Henry Karlson says:
February 8, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Though your simple, and false, presentation of history could get more of a comment from me, I think the most important point to made is: abortion is not one of the eight deadly sins.
The seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.
If you don't know your faith and didn't scratch the surface, Henry's statement could be taken at face value. But Henry seems to have fallen into the trap of fallacious argumentation.
There is nothing deadlier than the sin of abortion. Abortion breaks the covenant from God in the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill.
Not only does a child die, abortion is lethal to the souls of everyone involved in the procedure.
Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth and pride are all wrapped into the sin of abortion.
The question for me is, why would he go out of his way to say something so theologically misleading?
It reminds me of the poor women who have been duped into dressing up like Stevie Nicks and dancing at Golgotha because they can't find anything in the GIRM that forbids it. I always respond that they won't find any prohibitions against Father dressing in his mother's wedding dress, high heels and lipstick either. The Holy See couldn't possibly anticipate every wacky Liturgical innovation. However, the rubrics that are to be obeyed in the Liturgy are painstakingly spelled out.
One ought not to be out there teaching theology if one does not know the basics of how to put the puzzle together.
I did a little search around the internet to see if I could come up with something sound on why the deadly sins are deadly and came across this very well-written article.
To be strictly accurate, the preferred term isn't seven deadly sins but seven capital vices, which better conveys the thought that the seven aren't sins in themselves, merely habits or predilections disposing one thereto. This point was made by Saint Gregory the Great in the sixth century AD and later restated by Aquinas. But the term seven deadly sins survives for obvious reasons--it sounds a lot snappier.
In current thinking the seven really bad things do not loom very large. I notice in the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, consisting of 2,865 numbered sections published in 1994 by order of Pope John Paul II, the capital sins warrant exactly one paragraph. The principal codification of moral transgression for Christians continues to be the Ten Commandments, upon which the catechism confidently excogitates, much as the Supreme Court finds guidance for cable TV regulation in a document written in 1789.
Do read it, it's a gem.
Vox Nova, America Magazine, The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal and the Catholic bloggers at First Things should not be linked to our blogrolls. Their presence in our blogrolls gives what is written there credibility, and could lead to incorrectly forming the conscience of unsuspecting Catholics who have been poorly catechized.
Once a Bishop asked me to be on some committee that was stacked in favor of recommending something scandalous. I told him I just couldn't do it because my presence and name would lend credibility to the product I knew was going to be rolled out to unsuspecting parents and children. Lots of luck with it but you know what Christ said about the millstone and all.
Here's my Valentine's Day advice for navigating through and linking to the genre of Catholic blogosphere:
You've got to know when to hold em. Know when to fold em. Know when to walk away and know when to run.
