The Vatican creates some new sins

Continuing our little look at religious news, Reuters has announced that the Vatican has decided to create some new sins, to modernize things a little.

The Toronto Star reports that although there is no offical list…

No official list of new sins has been issued by the Vatican, though the Bloomberg wire service reduced Girotti’s interview to a catalogue of “Seven Social Sins”: birth control, stem cell research, drug abuse, polluting, helping widen the gap between rich and poor, excessive wealth and creating poverty.

-Source

It’s kind of an interesting way for his popeness to ‘modernize’ the religion in some ways. And while I applaud some of the goals (i.e. bringing attention to poverty and pollution), I worry about the continuing focus on birth control and this new opposition to stem cell research.

While I understand the desires to protect ‘life’, I think that ignoring the very real risk of HIV/AIDS for the sake of fostering this anti-condom agenda is dangerous and detrimental. I also think that stem cell research holds some very real potential to curing some of the most serious and traumatic diseases out there. It’s a moral quandary for sure, and one I think that should be carefully examined.