Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I smell a sequel

In Se7en, a violent and moody piece of film-noir, and one of my favorite all-time movies, Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt play two police detectives on the trail of a brutal murderer whose victims have all committed one of the seven deadly sins. The murderer dispatches each victim in a way that reflects the sin that the victim was committing. For instance, the first victim is an obese man who is forced at gunpoint to eat can after can of spaghetti sauce until his stomach bursts. Another victim is a model whose face the killer horribly disfigures, and then the killer gives the model a logical choice. He glues a phone to one hand (so she can save herself if she wants) and a bottle of sleeping pills in her other hand. Rather than live the rest of her life with a scarred face, the model chooses an overdose of sleeping pills.

Freeman and Pitt had best be ready to be called back for a sequel, for today, the Catholic Church has identified se7en additional deadly sins, and some of them are doozies! Here they are:
  1. Polluting
  2. Genetic engineering
  3. Being obscenely rich
  4. Drug dealing
  5. Abortion
  6. Pedophilia
  7. Causing social injustice
OK, I can get on board with 4, 5, and 6. Numbers 1 and 2... eh. It is numbers 3 and 7 that are giving me fits. What is wrong with being obscenely rich? The mere fact that you are that rich is not necessarily a problem. Bill Gates is "obscenely rich." How many people are making a good living by being employed by Microsoft? How many people are making a good living by selling things to people employed by Microsoft? How many people have made good livings by using computers that have Microsoft products on them? How many people... you get the idea. On that so-called deadly sin, all I can tell the Catholic church is that ENVY of other people's wealth is a very ugly (and deadly) sin indeed.

Then we have that ever hard-to-define social justice canard. The best definition I can think of for social justice is to abuse a certain group of people in the present in order to atone for abuses of a different group in the past. A perfect example is Affirmative Action. Whites and males used to discriminate towards Blacks and females in academia and in the workplace, so now the tables have been turned. This of course begs the question of whether discriminating towards white males (and Asians) is any less sinful?

It is too late at night for me to stretch my brain like this, but I'm sure I could take these new deadly sins and apply each of them to one of the original deadly sins - for instance, "obscenely wealthy" could simply be put in the Greed category could it not? And couldn't pedophilia be included in the Lust category?

All in all, these new and improved Seven Deadly Sins seem rather redundant and unnecessary. If the Catholic Church is hoping to win over new converts by embracing political correctness, I think they are making a serious miscalculation. I'm not a Catholic, but this latest move by the Church does nothing to make me want to switch from the Presbyterian church I currently attend.

Good Day to You, Sir

8 comments:

Unknown said...

There was nothing official about that statement. It was, in other words, nonsense spewed by a cardinal with an agenda.

W.R. Chandler said...

That might be the case, but in every article I have read today, I have yet to see any kind of disavowal by the Church of the what the Cardinal has said.

Don, American Idle said...

And don't forget Gates has contribited MILLIONS to charity. Class envy is such a liberal idea.

Law and Order Teacher said...

I am a life-long Catholic. Time and again the church has embarassed me as a member and the liberalism of the church is getting worse. Must have something something to do with boredom and celibacy. As far as pedophilia, are you kidding me? Liberalism knows no shame or irony.

Mrs. Bluebird said...

Just one more on a list of reasons (mainly having to do with stupid liberal political agendas) why I left the church I was raised in.

W.R. Chandler said...

Just so you all know that I am not trying to beat up on the Catholics here, I also have serious reservations about the Presbyterian Church to which I belong.

Their divestment-from-Israel idea had me extremely hot under the collar, and if I see one more petition handed out in the Gathering Place that asks politicians to raise the minimum wage, I am going to lose it.

George Grady said...

If being obscenely rich is a mortal sin, the Vatican itself must be the gate of hell. I mean, that was one of the proximate causes of the Reformation! Just absurd.

Darren said...

I did not like that movie. Gross.