Several of the original Seven Deadly Sins– Pride, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth and Greed– have enhanced automobile sales and pistonhead pleasure. But Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the Pope's BFF and the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (uh-oh) reveals that these "sins of yesteryear'' have a "rather individualistic dimension.'' The Church's seven new deadly sins are intended to make worshippers realize that their poor decisions also do unto others: Human Genetic Modification, Human Experimentation, Environmental Pollution, Social Injustice, Causing Poverty, Seeking Obscene Wealth and Drug Abuse. Did you know that every deadly sin has a traditional punishment? Pride leads to being broken on the wheel. Wrath leads to being dismembered alive. And so on. Hence, our QOTD: how can the car industry and pistonheads stay on the side of the angels with these new strictures, and what should happen if they don't?
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Driving a supercar– indeed most sports cars– constitutes drug abuse. There is no possible redemption. In fact, you've got me thinking about the Tire Rack in a whole new way…
Greed, sloth, gluttony? I get through these before lunch so a little pollution won’t add too much to my eternal damnation. I’ll race you all in hell ;)
At times like this I can’t help but turning away from men in robes and hats and turning to George Carlin — who recently said, “It’s all bullshit. And it’s bad for you.”
I’ve got reservations in Hell already. It’s a nice spot with great views of the brimstone. Cold beer may be scarce though so I’m getting used to drinking it warm.
Owning a Sebring is a sin.
Car ownership is fundamental part of human liberty.
Car ownership probably isn’t doing the planet any favors, and there certainly aren’t enough resources for everyone on the planet to own one.
That said, I’m not giving mine up anytime soon, and ours in the US are a lot easier on the environment than smoke belching polluters they drive in Mexico, China, and India.
… and this is how the church shows that it’s still relevant in today’s society?
Support athiesm instead! It’s a non-prophet organization.
Mike66Chryslers – at least this is a welcome break from the church’s unrelenting obsession with other peoples sex lives.
“Car ownership is fundamental part of human liberty.”
Funny that it’s so liberating when most of us don’t have the choice of going without. Seriously, try it. And I don’t mean taking the bus one time or biking to work on a sunny summer day. Try getting rid of your car.
Most people find cars are an expensive nuisance, but they almost all own one. Why do you think that is?
i6: Most people find cars are an expensive nuisance, but they almost all own one. Why do you think that is?
No, YOU think cars are an expensive nuisance, and are projecting your views on to everyone else.
“Funny that it’s so liberating when most of us don’t have the choice of going without.”
I don’t know what this means. Try not having a job, house, and a family? Try living in a cave? I don’t get it.
Of course it is, because anything that feels THIS GOOD has got to be a sin. Unless you drive a G5, in which case you’ve already had a taste of eternal damnation and should most certainly change your ways…
Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly got t-boned by a jeep wrangler with plates that said “PRAY4U”? Yeah, hang up and drive, maybe then you won’t need to spend so much time praying for other drivers.
Car ownership is fundamental part of human liberty.
Last I checked you have to buy one.
Most people find cars are an expensive nuisance, but they almost all own one. Why do you think that is?
Late 20th century planning assumed that nearly everyone would be driving an automobile. Unless you live in one of a handful of cities, most places that you need to visit are far enough away that you need a car to get there. Cities and towns that were planned before cars aren’t nearly as spread out.
Maybe that’s why the European car manufacturers keep falling over themselves to gift the Vatican new Popemobiles. Buying indulgences?
http://www.worldcarfans.com/2061020.004/vw-phaeton-presented-to-pope-benedict-xvi
The same church that is guilty of fostering world overpopulation, which, of course, helps raise food and gasoline prices higher. President Nixon tried to institute a population policy that would have been aimed at keeping the US population at the then current level, about 200 million. There was a commission headed by Rockefeller on the subject. The church let him know that if he continued in this vein he would be in deep political doo-doo. That was the end of that. A damn shame. The driving, and everything else would be a lot better, and the environment a lot healthier if the US still had only 200 million. The cost of fuel would undoubtedly be a lot cheaper, too.
If you lease, do you at least get Purgatory instead?
I have a hard time taking that sort of nonsense from a bunch of guys who wear such nice fabric, walk around on polished marble floors, and read from a book with gold lined pages.
