LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

Repent! Repent you sinner you, or the God who is love will sent you sorry soul to hell to burn forever and forever. And that’s a very long, long time. Now, in case you didn’t know what those deadly sins were, the Catholic church had digitized them for us. The latest version of the seven deadly sins SDS.08 is now been released. No excuses sinner. Now you know- the rest of the story!

The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices, mortal sins, or cardinal sins, are a classification of vices that were originally used in early Christian teachings to educate and instruct followers concerning (immoral) fallen man’s tendency to sin and subject his soul to an eternal hell.

The Roman Catholic Church divided sin into two principal categories: venial sins, which are relatively minor, and could be forgiven through any sacrament of the Church, and the more severe capital or mortal sin. Mortal sins destroyed the life of grace, and created the threat of eternal damnation unless either absolved through the sacrament of confession, or forgiven through perfect contrition on the part of the penitent.

That’s if you believe in God’s conditional love, which I don’t. But, I digress.

After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalization. The list, published yesterday in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “secularized world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession. The scapegoat mentality reigns!

A recent survey shows that 60% of Catholics in Italy no longer go to confession-come on saints, FESS UP!

Although there is no definitive list of mortal sins, many believers accept the broad seven deadly sins or capital vices laid down in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and popularized in the Middle Ages by Dante in “The Inferno”: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride. To counter thsoe seven deadly sins, Christians are exhorted instead to adhere to the seven holy virtues: chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Included in the digital list of deadly sins are: drug pushers, the obscenely rich, environmental polluters and manipulative genetic scientists. I’m not sure this changing view of God is headed in the right direction. I think Jesus and the Kingdom would be better served if there was more interest in riding the Catholic church of pedophilia!

Eastern Catholics do not recognize the same distinction between mortal and venial sins as the Western or Latin Church does, nor do they believe that those people who die in a state of sin are condemned to automatic damnation. Let’s hear it for sanity and some really GOOD NEWS!