Deadly sins for the modern age

As suspected, those good folks in the Vatican really are making it up as they go along. For the first time in Catholic history the seven deadly sins have been brought up to date to accommodate the perceived ills of the modern world.

To coincide with the Pope's condemnation of the secularised world's "decreasing sense of sin", the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano yesterday published seven new ones which, according to Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (it "oversees confessions and plenary indulgences", apparently), take account of "new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation."

The new sins can be listed as follows:

• Paedophilia
• Abortion
• Ruining the environment
• Carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments
• Allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos
• Dealing or taking drugs
• Social injustice that causes poverty or the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few

To make a couple of observations, it's good of the Catholic Church to have noticed that paedophilia's a bad thing, and I think it's worth highlighting the attack on science represented by two of the new sins – no doubt the Vatican's definition of "morally debatable scientific experiments" is broader than most.

Will the concept of 14 deadly sins take off? It seems unlikely, as the names aren't quite as catchy as Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth. And does this mean there'll be a sequel to David Fincher's 1995 Oscar-nominated picture Seven, provisionally entitled Fourteen? Let's hope so...