The Vatican have updated their list of deadly sins! The New Sins are:

• Polluting
• Genetic engineering
• Being obscenely rich
• Drug Dealing
• Abortion
• Pedophilia
• Causing social injustice

The fact that it exactly doubled is interesting, how likely is it there just happened to be exactly seven more? You suspect that there are some in there just to make up the numbers (Being obscenely rich seems a likely suspect, it seems a lot like ‘greed’) . More concerning, there might be sins out there we are not being told about. I mean, have these always been true and no one told us? I’d find the Bible a lot more convincing if there was a passage along the lines of ‘And lo, you shall discover the means to edit the code of life, a discovery with enormous potential benefits for humanity, but beware, doing so is a MORAL SIN’, as is it’s hard not to think they’re making these up as they go along. But then, he’s got The Hat, who am I to argue?

Is it just me or are these new sins less, well, fun than the old ones? I can’t imagine an ice cream series based around ‘abortion’ and ‘drug dealing’ taking off. I was going to be snipy that drugs that “weaken the mind and obscure intelligence” might rule out communion wine but then I remembered that it magically stops being wine, neatly sidestepping the issue. Then I was going to complain about the Vatican’s own ‘obscene riches’, but I can’t find any evidence that it’s really that wealthy anymore (the best source that didn’t invoke the illuminati was a 1965 Time article) and I really do prefer to have sources. As I can’t have those ones, I’m going to call hypocrisy on these two:

Abortion - You want abortion rates to go down? Stop complaining about contraception.

Pedophilia - It’s nice to hear some that it really is a bad thing, but when there are official records of ordering coverups and accusations that the pope himself was involved (though in the interests of fairness, the Catholic Church contests this), I find it hard to take this seriously.

But don’t forget, all you have to do is confess and you’re off the hook! It’s a fair world after all!