Talk about special places in hell. If you are going to talk like that, at least have the decency to do it while dressed in a burlap sack and standing in front of a third world hut with no plumbing. It will still be nonsense, but at least it will be less hypocritical.
Social Injustice is a code word for capitalism. Causing poverty has been the all to foreseeable consequence of most of the church’s political actions since the fall of the Empire. I suppose God intended this, or it would take little faith to be a Christian.
http://www.bendib.com/newones/2006/september/small/9-26-Popemobile.jpg
How about molesting little boys?
John
From wikipedia, “The Apostolic Penitentiary is chiefly a tribunal of mercy, responsible for issues relating to the forgiveness of sins in the Roman Catholic Church.”
I think it is actually rather polite of the church to let us know of the new ways in which we can end up burning in eternal damnation. They let us know what we do wrong and the provide us the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary to help us out.
Very nifty.
geeber – No, YOU think cars are an expensive nuisance, and are projecting your views on to everyone else.
I don’t think people buy all those Camcords and Caravans for the passion of it.
i6: I don’t think people buy all those Camcords and Caravans for the passion of it.
No, they buy them because they enjoy greater mobility that they bring, which, in turn, results in the ability to expand the scope of businesses, friends and places of employment within their reach.
Just because people buy a vehicle to get around – as opposed to tearing up the slalom course – doesn’t mean that they don’t like the benefits that it brings.
geeber – No, they buy them because they enjoy greater mobility…
Exactly right! It is not car ownership itself that people desire, it is freedom of movement (which is liberating). There is a very important distinction there.
As things stand, we in North America are largely obliged to buy cars to benefit from that freedom of mobility, due to the nature of the design of our cities.
i6: It’s a chicken and egg problem. The automobile helped enable the decentralized city, which reinforced car ownership, which reinforced the decentralized city, etc.
It’s not the design of cities that caused us all to have cars, it’s all of us having cars that caused the design of cities (IMHO).
i6: Exactly right! It is not car ownership itself that people desire, it is freedom of movement (which is liberating). There is a very important distinction there.
Except that nothing provides the degree of privacy, mobility and flexibility that a private car does. Even mass transit, unless you live in Manhattan (and then forget the privacy part), and I have no desire to live in Manhattan (or in the downtown of any other large urban area).
i6: As things stand, we in North America are largely obliged to buy cars to benefit from that freedom of mobility, due to the nature of the design of our cities.
Most people have no desire to live in high rises or rowhomes.
Also note that Europe has extensive mass transit and compact cities (not to mention onerous fuel taxes and real parking problems). The western European countries also have lots of cars, and both the number of vehicles and the number of miles they are driven has been increasing.
The simple fact is that people like the privacy, mobility and flexibility of private automobile ownership, and will continue to do what is necessary to enjoy it. Which means that what will happen is that all of those Silverados, Explorers and 4Runners will be traded on Civics, Fiestas and CR-Vs, not that people will completely abandon their vehicles to ride the train.
I just want to have mine for a little bit before the world goes sour for cars. Is that so much to ask?
If driving a car is wrong I don’t wanna be right.
“I’ve got reservations in Hell already. It’s a nice spot with great views of the brimstone. Cold beer may be scarce though so I’m getting used to drinking it warm.”
Hell may be bad, but its not England…
and what should happen if they don’t?
A second reformation.
Car ownership is as evil a smoking and eating red meat.
Pistonheads will surely burn in hell for their evil petrol burning ways.
The new holy acronym is
W hat
W ould
S atan
D rive?
Just become an atheist like me and get your self free. There’s no heaven and no hell. When you die you go to the same place you were before you were born: nonexistence. You won’t remember your death any more than your birth and a dead body can’t be tortured. Been an atheist for 40 years and love it.
I’m with you 97escort (sorta). I’m completely non-religious, and it feels great to not be limited by a set of standards.
So of course, if owning a car is considered a sin, I’d gladly own 10 with no guilt whatsoever (if I wasn’t such a broke-ass :D).
If you have a beautiful high performance machine sitting in your garage roped off and glistening, I believe you are a sinner.
I personally don’t care if God himself demands I give up my car, I won’t do it.
I’m actually with 97escort as well. It feels great and on Sunday it’s easy to pop over to the diner and get a good breakfast in with the family before church lets out.
