Vatican Releases New List of Seven Deadly Sins. What Party does this sound like to you?

[Mugsy]

Via "Mugsy Rap Sheet":

Vatican Releases New List of Seven Deadly Sins.
What Party does this sound like to you?

On Sunday, the Vatican released an updated... "modernized" if you will... list of The New Seven Deadly Sins. Pope Benedict XVI felt it was time to update the famous 500 year old list of "Seven Deadly Sins"... Anger, Sloth, Greed, Vanity, Pride, Gluttony & Envy/Lust... to reflect modern times. Now, I'm not one to point fingers, but if you were a good Christian trying to decide which political Party best reflected the Vatican's values, what decision might you come to after reading a list like this:



#1: Causing Pollution - I find it fascinating that the Vatican has not only taken a position on the environment, but has concluded THE EXACT OPPOSITE of the likes of the late Rev. Jery Falwell and the Religious Right in this country that has actively sought to disparage Environmentalists and the subject of Global Warming, claiming that God promised that "the Earth's resources were here for us to use and could not be used up". Apparently, the Vatican believes caring for the Earth and all God's creations is what God wants. If I were a devote Christian debating whose translation of the Bible *I* would trust most: Falwell's vs The Pope, sorry Jerry, you and your Conservative smog-belchers are on the wrong side of what God wants.

#2: Social Injustice - How many ways can this be expressed? Unequal justice for the Rich vs. The Poor; believing in Social Programs like "Social Security", "National Healthcare", "Minimum Wage"... or do we look at it from the perspective of "Torturing prisoners at Gitmo & Abu Ghraib". Might we look at the disparity in the number of "poor & low-income Americans" serving in Iraq vs the percentage of troops hailing from affluent families or members on Congress? Or perhaps we should consider the treatment of survivors of Hurricane Katrina?

#3: Causing Poverty - "Nationwide, nearly 6% of all mortgages were delinquent at the end of the fourth quarter and just over 2% were in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. reported." "65,000 Americans lost their jobs last month", the second month in a row that the country reported net job losses. The dollar has lost 50% of its value against the Euro since George Bush entered office, and the collapsing dollar is pushing the National Debt to a heart-in-the-throat TEN TRILLION DOLLARS and has sent the price of oil gushering past a once-unthinkable $100 a barrel, which simultaneously drives up the costs of food production & delivery, pushing up prices in the grocery store as well as the gas pump.

#4: Obscene wealth - Two words: Halliburton and Exxon. Likewise, tax cuts for the rich on the backs of the poor has resulted in "the top 5% of all Americans own 50% of all the wealth" in this country. The top 1% owns 38% of all the wealth in the United States" (yes, that means that other 4% makes up only 12%). The remaining 95% of Americans make up only 50% of all the wealth in this country. Toss in that lucky 4%, and 99% of all Americans account for only 62% of all the wealth in this country.

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[mac2]

1. Should they have taken Blair (genocide and war liar) into their church?

Now he will be teaching "faith and globalism" at Yale. Hypocrites aren't they?

[Demeter]

3. The Catholic Church Takes Anyone--Rejection Comes After

and there's always room for repentants, whether sincere or not.

[pnwmom]

8. He had to make a confession and do penance before entering the Church.

Hopefully he remembered to include these issues.

:shrug:

[xchrom]

2. will the conservative catholics on our supreme court fall in line?

i mean they must approve of this new pope and his messages.

[Demeter]

4. Stop! You're KILLING Me!

:rofl: Of course not! (That was a pun, a double entendre, in the title, by the way).

[xchrom]

5. hi! -- how are you?

:hi:

[Demeter]

6. Just Fine, Thanks!

Enjoying your zany humor.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. The Vatican never said these were "seven new deadly sins" and in fact

they can all be classified under the old seven deadly sins. It's media misunderstanding of what was actually said to assert that. The Vatican was simply drawing attention to new forms of old sins.

But at least the writer gets it that Catholics should be Democrats, too bad the party seems determined to drive us away.

[pnwmom]

9. And too bad the Church allowed the Rethug Party to use it

during the 2004 election.

The Bush campaign website had a page for Catholics which, among other things, featured prominently a photograph of Pope John Paul clasping hands with George W. The picture was emblazoned with the words "Catholics for Bush." The clear intent was to imply that the Pope was endorsing Bush.

I contacted my Archdiocese about this, and even emailed the Vatican (silly, I know) -- but nothing came of it. That web page remained up for the entire campaign, even though it was putting the Church's IRS exemption in jeopardy.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Too late now, but I wish you'd contacted the DNC about it.

