Recycle or go to Hell

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Recycle or go to Hell, warns Vatican
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 10/03/2008

Failing to recycle plastic bags could find you spending eternity in Hell, the Vatican said after drawing up a list of seven deadly sins for our times.

The seven, which include polluting the environment, were announced by Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, a close ally of the Pope and the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, one of the Roman Curia's main court.

Polluting the environment by failing to recycle is one of the new seven deadly sins

The "sins of yesteryear" - sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride - have a "rather individualistic dimension", he told the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper.

The new seven deadly, or mortal, sins are designed to make worshippers realise that their vices have an effect on others as well.

"The sins of today have a social resonance as well as an individual one," said Mgr Girotti. "In effect, it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins."

According to Roman Catholic doctrine, mortal sins are a "grave violation of God's law" and bring about "eternal death" if unrepented by the act of confession.

They are far more serious than venial sins, which impede a soul's progress in the exercise of virtue and moral good.

Mgr Girotti said genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy and taking drugs were all mortal sins.

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Thou Must Rinse Wring and Use Again! [img]graemlins/hmmm.gif[/img]


Cant believe they left out re-using gift bags! [img]eek.gif[/img]
You can usually get three or four uses out of them thar thangs [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]

First off, in my 7 years or so of being on this board, I think that has to be one of the best Thread titles ever.

Secondly, when I was at St. X, I'd talk to a lot of the old heads who had gone there back in the day and they all told me how soft the Church had become over the years (and this was the late 80s, mind you). So, for what it's worth, I'm happy to see the Vatican toughening-up again and confronting the really challenging issues of our time...you know, like recycling (I'm hearing whispers that the next papal epistle is going to deal with campaign finance reform)

My former boss, before he became an attorney, spent two years studying to become a priest (I guess all that religious training wasn't goody-goody enough for him, so he decided to enter a more virtuous profession, that of a criminal defense lawyer).

He and I used to talk about this very issue. He maintains that there were those who actually started complaining about this back in the 1960s (probably earlier, but this was when my boss first became aware of it). And throughout the 70s, there were those who went to the Church leaders and said, look, we have a problem here and we have to rectify it. And had they done something about it then, they would have gotten off a lot better. For one, it would have given the appearance that they were being proactive. And two, litigation costs were less back then, whatever settlements they would have entered into would have been a fraction of how things turned out.

But you can't "fix" a problem until you actually realize and accept that there is a problem to fix in the first place, and for decades the Church continued to act as if there was no problem.

Then, when they finally accepted that there was a huge problem, what was their answer? Re-assigning the offending priests to different areas.

Not exactly righting the ship, to say the very least.

So finally, there was so much public pressure that the government decided that, since the Church wasn't going to do anything about it, the government would. And lo and behold here came criminal charges, here came a flood of litigation.

And the thing is, there are many, many wondeful priests. I've known several over the years, they are good men who I have no reason to believe have ever done anything to hurt anyone. And it's not fair to judge all priests based on the actions of some. But, by the same token, we're not talking one or two bad apples here and there, we are talking about an extensive, widespread problem that the Church leaders knew about and simply did nothing to cure.

And GL is right, it's hard to take them serious on other issues in light of the problems of the past. You reap what you sow and the Church cannot blame its current situation on the media or other religions or the government or anyone else other than itself.

Let's see the Vatican own up to child molesters in its priests, cough up some of its wealth to feed the starving masses it constantly exhorts the developed world to do, and make some sort of apology for the Inquisition and its treatment of native peoples it abused over the centuries while "converting" them and then and only then will I pay any attention to anything the Pope has to say. Organized religion is a perfect scam and always has been.

The pope can blame islam and I won't object. [img]wink.gif[/img]

What about paper bags? [img]eek.gif[/img]

What if you used your plastic bags to carry your paper bags to the garbage can?!?!?!? [img]graemlins/hmmm.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/sure.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img]

I'm just waiting for the day when GL blames the events at Waterloo on Islamo-Fascism..... [img]wink.gif[/img]