I only keep up with the news anymore my email welcome screen’s Yahoo! headlines. (Though, with the recent horrible performance of Yahoo! Mail’s SpamGuard, I might have to reconsider Gmail.) When I saw the Reuters article about “new” mortal sins, my red flag went up.
The secular media is so inept at reporting religion, especially U.S. Catholicism. The press just doesn’t “get” religion. No, dear reporter, the “sin list” has not been updated. The bishops even clarified this. There’s no big list of sins issued to seven-year-old Catholics (the age of reason and usually of first reconciliation) that gets updated to suit the times. The Church doesn’t change with the times.
What changes is humanity’s daily relationship with God. Human cloning wasn’t a sin because it was scientifically impossible for most of Christianity. Now that we can do more, we can sin in new ways. Bishop Girotti answered the reporter’s question honestly. Littering hurts the planet we share with other people. Earth is a gift from God. Littering can break the two most important commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. What happens when we break the commandments? We sin.
Sin is more nuanced than that, of course. It doesn’t boil down into a handy list. God knows that. That’s why he came to save us.
