Stop that cloning. Stop it right now:
Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Modern times bring with them modern sins. So the Vatican has told the faithful that they should be aware of “new” sins such as causing environmental blight.
The guidance came at the weekend when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican’s number two man in the sometimes murky area of sins and penance, spoke of modern evils.
Asked what he believed were today’s “new sins,” he told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics.
“(Within bioethics) there are areas where we absolutely must denounce some violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control,” he said.
The Vatican opposes stem cell research that involves destruction of embryos and has warned against the prospect of human cloning.
Two questions:
1. Does this mean we can threaten people who litter with hell? Cuz I’m all over that. When I was in Florida last summer, glorious sun, vast sandy beaches covered with the Big Gulps of the American south, all I could think about was how satisfying it would be to kick the next person I saw drop a Cheeto bag in the ocean really hard in the balls. It wouldn’t be quite as gratifying to just say a rosary for their sure-to-burn pathetic souls, but with the way my writer’s block is settling in for the long haul, I’ll take my accomplishments where I can get them.
2. Can the list possibly be expanded to include whatever it is Vera Wang is doing at Kohl’s? I was over there this weekend, looking for new mixing bowls and … I don’t know what that woman’s smoking but I want some of it. Is this just me being one of those people who thinks the purpose of clothes is to make you look nice, rather than make people go “oh, what an interesting designer you’re wearing”? Because a sack dress with a bunch of plastic shit glued on the front of it is … not productive, let’s just say. And while I personally love chartreuse, the idea of it anyway, finding six people who don’t look like a dog’s dinner in it is a hard fucking sell. I don’t think it’s nice, somehow, making things that look like that. It feels perverse, like she’s screwing with us. Maybe the Holy Father can intervene.
A.