Thou shalt not...pollute your backyard?

A top Vatican official just recently "updated" the old list of sins by adding in such things as polluting the environment, genetic manipulation, and (my favorite) extreme inequality as exemplified by the quote: "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." It seems that the modern legalistic spirit of wanting to get away with anything that is not expressly forbidden has necessitated that the Vatican spell things out.

The hallmark of a liberal moral conscience, and by that I mean an unrestrained one (not a hippy one, although those come close), is the usage of moral laws only when they are to one's moral benefit. For example, freedom of speech is essential! (but it must exclude religious talk in schools). Freedom of assembly is crucial! (but churches must keep wholly on their own property and not demonstrate publicly). Killing is evil! (unless I need to abort my baby because of my own irresponsibility). See the inconsistency?

The same sense of moral exploitation, if you will, rears its head when it comes time for an examination of conscience before confession. One of the main definitions of a mortal sin is that it is a grave and wanton violation of God's law. More often than not, the benchmark for God's law is the Ten Commandments. Ok, let's begin there. Now, (to borrow names from the Baltimore Catechism), Felonius may egg on a buddy of his to view pornography but, since Felonius is such an angel, he refrains from doing so while his friend does. Confession times comes about. Felonius says, "I didn't commit the sin by watching the pornography so I don't need to confess!" Well, yeah, that's right, Felonius, you didn't watch the pornography. But you forgot one minor detail: you drove your neighbor to sin, and to sin quite gravely. The Pharisees had a similar logic when they felt that by paying Judas to betray Jesus they would have no blood on their hands. And yet, even they accept their own guilt when the blood money is returned and they do not place it in the temple coffers. This act of leading someone else to sin is called "scandal" and it is indeed mentioned in the Ten Commandments as "Thou shalt not kill." In this case, scandal spiritually kills by driving another to sin. It could be said that one who commits scandal is a particularly nasty opponent of God's will, an accomplice of Satan one might say.

Allow me to venture a bit further on my scandal tangent. Now, what about free will? The dude who watched the pornography could easily have just not done so. True. We do not know the circumstances by which, let's call him Jasper, was driven to view pornography. All the same, Felonius was what the Church calls an "accessory to sin". Had Felonius not egged Jasper on the chances of his viewing pornography on his own may have been far less or even nonexistent. Maybe he used such Satanic poetry as "Oh, it's not that bad! You have to release your sexual urges somehow! EVERYONE DOES IT!"

Right there before your eyes is an examination of conscience over one sin- a particularly grave one. Contrary to the legalistic cognition of our time, things do not need to be spelled out all the time for us to know that they are immoral. If we approach confession and sin in terrible fear of the Judgment, like we ought to, we would not be so lax in our "interpretations"- another lovely word from Satan's opus.

The Vatican is to be commended for being well abreast of the times as it has always been and reiterating the need to look between the lines when it comes to examining our moral conscience. The need to care for our environment, avoid genetic manipulation, and fight economic inequality are perennial Christian virtues with a slightly different look but with all the same essence.

"Si iniquitátes observáveris Dómine: Dómine quis sustinébit?"

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/vatican-updates-thou-shalt-not-list/20080310151509990001