I believe cars are an instrument of good. Who hasn’t: picked up food for a child,taken an elderly family member to the doctor,taken a friend to the airport? ETC
Maybe I’ll think about this the next time I blow past someone in my 340hp V8. Or not.
Widespread maiming and killing of the innocent,
olfactory irritation, cancer, bronchitis, impatience, back ailments, alienation from your brethren, and a general feeling that you have wasted your life.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but the general tone of most of the Atheist commenters seems to be excusing themselves from a social conscience because they don’t believe they’ll go to hell. This presents a conundrum. If there is no afterlife and this is all we have, wouldn’t your belief system dictate that we should make this world the best possible place to live for everyone right now? Unless of course you’re a hedonist or sociopath. Maybe I’m reading too deep into this.
I don’t believe that owning a car is a sin. I do believe that owning a car that impacts the environment far more than another simply to show that you have the means to do so is a sin whether it’s a gas-guzzler for a daily driver or a green-washed hybrid.
I’m an agnostic BTW.
I own a car partly for the mobility, but partly because I love to drive–if I go a day without driving, which is easy since I work out of my house, I feel deprived–and I love the car, itself. I could happily live in Manhattan, but I probably would feel somewhat driving deprived if I lived there.
As for the question of the day, I don’t think you could call it a sin to own a car in a society where it is so difficult to go without a car. I would say, perhaps stretching it a bit, that the relevant sin is gluttony, or rather, conspicuous consumption.
I think the CC is picking on cars; yet, a lot of other things we do use more resources, often with less purpose. If owning a car is a sin, what about flying a plane, or even being a commercial air passenger? What about having a 4,000 sq ft house, or buying a lot of useless stuff that will end up in the landfill. I’m sure it’s catchy to condemn car ownership, but the more I think about it, less I think of it.
On the other hand, Hummers, Excursions, stuff like that–I think a case can be made.
David Holzman: On the other hand, Hummers, Excursions, stuff like that–I think a case can be made.
I think that owning one of those is more a crime against good taste than anything else…
As usual, the press is not getting it right.
http://tinyurl.com/2vcg7j
http://tinyurl.com/24gmdu
A quote from the first article:
Finally, in the afternoon, I spoke with the CBS News religion consultant at the Vatican, Fr. Thomas Williams. He confirmed what I suspected: there’s nothing new in the “new” deadly sins — and they aren’t necessarily deadly, and they don’t number seven, and it’s all one person’s interpretation of moral failings that are as old as time itself. The pope had nothing to do with it. It doesn’t change doctrine or dogma one iota.
And from the second:
The Vatican’s intent seemed to be less about adding to the traditional “deadly” sins (lust, anger, sloth, pride, avarice, gluttony, envy) than reminding the world that sin has a social dimension, and that participation in institutions that themselves sin is an important point upon which believers needed to reflect.
In other words, if you work for a company that pollutes the environment, you have something more important to consider for Lent than whether or not to give up chocolate.
Another article:
http://tinyurl.com/2y6dan
An excerpt:
As usual, a British newspaper leapt to the forefront with the most sensational and misleading coverage. The Daily Telegraph made the preposterous claim that Archbishop Girotti’s list replaced the traditional Catholic understanding of the seven deadly sins:
It replaces the list originally drawn up by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th Century, which included envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride.
Could we have a reality check, please?
When a second-tier Vatican official gives a newspaper interview, he is not proclaiming new Church doctrines. Archbishop Girotti was obviously trying to offer a new, provocative perspective on some enduring truths. The effort backfired– but in a very revealing way.
I want to point out that I am not Catholic, but I just wanted to correct story to be known. It continually amazes me that so-called professional journalists report things that they know are wrong or they just don’t do their homework or pay very close attention. It would seem that on TTAC, of all places, this fact would be at the forefront and every story would be checked out; even those about the “horrible, backward” Catholic Church.
It took me about five minutes to get the real story on this, and I am certainly no professional journalist.
Did you know that every deadly sin has a traditional punishment? Pride leads to being broken on the wheel. Wrath leads to being dismembered alive.
These are the punishments in hell for the sins. Some people mistakenly believe the traditional list of punishments to be those used by the Church on earth.
http://www.deadlysins.com/sins/history.html
Agnostic>Atheist. This way, if the Church is right, we still have our bases covered.