Time to get medieval.

According to Chapter One, Section 393 of The Cathecism of the Catholic Church:

393. Is there a variety of sins?

1852-1853
1873

There are a great many kinds of sins. They can be distinguished according to their object or according to the virtues or commandments which they violate. They can directly concern God, neighbor, or ourselves. They can also be divided into sins of thought, of word, of deed, or of omission.

And Chapter One, Section 379:

379. What are the principal human virtues?

1805
1834

The principal human virtues are called the cardinal virtues, under which all the other virtues are grouped and which are the hinges of a virtuous life. The cardinal virtues are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

Note that Sections 380 through 383 define prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance specifically.

So let me take another shot at the new sins with a better “theory of sin” under my belt:

Environmental pollution: a sin against your neighbor in the lack of prudence, justice, and temperance.

Genetic manipulation: ?

Accumulating excessive wealth: a sin against your neighbor in the lack of temperance.

Inflicting poverty: a sin against your neighbor in the lack of justice and temperance.

Drug trafficking and consumption: a sin against your neighbor / self in the lack of justice / temperance.

Morally debatable experiments: ?

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature: a sin against your neighbor in the lack of justice.

Theologian up ins. I hesitate with the “Science Sins” because I have a feeling that they’re “sins against God in the lack of justice”, in the “thou shalt not kill” sense (ie, they’re pro-life related). You could also think about them in terms of Mengele. The Sins of Science are general enough to creep me out though, so I’m going to avoid talking about them.

On to Jared’s summaries:

“Forgive me father, for I drank coffee that wasn’t shade-grown”: saying that theist morality is possibly better because it requires less thought is an argument I was thinking of applying to something a while ago. The problem is that it has a built-in downfall: telling people that thinking is bad for them seems counter-revolutionary. It’s the kind of argument I dismiss out of hand in every other case, so I don’t feel comfortable using it here. The first sin was a sin of thought though, so it’s probable that I’m just a giant heretic (see the Apple of Knowledge, above, and then click through pages and pages of Apple Computer Knowledge Base articles until you get to the theology).

“Forgive me father, for I voted for a candidate whose party leader appointed a health minister who increased funding for stem cell research”: Sins of Science! All I want to say here is that Bush’s stem cell research ban, which I think was despicable, forced research into adult stem cell usage, which is now the hot new thing. Religious morality bent the path of Science, and Science got to the same place in the end. Win-win, perhaps?

“Forgive me father, for my investments accidentally grew to an excessive size when I wasn’t managing them”: I was thinking about this one the other day. I think it’s a backhanded acknowledgment of the Buffett-Gates charitable partnership. The Church probably can’t directly congratulate them because they’re Godless atheists, but it wants people to act like them: the world would arguably be a better place if all the richies followed suit. The word “excessive” is also important because it leaves open the idea that commerce is, generally, a civic virtue. Really this is about exploiting market failures, which is a sin against the other market participants. Is that a theological theory of economics? Perhaps so.

“Forgive me father, for I shopped at Walmart”: Sins of commission aren’t better or worse than those of omission (see 393 above). Maybe they are popularly, but mortal (really bad) sin requires “grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent.” I can imagine sins of omission that fit that description: say deliberately not warning someone about an on-rushing bus. Also: the whole point of religious morality is that it stands outside the status quo and judges it. It takes an absolute morality to forgive a Nazi and make him the leader of your church, for example. Joey Ratz could never be, say, a governor in America because the secular world would not forgive him. The son of a Nazi could though. At least secular sins aren’t generationally-transitive.

Why care? I’ll quote sparsely from Section 392, which quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas (pictured, I guess). The rest is so dogmatic that atheist brains won’t be able to parse it:

392. What is sin?

1849-1851
1871-1872

Sin [...] wounds human nature and injures human solidarity. [...]

The idea being that these things, in theory, make you feel worse about yourself and make the world a worse place in the long run — unless you’re a psychopath (or, maybe, a Biologist). Everything on the new list meets that criteria, more or less.