''

Monsignor Girotti led the confession refresher corse because surveys had revealed that the number of people going was declining.

Many said they felt that they ''found it difficult to talk'' to priests about their sin with some saying they feared a severe reprimand.

Monsignor Girotti said the aim of the course had been to teach priests to be less aggressive and more understanding in the confessional box

They added "Flaming outside of Flame Wars" as a sin.

Well then they can anally f*ck themselves with baseball bats.

I committed a mortal sin last night.

brooksieb wrote:The Vatican has extended its list of mortal sins to include 21st century issues such as genetic experimentation, pollution, social injustice, drug abuse and excessive wealth.

Ouch. We're screwed.

brooksieb wrote:The Vatican has extended its list of mortal sins to include 21st century issues such as genetic experimentation, pollution, social injustice, drug abuse and excessive wealth.

Well I'm screwed. As if I wasn't already. Isn't social injustice rather vague? Might one argue that the Church has been involved in social injustice?

all of these seem to already be covered by the "mortal sins"

genetic experimentation, -- vanity or pride?

pollution, -- gluttony, sloth

social injustice, -- wrath, lust, vanity

drug abuse -- gluttony, sloth

excessive wealth -- um, greed anyone?



these new additions just don't work for me. part of what i like about the Mortal Sins is that they strike me less as 'sins' than as 7 basic motivations of human nature.

when i write fiction and i'm trying to create a compelling character, i use the 7 Deadly Sins as a guide. this is based completely on my own observations of human nature on display in the world.

so, my fictional characters (similar to anyone) have 1 dominant 'sin' (although i call it 'motivation'), with 2 ancillary echoes, and the other 4 may express themselves, but only well in the background. using those motivations helps create a character with depth and range.

plus, if you pay attention to the people around you in your own life, you'll see a similar dialectic as that i suggest above.

where the Catholics get it wrong, i think, is in ascribing a necessary "sin" qualification to these most basic of human motivations. i think it's a bit more complicated. the moral value of these intrinsic motivations comes in what we DO with them.

for example, if my primary 'motivation' is that of wrath, then the good comes from how i process and use that motivation.

keeping in mind of course, that good is stronger than evil. (and this is because good is necessarily and act of resistance to evil - often intrinsic to the hearts of all men, and to be evil is necessarily and act of succumbing - to that intrinsic nature of man's heart) of course, good doesn't always triumph over evil, but it is stronger.

so, all of that said, to exercise restraint, but use the wrath burning inside to make real changes, to go after the real bad guys.... that's a good way to use it. to ruthlessly beat the holy living shit out of someone for being bad is not, however. that makes me just like them.

you can think up hypos or real examples for any of the other seven you all wish.

[/rant]

reminisco wrote:all of these seem to already be covered by the "mortal sins"
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social injustice, -- wrath, lust, vanity

This leads to a new question for the priests: How big a penance do you perscribe to God?

excessive wealth huh? you guys know the vatican has its own bank..?

khazalid wrote:excessive wealth huh? you guys know the vatican has its own bank..?

I wonder if they actually have looked at the number of churches payed for by excessive wealth.

autoload wrote:I committed a mortal sin last night.

excessive wealth? And who says the pope doesn't have a sense of humor...

750 billion (Lira currency) in net assets as of 1994.

In all fairness, estimating the value of the catholic church would be about as easy as catching a snipe.

Snorri1234 wrote:

khazalid wrote:excessive wealth huh? you guys know the vatican has its own bank..?

I wonder if they actually have looked at the number of churches payed for by excessive wealth.

hehe..

it is unfortunately a closely guarded secret. next time you see the collection plate don't think it ungodly of you to take that $20 and give it to the poor. better yet, don't participate in organised religion! they say the scientologists like to bleed money.. i bet even tom cruise would balk if the vatican ever released their figures. criminals wearing robes i say. they could educate every child in the world if they really wanted to.

khazalid wrote:it is unfortunately a closely guarded secret. next time you see the collection plate don't think it ungodly of you to take that $20 and give it to the poor. better yet, don't participate in organised religion! they say the scientologists like to bleed money.. i bet even tom cruise would balk if the vatican ever released their figures. criminals wearing robes i say. they could educate every child in the world if they really wanted to.

some of them already do provide a little one on one education

brookseib wrote:The Vatican has extended its list of mortal sins to include 21st century issues such as genetic experimentation

Oh well that means most of the parents of the players here are guilty of sin.

When churches get big they forgo their non-profit status so they don't have to report the numbers. Or when they get REALLY big they form their own country where they can do whateverthefuck they want.

The biggest church I know of that still has pretty transparent financials are the Mormons who still have their non-profit status and claim net assets in excess of $50 billion.