You never know if e-mail to the Vatican reaches anybody important, or if bishops read their own mail. Actually, I'm sure bishops read very little of their own mail, so you're depending on someone on his staff to bring it to his attention. Same at the Vatican. Plus your bishop may have supported Bush because he is pro-life :sarcasm: and the pope, if he ever knew about it, may not have wanted to interfere in US politics, though he was being used to do just that. More likely, someone far down the food chain decided not to act, both in Rome and in your chancery.

But if I'd known this, I'd have called Howard Dean and every Dem I could think of to see if they could do anything. Not that they read their own mail, either, but they are elected officials/party officials, and they wanted to defeat Bush.

Edit: Well, in hindsight, that's what I would have done. But at the time, I might have done the same things you did.

The bottom line may be that since there were actually Catholics for Bush, it was legal for them to use the photo, but it still implied the pope's endorsement, I think. They probably ran it by their lawyers and cleared it before using it. It's a dirty trick, though.

Any Catholics who are computer literate should have known Bush had been to the Vatican a couple of times and not been impressed by the photo on the webpage. Especially if they'd seen the famous photo of JP II leaning his head on his hand while Bush is reading from a paper, with the caption "Oh, shit, he's dumber than I thought." :rofl: I suspect a lot of Republicans have seen that, though they wouldn't admit it.

Maybe you should still write to Howard Dean about this, and to both contenders for the nomination, give them a heads up in case McCain has had his picture taken with JP II or Benedict XVI, or any other pope.

[pnwmom]

12. Writing to Dean now is not a bad idea. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

[ChromeFoundry]

11. #4 Obscene Wealth ... Vatican

um, umm... did they suddenly give away a lot of their wealth?

[DemBones DemBones]

13. The Catholic Church does a lot for the poor

and always has.

Like the US, the Church is not perfect, being made up of humans, who are notoriously imperfect. But the Church has done and continues to do a lot of good work.

In the US, it early on educated children who would not have been educated at the time, Native Americans and blacks, still has schools that serve primarily minority populations and give scholarships to needy kids. It provides a lot of social services to the poor as well. The Church has established schools, colleges, and hospitals around the world, all of them open to anyone, not just to Catholics. Catholic schools have always been known for providing a good education and Catholic hospitals known for providing excellent care.

The Church does own many beautiful churches and many great works of art, particularly
in Europe, but anyone can enjoy seeing these and the churches are spiritual homes to Catholics. Parishes provide a lot of things besides Masses, including financial aid to the poor. During the Renaissance, the Church was a major employer of artists and their assistants. Probably even more people were employed by the Church to build cathedrals and churches in the Middle Ages. It took centuries to complete many of those cathedrals, basilicas, and churches, so that several generations of men in a family of stonemasons or carpenters worked all their lives on the same building.

Perhaps you are one of those people who thinks the Vatican should sell Michelangelo's
"Pieta" and other great works of art to feed the poor. The first fallacy there is to think that
doing so would eradicate poverty. The money that could be raised would not be enough to do that. Poverty is not something that will disappear with one large infusion of cash.

Nations could do a lot to eradicate poverty, if they only would. Pope John Paul II declared 2000 a Jubilee Year, which has several meanings to Catholics, but the concept of a Jubilee Year goes back to the Hebrew people, who had a Jubilee Year every seven years, at which time all unpaid debts were forgiven.

John Paul II urged first-world nations to forgive the debt of third-world nations, much of
which is due to the nastier aspects of globalization, like the WTO and the World Bank, which "help" poor nations by getting them into huge debt. Of course not one rich nation was willing to do so, even though those debts will never be repaid, only interest payments are made, meaning the rich countries will be screwing the poor countries forever.

A second problem with selling all the Vatican's treasures is that much of the art would wind up in private collections of very rich individuals where it could never be seen by hoi polloi like you and I. As it is now, anyone can go to the Vatican Museums, to St. Peter's Basilica, which is where the "Pieta" is, along with Bernini's fabulous baldachino and much more, and to the Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and walls painted by Michelangelo. A trip to Rome is within the reach of most people who are not living below the poverty level, which could be most people if the rich nations would forgive the debts of the poor nations. I think it is best if great art is kept in collections accessible to the public, whoever owns the museums. The Vatican Museums, like most museums, also loan works from their collections for traveling exhibits at various museums, in the US and elsewhere.

[mwb970]

14. Why would any religious person support the Republican agenda?

You could have given ten times as many examples where Republicans routinely violate everything the Church claims to stand for. In their policies and in their words, Republicans are about as un-Christian (and un-American) as it is possible to get. And yet, so many, many believers flock sheeplike out of their churches and vote as one for every Republican on the ballot.

Why can't they see what they are doing? Why do they vote directly against their own self-interest? Why are they unable to tell they are being duped and used as fools? Are they missing the "Hey, wait a minute" reflex or what?

I swear, I will never, never understand religious people. I've tried, but I just don't get it.