Fresh off the red telephone with Providence, a senior member of the Vatican is upgrading a handful of lesser celestial bugaboos into what now will effectively destroy the grace of God within the heart of the sinner.

The Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano interviewed senior cleric Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (basically, the bureau of sin and absolution), who listed drug trafficking, pollution, social injustice and genetic manipulation as the new bleeding edge of mortal sins.

"If yesterday, sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that's especially social, rather than individual," the Associated Press translates from Girotti.

The man is a theological idiot, and I sincerely hope Benedict smacks him down very smartly. The idea that sin is no longer an "individual" matter but a "social" one undermines the entire foundation of the Christian concept of salvation, namely the uniqueness of each immortal soul and its absolute primacy in all moral considerations. He's one step away from utilitarianism, and that's a slippery theological slope.