Our task is one in two parts; first of all to refute the charge of hypocrisy or ‘delicious’ irony being laid at the door of the Church on account of the announcement by Gianfranco Girotti in L’Osservatore Romano of ‘new sins’, secondly to challenge the media reporting of the entire affair.
I
It is best to begin with the latter. The primogeniture of the confusion is an AP wire article which was lazily paraphrased or even repeated verbatim, with proper credit being given, I concede, across several ‘respected’ news agencies. The sin (hoho!) of course, is more concisely summarised by the commenter over here.
Who, as I have paraphrased elsewhere, is bang on about the ‘From the Vatican’ line heading most news reports. You know that the journalist is about to assault you with unfinished homework (bullshit, I might dare to call it) when you read that much.
There was the impression given first of all that it was the Pope who had sanctioned all of this and secondly that these were 7 new sins entering in to the catechism with full doctrinal force. The reality is much, much less clear-cut than that. Girotti is very far down the chain of command from the Pope, being number two in the Apostolic Penitentiary whose big preoccupation is the sacrament of confession. Indeed, the wires can’t even decide whether he’s a Bishop or a Monsignor. The Reuters wire thankfully seems to bring some of this to our attention.
The AP, Bloomberg, the BBC, Fox News, the Telegraph and the Times however, are another story. And the Times mentions Paedophilia as one of the new sins where all the others seem to diverge drastically. Where’s the truth of the matter amidst this malaise?
An AP wire article that appeared last night, cleared this issue up, thankfully, Here.
When it finally got a hold of itself, it decided to include a statement ‘from the Vatican’ indicating that there was no new ground being broken, let alone new sins being inaugurated, and that Girotti was merely giving latter-day examples in the course of a seminar on confession (which the BBC, at least, picked up) and in a subsequent interview in L’Osservatore Romano. I need not remind anyone that L’Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Vatican City State is neither a decretal, bull, encyclical, motu propiro, letter to the faithful nor anything within an asses’ roar of something as dogmatic as an ex cathedra statement.
Indeed, this much was to be suspected as even in the faulty wire stories we saw that P.P. Benedict XVI had been making noises about the environment, a lack of a palpable conception of ’sin’ in today’s world and there was mention too made of the report by the Archbishop of Milan (an office with a history I’m sure is familiar to everyone as being a harbinger of bad news*) which found that 60% of Italian Catholics no longer attend confession regularly. To put that in perspective, the Pope attends weekly and the Church teaches that we all sin anyway.** Essentially, this was a popularising effort as much as the ‘Driver’s Ten Commandments’ was a paean to notoriously enraged Italian motorists: and we hardly talk of 20 commandments these days.
Post-Script: People also did very well to call out the overlap between these ’seven sins’ and the old seven. It is almost a complete overlap and each can be accounted for in terms of the other seven. This demonstrates even more potently the crux of the matter: these weren’t ‘new’ sins.
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I’ll broach the second part (II) of the exercise in the next post.
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Notes:
* Canossa, 1080 anyone?
** Ultimately forgiveness for any sin can be sought. Mortal sins (as against venial ones) must be confessed before death to prevent damnation as far as I am aware. To attack the Church on this seems to be attacking it for being too Catholic. Sin is a powerful concept in the Christian faith, which a Christian is said to be engaged in a fight with every day of his or her life in imitation of Christ’s passion on the cross. I should hardly think it warranting the uproar, guff and hot air that we’ve had to suffer that the Catholic Church has decided to enunciate in modern terms how we each sin. Furthermore, none of the above ’suggestions’ that Girotti made should be read literally any more than one of the ten commandments should be read literally. Unfortunately some people have made that mistake: notably on the ‘genetic manipulation’ and ‘pollution’ counts.
As I said elsewhere, on the sin of ‘Genetic Manipulation’:
(boards.ie)
I’ve also heard people moan that the above makes modifying rice to include Vitamin A and prevent blindness in the third world a sin. Of course it does not. That’s a benign use of genetic modification. They referred to human genetic modification as a sin - that is altering the DNA of humans by splicing it with those of animals or embryonic stem cell research.
(over at ‘Peter’s Apology’)
Might I further add that the particular genetic engineering frowned upon by the Bishop there was human genome splicing and embryonic stem cell research. Anyone at all familiar with Humanae Vitae, 1968 (P.P. Paul VI) knows that those were areas that immediately entered dodgy ground with that encyclical’s promulgation.
My own view of course is that Humanae Vitae has bits we can admire in equal measure to the bits we can scream blue murder over.
But, importantly, nothing new there. I think you’re making the mistake there, as some people have been wont to do with the 5th commandment by interpreting it to mean we cannot kill animals or serve as soldiers (after all it is ‘Thou shalt not Kill’ is it not?)
I would trust that more than a literal meaning is intended. It is after all the Roman Catholic Church which has a long tradition of being anything but straightforward since St. Ignatius, Origen and Augustine of Hippo.
On ‘Polluting the environment’
(on boards.ie)
A: ‘Polluting the enviroment’ is so arbitrary anyway, for technically anyone that lights a fire or burns anything or disposes of plastic or uses electricity that wasn’t produced from hydro electric or a wind power is also guilty.
B (me): Pardon me, but you know as well as I do that that’s bullshit in the same way that you could say the 5th commandment is arbitrary and as a result we can’t even slaughter animals or go to war as soldiers. We can all try not to actively or wilfully pollute the environment, or be more conscious of our impact I think is what they’re trying to get across here. Particularly illegal dumpers or industry heads operating very low standards. You’re not going to hell because you flicked the light switch on, there are degrees with these things.
