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Vatican Announces Seven New Deadly Sins
March 10, 2008 5:14 a.m. EST
Isabelle Duerme - AHN News Writer
Vatican City (AHN) - In an attempt to give moral and ethical behavior more significance to current times, the Vatican has recently announced seven new deadly sins, published in an issue of the L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper.
The revision of the list comes after 1,500 years, with Vatican officials explaining that the new items address a global "secular" society bent on the concerns in the age of globalization. The sins are said to be an address to the "decreasing sense of sin" in the modern world.
"The sins of today have a social resonance as well as an individual one," said Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary. "In effect, it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins."
Mgr Girotti named the new mortal sins to be (1)genetic modification; (2) human experimentations, (3) polluting the environment; (4) social injustice; (5) causing poverty; (6) financial gluttony; and (7) taking drugs.
The sins were added, according to the Telegraph, to the original seven, which Mgr Girotti described has having "rather individualistic dimenion(s)."
Mgr Girotti explained that numbers have shown that less Catholics in Italy go to confession, with 60 percent no longer participating in what is considered one of the most important sacraments.
In remedying this, he acknowledged that priests must also consider new sins, brought about by changes in the global community.
"You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbor's wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out mortally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos," the Times quoted Mgr Girotti.
Girotti also recognized the growing problems of abortion, **********, and a widespread habit of "making do without God."
"Those who trust in themselves and in their own merits are, as it were, blinded by their own 'I', and their hearts harden in sin," said Girotti.
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