Old sins for a new age
Eduardo Porter observes in the New York Times the difficulties of bringing forward ancient teachings to modern realities, when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, regent of the Vatican Penitentiary, said that globalization might perhaps need new ways of thinking about sin in more social terms.
“If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a value and resonance that is above all social, because of the great phenomenon of globalization,” Monsignor Girotti told the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.Sin, however, doesn’t take well to tinkering. Many Catholic thinkers reacted strongly against the idea that new sins were needed to complement, or supplement, the classical canon. They accused the press of exaggerating Monsignor Girotti’s words. Their reaction underscored how tough it is for the church to manage a moral code grounded in eternal verities at a time of furious change.
Here is an article from the LA Times describing what Girotti said.
