This news comes from the Catholic Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, second in charge of the Apostolic Penitentiary, which deals in deciding matters of conscience, sins, and penance.
Asked what he believed were today's "new sins," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics.Which yes, I realize doesn't necessarily make the liberal bioethicists public enemy numero uno, but it certainly isn't going to place any of us cartographing this new world by liberal guidelines in graceful light.
"(Within bioethics) there are areas where we absolutely must denounce some violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control," he said.
Edited to add in: BoingBoing has the full list of the seven new social sins, and you'll note that bioethics is technically there twice, in the first and second spot, go us:
1. "Bioethical" violations such as birth control
2. "Morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty
They're also considering holding a contest for a Bosch-ian version of the new sins; anyone game for a go? If so, click on through (and don't forget to share your art with us, too).
-Kelly
