The Catholic Church recently announced the addition of several new sins to an already hefty list.
These offenses include using drugs, polluting, engaging in social and economic injustice and experimenting with genetic manipulation. Pope Benedict, you have got a lot of cajones to announce this.
I find these proclamations to be a bit hypocritical and a bit more laughable. People get upset with legislating from a judicial bench - how about legislating from the pulpit? The fact is, except for genetic manipulation, the Catholic Church has engaged in each of these "sins," and if they are indeed retroactive, they should burn for it.
Let's start with drugs. According to the Vatican, these drugs "weaken the mind and obscure intelligence," and should be avoided. The easy one first: Wine is regularly used in Catholic ceremonies as the blood of Christ, and wine certainly weakens the mind and obscures intelligence. I live on a college campus - I know precisely how much intelligence is obscured on a Saturday night. I take it that already illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, ecstacy, etc. are out, but what about legitimate medical drugs (besides marijuana)? Painkillers would be off the list because of their intoxicating effects. The same would go for antidepressants.
And of course, what about brainwashing? Not a traditional drug, but filling the minds of the faithful with false hope and bogus stories certainly weakens and obscures. Arguing that drug use is a sin because it weakens the mind and obscures intelligence leaves a precedent for the Church to ban The Simple Life and Chuck E. Cheese. Oh, and if we're banning intelligence-obscuring organizations, the Church is out as well.
Next, polluting. I don't have a real issue with this, but I don't understand why it's a sin. After all, polluting doesn't really involve religion per se. I have no major issues, but I just don't see it as a top priority for a religious organization.
Social and economic injustice. Hypocrisy-laden. Let's start with social injustice. How does a group with members who have committed absurd amounts of child molestation, that supports discrimination against homosexuals and in the past has caused the death of millions of people even talk about social injustice? It just doesn't sit right with me. The Malleus Maleficarum was a book published by the Catholic Church on how to hunt down and mercilessly murder freethinking women. Sounds fair and just to me.
Economic injustice? The Church has more money than Paris Hilton, mostly in priceless artworks and relics, and various items they nicked over the past few centuries. If the Church believes in economic justice, then why is the Catholic Church notorious for extorting peasants and hoarding power? They have a pretty bad track record and it's shocking that they would come out and say something like that.
Experimenting with genetic manipulation. I doubt that they have ever tried it, but I don't think this should be a sin. After all, modern medicine is based on experimentation. If we limit what our scientists and researchers can do, who knows what life-saving cures or breakthrough medicines could be left undiscovered.
To be fair, I have no problem with people of faith. I think that people should be allowed to worship who they want and how they want. But I don't believe that people should be handed down a set of morals from an authority, especially if that authority isn't even divine. I believe that everyone must find their own spirituality, and live by their own set of values. The Church's hierarchal system of command-and-control worship is an anachronism in a modern world, and it would benefit from enlightening itself.
Dave Adams is a freshman majoring in political science and economics. He can be reached at David.Adams@tufts.edu.
