Vatican: The Solution to Pollution is Damnation
Polluting the Earth is now a mortal sin, according to the Vatican. And you thought I was being an alarmist when I wrote Hell and High Water. This is, I suppose, the ultimate form of waste-to-energy incineration:
The original Italian interview with Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (!) which is in charge of confession, is here. Fortunately, Bloomberg has made an English cheat sheet for the seven new mortal sins:
- ‘Bioethical’ violations such as birth control
- Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research
- Drug abuse
- Polluting the environment
- Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
- Excessive wealth
- Creating poverty
I’m afraid Americans in heaven will be as rare as … as rare as … pretty much every one else in the industrialized world.
I am interested in your thoughts on the appropriate punishment for polluters. Here are “The original offences and their punishments“:
- Pride: Broken on the wheel
- Envy: Put in freezing water
- Gluttony: Forced to eat rats, toads, and snakes
- Lust: Smothered in fire and brimstone
- Anger: Dismembered alive
- Greed: Put in cauldrons of boiling oil
- Sloth: Thrown in snake pits
Assuming there is some threshold below which one’s pollution isn’t sinful, then I’d be okay with combining, in succession, the punishments for gluttony, pride, envy, and and greed. If there isn’t a threshold, then I’m thinking … heck, what am I worrying for — I’m not Catholic (don’t be fooled by my last name — it was shortened from Romanoff).
March 10th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Way back then when I was in Catholic school, a favorite punishment was making us scrape all the gum from all the sidewalks within a three block radius of the school. I’m sure something analogous could be worked out for polluters. By the way, Joe, since you are not an environmentalist, you better watch out. Not being of the Faith provides you no protection. As Tommy Smothers famously said about the Catholics, “They’ll get you!”
March 10th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I’ve just blogged on this myself (http://layscience.net/?q=node/70), dismantling each of the “sins” in turn. Even if I were a Christian, I don’t see how you can follow a set of statements that - when you analyze them - are basically meaningless…
March 11th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
There isn’t enough boiling oil to go around.
Heard of Peak Oil?
March 11th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Looks like the AGWers are going to burn in a carbon based hell for creating poverty, and morally dubious economic experiments to slow use of carbon. Remember you have to confess your sins and honestly intend to sin no more while making amends to the injured to avoid everlasting Damnation. I would think any type of sustainability cult would be anaethema to the Catholic Church–less customers is bad for business.