As you all should know, when the trumpets blasted this morning at all corners of the earth, the Catholic Church announced another edict. Specifically, thE Vatican's Apostolic Penitentiary (slogan: "We keep an eye on your heart and soul so you really don't have to") has essentially extended or modified for contemporary purposes the list of the seven deadly sins. You know, the REALLY bad yet fun things that send you straight on a first-class, instant trip to Hades save for confession, penance and absolute luck.
The original deadly mortal sins are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride as established by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century. These terms entered popular lexicon thanks to Dante's "The Divine Comedy," but were immortalized by the near-flawless Brad Pitt-Morgan Freeman sicko thriller "Se7en" ("I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue"; "What's in the box?!")
As humanity strives to evolve (not wholly in an intelligent way as my barrio trash apartment neighbors can attest to) there are certain modern-day behaviors that the church sees not only as a threat to mankind's salvation but a great way to increase the crowds at Mass, confession and sacramental adoration.
The "new social" or venial (lesser) sins are: "bioethical" violations such as birth control, "morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research; drug abuse; polluting the environment; contributing to widening divide between rich and poor; "excessive" wealth and creating poverty .
There is mention on the part of the Apostolic Penitentiary that, for example, drugs "weaken the mind and obscure intelligence." Are you kidding me? Not the drugs I've been taking…er, I mean the substances I've read about J And what drugs are we talking here? Illegal, illicit substances? Like how marijuana is merely bad for you or how idiotic those anti-weed TV commercials are? Or perhaps prescriptions some of us get hooked on? At that point, when does drug use become abuse?
Doesn't "excessive" wealth and widening the rich-poor gap cancel each other out? And you could lump the bioethical violation/morally dubious experiment thing. And what if stem cell research really could help us arrive at a way at curing disease and prolonging life? Is that not pro-life?
On the other hand, it seems the Catholic Church (while it proclaims concern for it) doesn't seem in a rush to officially classify pedophilia or unjust war as utterly sinful. Apparently, letting Britney Spears continue to exist, talking on your cell phone while driving, paying CEOs millions of dollars while crapping on workers and finding unrelated ways to deny health insurance coverage are not worthy of any sinful categorization. Not yet anyway.
But at least the church got the "pollution is a sin" thing right. Finally. That whole "screwing up God's creation" logic has at last been understood. I did get a 100 on that high school theology term paper for reason. The question is, will Republicans and their Big Business friends acknowledge this. They couldn't go against God on this, could they? Anyhow, perhaps we should stick with George Carlin's deductive revisions of The 10 Commandments: "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie" and "thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you."
Other observations:
* Woohoo! March Madness has formally begun. I'm a college basketball fanatic. Between watching new episodes this week of "South Park" and "Lil' Bush," watching hoops conference tournaments, Selection Sunday and whatever St. Paddy's Day bashes that might spring up, this will be a busy, fun (and hopefully drunk) week ahead LOL
* Astronomers say there is a fiery pinwheel in space that is like the Death Star in "Star Wars," in that it could one day blast Earth with death rays. Yay! At the pinwheel's heart is a pair of hot, luminous stars locked in orbit with each other. Both the massive stars in WR 104 will one day explode as supernovae. Only then could there possibly be an intense beam of gamma rays. Because the pinwheel is a nearly perfect spiral to us, and considering some simple physics, gamma ray bursts seem to be shot right along the axis of systems. Our planet could be in the firing range even 8,000 light-years away. If the burst is long and strong enough, it's game over for the stratosphere, the ozone layer, the food chain and ultimately us. Woohoo, geek stuff!
Oh wait. Ooops. That all sounds horribly depressing.
Yay!
