Catholics and Baptists Take on Environmental Pollution

The Vatican isn’t exactly a hotbed of socially-progressive viewpoints, but occasionally the Church comes around and surprises you. Such was the case when the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, recently came out with an updated list of the seven deadly sins that includes environmental pollution. And here in the U.S., the Southern Baptist church leaders recently declared their denomination has a responsibility to confront and combat global warming.

Whereas the original list of mortal sins -- pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth – were acts that breach the Ten Commandments, the new list offers a modern social perspective on the nature of acts which might offend God. The list was put together by Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, who is in charge of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican department which deals with the forgiveness of sins. The other six sins are drug abuse, genetic manipulation, morally dubious experimentation, social inequalities and social injustice, causing poverty and accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of the common good of society.

While the Vatican’s call for environmental stewardship was somewhat generic, the Southern Baptist church took a more specific and aggressive stance, calling on the Baptist community to "be proactive and take responsibility for our contributions to climate change -- big and small…our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. We can do better."

With over a billion baptized members worldwide, the Catholic church is one of the most influential groups in the world. Likewise, the Southern Baptist church has about 16 million members. While both of these organizations have some unfortunate views on other social issues, it’s nice to see them coming around on the environment. And although President Bush is a Methodist, we can hope that the Catholic and Baptist calls for more action on climate change have gotten through to him and other conservative political groups in the U.S.