Sinapalooza '08 - Vatican adds to list of sins

This just in: If you're an obscenely wealthy drug-dealing pedophile stem-cell researcher who drives a Hummer and doesn't recycle, you are totally going to hell. Oh please, like you didn't already know.

The Big Book o' Deadly Sins apparently has a whole new addendum and it looks like it ain't just gluttony and lust and murder and hot porn and witchcraft .... The pope and his posse - or, rather, the Vatican's second in command on matters of hell and penance, Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti - have announced seven new deadly sins for a brave new world.

We can only applaud the Vatican for its efforts to uphold and reinforce global ethical standards with numbers 4 to 7:

4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty

I, no doubt, will be found guilty of 4 and 5 above. Especially at points in my life when, in youthful ignorance, I bought into the media messages to "buy and consume". Efforts to reform myself later in life will likely not absolve me from going straight to hell in what will be an increasingly crowded handbasket.

There are some sins that are still missing:

Note to the Vatican: You want more true sins? Here are a few on my list:

• Lying to women is a sin. So is oppression, repression and exclusion of women
• Pathological hypocrisy is a sin.
• Half a billion dollars in pedophilia lawsuit payouts is a sin.
• Homophobia is a sin.
• Annihilation of aboriginal cultures is a sin
• The "makeover" culture is a sin (making over our bodies, our faces, our hair, our wardrobes, our teeth, our outlooks, our homes, our closets, our pets and our spouses.)