Tuesday, March 11, 2008
It's a Sin!
Yesterday, the Vatican released it's revised list of sins. Apparently, this is something they do regularly.
Last year's updates included things like road rage, alcohol abuse and, if you can believe it, rudeness. (This from a religion whose main guy was always going on wine runs for his buddies and who seemed to be constantly snarking off at his mom and almost anyone else in authority.)
This year's list includes genetic engineering, pollution and drug abuse. OK, I get why they need an update to capture those first two, but I'm surprised they are so late to the party with that last one. Does this mean that drug abuse was not previously a sin? Or was it always a sin but only recognized as such now? If the latter, does that mean that punishment for the sin will be meted out retroactively?
That's a thorny question. Not the drug abuse part, which I of course agree with completely. For the record, Buddha was all over this 2,500 years ago with clear instructions against abuse of not only alcohol but intoxicants and "poisons" of all sorts.
No, the troubling part is the prospect that the Vatican can just make up new sins and then enforce them retroactively. If they can do that, then Christians can never be on solid ground with anything they do. Next year, they could declare chocolate a sin and then old aach-eee-double hockey sticks would get a giant population boom.
Doesn't seem quite fair. It would never hold up in a secular court. Is there an appeal process? Who picks these sins? Was there a public consultation process? Was there an impact study done?
What I'm most curious about is whether there's any process to petition for new sins. I've got a whole list of people I'd be happy to send to hell, as soon as "crowding my frickin' parking spot", "scheduling meetings too early in the morning" or "failing to invite me to your big fancy Christmas party for the third goddamn year in a row" get recognized as official sins.
Even if there isn't a petition process, I think the Vatican is missing out on a huge opportunity for public engagement. They should take a cue from Hollywood and do some build up to the Sin List, like the Academy does with the Oscars: "Work-place back-stabbing is favoured to top the Sin List this year, after it got the nod as a sin from the Islamic Council and several Protestant denominations, but watch out for dark horse 'publishing underwear ads', considered the favourite among the more conservative Italian priests."
What do you think? Are there any as-yet unrecognized sins you'd like to see added?
Labels: "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer"
posted by Mentok @ 10:20 a.m.,
8 Comments:
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At 11:45 a.m.,
cchang said...
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Oh man...this is a great post. First of all, I had no idea that the sins list got revised by the Vatican regularly. Secondly, I thought that the "incense" that they burned was actually something else...er never mind. Maybe only in Austin Churches.
At this rate eventually "indecisiveness" will make it on the sins list. -
At 11:31 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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I heard they thought about putting indecisiveness on the list but couldn't make up their minds about it.
Whacka-whacka. Thank you thank you. I'm here all week. Please tip your servers and drive safely. ;-) -
At 12:49 p.m.,
FiL said...
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Yacht rock should be a sin. This morning at the gym I had to endure a whole hour of it on the stereo. Billy Joel, Supertramp, it were 'orrible...
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At 1:02 p.m.,
cchang said...
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Yacht Rock? I don't think I've ever heard that term before!
(my word verification was "ugotstd" hrm...u-got-std that's really disturbing) -
At 1:03 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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I think this was before your time, fil, but I did a snippet about that in the old fake-news days. Check out point 7:
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At 1:19 p.m.,
FiL said...
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Indeed, it was before you and I met in the blogosphere. But the implications of the Book of Judas are troubling, for it implies that at least some yacht rock is good and holy in the eyes of the Lord. Hmm...
Hey, waitaminit, there's something at the bottom of my "In" tray here. Looks real old - lemme see... It's some sort of a scroll with a weird scrawl on it. I think it says "The Book of FiL." Hang on a sec, let me have a read... -
At 1:31 p.m.,
FiL said...
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Wow, this is a real bombshell. It says right here, Book of FiL 1:1:
QUOTE
And the yacht rock, though it hath passing semblance to music, it is unclean to you.
And whosoever listeneth of the mewling and brawing shall wash his ears, and be unclean until the even.
UNQUOTE
God hates yacht rock. Fact. -
At 7:31 a.m.,
Natsthename said...
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No matter what you do, you'll go blind if you do it, so hurry out and buy some coke bottle glasses and keep sinning away!
