Seven New Deadly Sins
O'ROURKE, P.J.
Seven New Deadly Sins Suitably updated. BY P.J. O’ROURKE Busy times for us sinners—there are now an additional Seven Deadly Sins. The fresh abominations in the eyes of the Lord...
...Yet we bear witness to the eternally babyish baby boom...
...I care more about diddledydum than you do...
...The fresh abominations in the eyes of the Lord were announced by Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Vatican body that oversees confessions and plenary indulgences...
...But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it...
...Because I’m a better person than you are, I have the right to order you around...
...The women go to and fro in the earth, mutton dressed as lamb, with liposuction well-applied to tummy, butt, and brain...
...A cherubim with a flaming sword is expelling us from the offi ce cubicle of Eden, or would be if he could tear us away from the Internet...
...I’m talking about you, Paul Krugman...
...Alas, I couldn’t get this into a single descriptive term, but it might as well be all one word...
...4. Authenticity...
...And Gordon Gekko said it all about greed...
...I’ve been to parties where all seven of the original deadlies were on offer in carload lots...
...1. Celebrity...
...His seven evocative nouns produced an instant mental image: a puffed-up, shifty-eyed, fat cat furiously ripping the thong off a young intern on a slow night in the Oval Offi ce...
...What evil, pentagram-enclosed, goatheiniekissing ceremony are we celebrating with Kevin Federline...
...Life has changed since Pope Gregory the Great scribbled his initial list in the sixth century...
...Eschewing New Deadly Sin #3 forces us to commit New Deadly Sin #4...
...Never once have I heard a reveler shout with evil glee, “Let’s dump PCBs in the Hudson River...
...This is far and away the besetting sin of the 21st century...
...Listen to NPR or AM Talk Radio if you don’t believe me, or, better yet, read the opinion page of the New York Times...
...Please do your best to be someone better than who you truly are...
...I pretend to no expertise, let alone authority, in religious matters...
...A deadly sins addendum is long overdue...
...2. Communication...
...For one thing modern society has turned Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Sloth, and Greed into virtues: building self-esteem, dreaming your dream, exercising gourmet tastes, having satisfying sex for life, speaking truth to power, being relaxed and centered...
...Here we have Bishop Girotti, who is supposed to be leading us to God, leading us instead to a hopeless paradox and the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost, despair...
...A Mother Teresa leper hospital it ain’t...
...In an article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Bishop Girotti detailed the seven new ways we can go to hell or, at the minimum, be sentenced to afterlife in purgatory at the Apostle Pen...
...Speaking of which, modern economists despair of any way to quit causing poverty except by accumulating excessive wealth—the excess supplying the capital needed for global economic progress...
...This is the meaning of original sin...
...Furthermore, that progress depends in part on New Deadly Sin #6, the genetic manipulation entailed in the bioengineering of new high-yield crop varieties to feed the hungry...
...3. Youth...
...Therefore I’m a better person than you are...
...Unfortunately Bishop Girotti’s late-model sins make as little sense as a Jeremiah Wright sermon...
...And New Deadly Sin #5 as well, since “social injustice and inequality” cannot be eliminated without global economic progress...
...And notice that when someone says, “I care about the war in Iraq,” he almost always means, “I want to lose it...
...This organization goes by the contrition-inducing name of the Apostolic Penitentiary...
...5. Caring...
...I once would have felt it was prideful to do so, but that was before building my self-esteem...
...6. Opinion...
...The bishop’s supersizing of the mortal transgression catalog is thoroughly up-to-date (as translated by the Times of London): 1. Drug abuse 2. Morally debatable experimentation 3. Environmental pollution 4. Causing poverty 5. Social inequality and injustice 6. Genetic manipulation 7. Accumulating excessive wealth Not to argue theology with the Vatican, but environmental pollution is hardly among Satan’s strongest temptations...
...Some people have facts, these can be proven...
...Still, one takes the bishop’s point...
...And when people say it we know that they’ve been doing something at least as bad as the former governor of New Jersey, his wife, their chauffeur, and Eliot Spitzer in a hot tub together...
...Now everybody’s a knowitall 24/7 thanks to Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, email, cell phones, text messages, and so on...
...God’s message to man has always been, “You can’t really be good, but you can fake it...
...Imagine the reaction in the confessional when you say, “Father, I have littered...
...The beauty of Pope Gregory’s P.J...
...And vote for Hillary on November 4th...
...And they all come to Mass, when at all, in shorts, T-shirts, and shower fl ip-fl ops...
...Really...
...They have no gravitas...
...In former days just Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and only one time at that...
...Everyone’s authentic self is horrid...
...Some people have theories, these can be disproven...
...O’Rourke is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Pollution is not a passion we resist with an agony of will for the sake of our immortal souls...
...No doubt our venial sins could use a do-over as well, but my sanctimoniousness reserves are nearly exhausted...
...Talk about worshiping false gods...
...The young are spotty, sweaty, chowderheaded, and woefully lacking in wisdom, experience, or control over anything, especially themselves...
...We need to move on,” is a similar phrase but with the implication of, “And I won’t quit doing it until I’m actually behind bars...
...However, I can’t resist the temptation of having a go, myself, at The Seven Deadly, Part II...
...lineup was that he nailed our most devilish villainies with one word each...
...Deep down inside we’re ravening beasts...
...why would anyone pray—or pay!—for youthfulness...
...Also the Right Reverend should get out more and take a walk around Vatican City...
...7. To Spend More Time With the Family...
...Nonetheless I’ll wager that one of those venial sins is blowing neo-lefty stink bombs out your bishop’s miter...
...Men in their sixties are on Harleys and snowboards and basketball courts, from which they will proceed to damnation by way of the emergency room...
...If all environmental pollution were stopped forthwith—as any proper sin ought to be—wouldn’t this result in “causing poverty...
...And you, young man in the reading audience, take those ear buds out when your elders are addressing you...
...The 11th Commandment is, “Thou shalt not blog...
...Also there’s a bullying logic among those who care...
...Note that the root of the word is “celebrate...
...This takes so much time and effort that it necessarily results in the opposite of doing something...
...Plus the supplementary desecrations lack a certain fl air...
...It’s the reverse of fact...
Vol. 13 • April 2008 • No. 29
