Media is wrong about 7 social sins, says cardinal

Guadalajara, Mexico, Mar 13, 2008 / 21:35 pm

The Archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, responded to inaccurate information in the media about the supposed “new sins” outlined by the Vatican this week and said, “The sins are the same, what has changed is the how they are applied.”

“The commandment is the same: thou shalt not kill,” the cardinal said, “and now there are many ways to kill if we apply this to the field of bioethics and scientific experiments,” in which human embryos are often destroyed.

Cardinal Sandoval stressed that the social sins are not an impediment to reaching heaven, but he noted that “going to heaven is not easy, the road is not downhill.  The Lord said narrow is the door and few are those who find it.”

He also stated that excessive wealth “goes against social justice; the goods of the earth are for all,” and he explained that the Church’s “social doctrine teaches that wealth should redistributed between business owners and workers.”

The cardinals comments came in response to media coverage of a interview given to L’Osservatore Romano by Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, in which he explained that today there are social sins such as genetic manipulation, that undermine respect for life, drug use and social inequality.

The media incorrectly interpreted this application to the social sphere as an update of the Church's seven deadly sins.