The Observer, March 28, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 22
Columnist should get facts right about "new sins"
To the Editor:
Tulsi Roy, though I cannot pretend to understand your fetish for constantly picking on Christian religions, I have been attempting to read your columns with a grain of salt. At some level, I respect the fact that you enjoy masquerading as an investigative journalist. But honestly, please get your facts straight before you slander over a billion people worldwide, hmm?
Time to set the record straight (again):
The Holy Roman Catholic Church has not added any "new sins" to any list whatsoever. On March 9, 2008, Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, Regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Roman Curia, granted an interview to a reporter of L'Osservatore Romano, a Vatican newspaper. The Penitentiary had recently held a council concerning how sin and social injustice affect people differently today because of globalization. In this interview (one can read it at http://blog.acton.org/uploads/penitentiary_interview.pdf) Girotti asserts his personal opinion on what he called "new forms of social sin."
The website (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08031110.html) has an excellent explanation of what resulted from the publication of this interview. Major news agencies worldwide began to fuel the hype, their headlines erroneously proclaiming (as Roy does) that the "Vatican updates seven deadly sins," and other ridiculous claims. I found the comment by Phil Lawler (author and journalist) most telling: "When a second-tier Vatican official gives a newspaper interview, he is not proclaiming new Church doctrines."
The Catholic Church had taken definitive positions on birth control and stem cell research that destroys human embryos long before Girotti's interview. The recent council of the Apostolic Penitentiary and Girotti were simply discussing the changing nature of sin and social justice. Morals and ethics do not change, but the ideas of stem cell technology and environmental pollution did not exist centuries ago, and so must be incorporated into the Church's current stance on sin and social justice.
It is also backward thinking to believe the Catholic Church is "exceedingly wealthy" and is being hypocritical given its stance on poverty. The facts are once again out there. Each diocese (and the Vatican) has annual spending reports that are frequently deficits. In 2004, for example, the Vatican reported only a roughly $3 million surplus. Should the Church sell off its artwork to private collectors, where they are stored and hidden to enrich no one? Should the Vatican sell off the priceless St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and have no place to worship?
Roy's cavalier attitude in lines such as "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned: I mixed the paper with plastics" are downright disrespectful.
Next time, Roy, let's leave the Vatican columns to the Catholics.
Michael Lyrenmann
Undergraduate student
