Drugs and deadly sins: unbiblical and unchristian

In this Vatican announcement of a new "Seven Deadly Sins" for the twenty first century, the Catholic Church has included the "taking of and dealing in drugs". Rarely can Rome be accused of political correctness, but on this occasion Archbishop Girotti has been spouting the most ungodly bollocks.

In the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 7 verse 15 Christ says: "There is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him. But the things which come from a man, those are they that defile a man."

In the very first chapter of the bible, Genesis 1, verse 29 God said to Adam: "Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat."

Most of the substances that humanity has used as recreational drugs for thousands of years have been completely natural in origin. Created, they would acknowledge, by God. Nothing in that creation is inherently bad. Each has its own place in our "diet", with some providing sustenance, some healing, and some oiling social interactions.

The great twentieth century monk Thomas Merton said that it made a difference what the purpose of using any of these gifts of nature was, whether the taking of them became sinful. In his case he looked at alcohol, and suggested that alcohol was good when it was used for companionship and for helping social situations on their way, but bad when it was used as an indulgence merely to get drunk, to lose one's faculties of judgement.

One can argue I suppose that many drugs can do the latter better than the former. Try talking to someone who has just shot up some heroin! On the other hand, cannabis can induce much loquacious companionship and even cocaine or ecstasy can cut the ice at parties - especially for those of us who are naturally quite timid (terror inducingly so) in such situations. I suppose addiction is a form of gluttony in some cases that has gone to extremes. But the mere act of taking drugs cannot be described as a "deadly sin" just because of the substance being used.

Because of the "war on drugs" we have a terrible situation in which some places, indeed some entire countries are in the midst of a battle with the organized crime that supplies the underworld global market in drugs, and supporting such organized crime is compounding the misery for many. But it is that "war on drugs" that creates and exacerbates that misery.

The Vatican should be denouncing instead the "war on drugs" as a biblically indefensible attack on some of the uses human ingenuity has found for some of God's entirely good creation.

The "taking of drugs" will certainly not be on this Catholic's confessional list any time soon. And I reckon the current crop of Vatican apparatchiks falls woefully short of the wisdom of St Gregory the Great!