I can't say this makes me happy, but at least they don't try to hide it.

khazalid wrote:

Snorri1234 wrote:

khazalid wrote:excessive wealth huh? you guys know the vatican has its own bank..?

I wonder if they actually have looked at the number of churches payed for by excessive wealth.

hehe..

it is unfortunately a closely guarded secret. next time you see the collection plate don't think it ungodly of you to take that $20 and give it to the poor. better yet, don't participate in organised religion! they say the scientologists like to bleed money.. i bet even tom cruise would balk if the vatican ever released their figures. criminals wearing robes i say. they could educate every child in the world if they really wanted to.

Interesting this is brought up, I just read an interesting article on the vatican bank. I wont go through it piece by piece but essentially:

-they aren't subject to any auditing or oversight so it's a money launderer's wet dream.

-there are lawsuits pending from survivors and families of holocaust victims about nazi gold. The vatican says they have no records because they destroy their records every 10 years. The german gov't however has records of nazi gold, which a lot was taken from prisoners in concentration camps, going to the vatican bank, then disappearing.

-There is documented evidence of the nazi ratline, the network that helped nazi's escape germany after the fall of berlin, going directly through the vatican. This is according to US Army Counter Intelligence.

-The italian mafia has been linked. In 73 the Vatican Bank tried to pass off $14.5 million dollars in counterfeit US Bonds. Investigators said they were so involved that it was difficult to determine where the vatican ended and the mafia began.

There is much more but I don't feel like typing anymore, see ya!

ive heard of that nazi link before too.. there's just no way of knowing is there?

interesting snippet from bbc.co.uk on the same subject

"I think priests who hear confession should have a deeper sense of the violence and injustice of such problems - and the fact that people collaborate simply by doing nothing."

i wish they would preach this in church, i really do. it will be about 10 years before we have ethical terrorism and they will stand against it, imperious and aloof as ever.. burning condoms and decrying wickedness; completely oblivious to theology and morality.

khazalid wrote:

Snorri1234 wrote:

khazalid wrote:excessive wealth huh? you guys know the vatican has its own bank..?

I wonder if they actually have looked at the number of churches payed for by excessive wealth.

hehe..

it is unfortunately a closely guarded secret. next time you see the collection plate don't think it ungodly of you to take that $20 and give it to the poor. better yet, don't participate in organised religion! they say the scientologists like to bleed money.. i bet even tom cruise would balk if the vatican ever released their figures. criminals wearing robes i say. they could educate every child in the world if they really wanted to.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

It's easy though - why think for yourself! Simply allow your morality to be dictated and updated every few years by some geriatric virgins who live in a golden palace. The head one is infallible! See? You can't lose.

haha yeah.. did you hear they are erecting a statue of galileo there? made me laugh.

i wonder if in 500 years time they will be doing the same for [insert pioneering stem cell researcher who cures aids]

the trick to making the most of mistakes is to learn from them, apparently

Here is 3 News bits about it.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/03/10/vatican.updates.sins.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1720922,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/seven-more-sins-thanks-to-vatican/index.html?ex=1362888000&en=d9b3189d2d9008b2&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I wonder if Nappy will respond to this thread.

dustn64 wrote:

autoload wrote:I committed a mortal sin last night.

Even I didn't think it was that funny.

khazalid wrote:ive heard of that nazi link before too.. there's just no way of knowing is there?

interesting snippet from bbc.co.uk on the same subject

"I think priests who hear confession should have a deeper sense of the violence and injustice of such problems - and the fact that people collaborate simply by doing nothing."

i wish they would preach this in church, i really do. it will be about 10 years before we have ethical terrorism and they will stand against it, imperious and aloof as ever.. burning condoms and decrying wickedness; completely oblivious to theology and morality.

The first job I had in my current line of work was for Ernst & Young. a group of Jewish business people hired us in a lawsuit against the Vatican to return all assets or like value received from the German Government during WW2 to a class action of holocaust survivors.

I did not actually work on the case (it was over by the time I got hired) but several of my mentors spent 5-7 years in Germany and or the Vatican trying to sort out that mess.

As one would expect, the Germans had meticulous records documenting what went into the Vatican and Swiss Banks. However, the banks on the other side claimed to have no such records.

The case ended up settling out of court for upwards of $500 million. The guys who worked on the case were always bitter because they believed that it was easy to prove that billions flowed from Germany to foreign banks during WW2, but no law firm had the balls to take it all the way.

brooksieb wrote:According to the Roman Catholic faith a mortal sin must be confessed to a priest and if not absolved or forgiven, will lead to a person's soul being condemned to Hell after death.

Bullshit!! Nobody needs a priest or confess to anyone when they do something wrong. That's why we have the police and the courts. I'll take care of my own soul if there is such a thing and the church can let me live my life.