== Thou shalt not kid thyself = By Mark Morford

[madokie]

The Vatican unveils fresh new sins, as the world just rolls its eyes. Is your name on the list?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/03/19/notes031908.DTL&nl=fix

This just in: If you're an obscenely wealthy drug-dealing pedophile stem-cell researcher who drives a Hummer and doesn't recycle, you are totally going to hell. Oh please, like you didn't already know.

Hey, the Catholic Church wouldn't lie, mister. The Big Book o' Deadly Sins apparently has a whole new addendum and it looks like it ain't just gluttony and lust and murder and hot porn and witchcraft and coveting thy neighbor's way cool Flickr photo stream anymore. That stuff is for wimps. Serfs. Lutherans.

The Vatican is trying to get serious. Modern. Hip, even. Indeed, Sins 2.0 now includes taking "mind-altering" drugs and polluting the planet and creating poverty and hoarding excessive wealth and messing around with genetics and did you not see the grim expression on the face of that Vatican official when he announced the new aberrations? Totally serious. Deadly. I mean, the scales were flaking right off his face. And if you look closely, you can see God right there, standing just behind the podium like a hulking Dick Cheney figure, nodding gloomily in agreement. Mmm, the Vatican. It's like Disneyland for arthritic masochists.

Hey, don't get mad at me. These are just the rules. I don't make them up, I just report the facts. Like this one: Do you have a healthy Adderall/Zoloft/Budweiser addiction that you couple with a severe case of keepin' your uppity and sexually dangerous wife in her gul-dang place? God loves you. And your fellow Republicans. Do you enjoy a joint with your wine and a few hits of Ecstasy at Burning Man and maybe some special mushrooms at SXSW as you play with a Pyrex dildo with your joyful girlfriend just after yoga but before meditating? Say hello to Satan for me, pervert.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. In that being environmentally irresponsible may lead

to ecological disaster, perhaps the Vatican wasn't too far off the mark calling it a sin. After all, if we don't do something, we could all be living in hell--on earth.

[madokie]

2. wouldn't hell on earth be a step up from bushworld

just kidding, i think ;-)

[Warpy]

3. That doesn't compute with sin #1, using birth control

Preaching against birth control might increase HIV transmission, but that's a very slow disease. Meanwhile, the planet is groaning beneath so many human bodies. Overpopulation is one of the worst sources of pollution.

Funny, the sexual mistreatment of children didn't make that list. I wonder why.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. I wasn't condoning the entire list

but pointing out the irony of people not following ecological sanity--it could indeed result in hell on earth.