by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(March 10, 2008) An official of the Apostolic Penitentiary is warning priests and the faithful about new forms of sin that have arisen in today’s globalized culture. These sins include polluting the environment, genetic engineering, excessive wealth, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice.
“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife – but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” said Bishop Gianfranco Girotti of the Apostolic Penitentiary, an office that deals with questions relating to penance and indulgences, in a March 8 interview appearing in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Bishop Girotti also included among these new sins the taking or dealing of drugs, social injustice which causes poverty or “the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few.”
In a culture where the sense of sin has almost completely vanished, Bishop Girotti said our sense of sin should be just the opposite – it should be more acute than ever because the effects of sin are so widespread.
“If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has an impact and resonance that is above all social, because of the great phenomenon of globalization,” he said. “In effect, attention to sin is a more urgent task today, precisely because its consequences are more abundant and more destructive.”
He advised priests to take account of these “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalization.”
His remarks were made only a day after Pope Benedict gave an address to the Penitentiary where he mentioned the current “disaffection” among the faithful toward the Sacrament of Penance. It’s not just about accusing ourselves of sin, he said. When we look at the Sacrament in such a way, “we run the risk of relegating to second place what is, in fact, essential, in other words the personal meeting with God, Father of goodness and mercy,” he said.
“Those who trust in themselves and in their own merits are, as it were, blinded by their own ‘I’ and their hearts harden in sin. On the other hand, those who recognize themselves as weak and sinful entrust themselves to God and from Him obtain grace and forgiveness . . .
“What is most important is to make it clear that in the Sacrament of Penance – whatever the sin committed – if sinners recognize it humbly and entrust themselves to the priest confessor, they will always experience the soothing joy of God’s forgiveness.”
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