7 Mortal Sins Plenty for Most People, Says Vatican

I wanted to write a rant on the seven additional deadly sins issued by the Catholic Church, which would bring the number of mortal sins to 14 (collect them all), but the Acton Institute blog set me straight: the story appears to be entirely a media invention. The Acton Institute identifies the journalistic carelessness that led to headlines like "Recycle or go to Hell, warns Vatican" and contains a pdf of an English translation of the actual interview the story was seeded from.

It turns out there is no new sin of excessive compensation per se. So it appears there is no need for me to observe that coveting excessive compensation is the real sin.

The mainstream media are interpreting this paragraph as saying there are seven new mortal sins:

In your opinion, what are the "new sins"?
There are various areas today in which we adopt sinful behavior, as with individual and social rights. This is especially so in the field of bioethics where we cannot deny the existence of violations of fundamental rights of human nature—this occurs by way of experiments and genetic modifications, whose results we cannot easily predict or control. Another area, which indeed pertains to the social spectrum, is that of drug use, which weakens our minds and reduces our intelligence. As a result, any young people are left out of Church circles. Here’s another one: social and economic inequality, in the sense that the rich always seem to get richer, and the poor, poorer. This [phenomenon] feeds off an unsustainable form of social injustice and is related to environmental issues—which currently have much relevant interest.

Well, it does sort of say that excessive compensation (or excessive lack of compensation) is a sin, but it doesn't call it a mortal or deadly sin, and it doesn't seem to be issuing "infallible" doctrine.

I still believe Nancy Gibbs makes some salient points in her essay in Time. If excessive wealth is sinful, she asks, "what do we make of Bill Gates, the Great Acquisitor, who, as a philanthropist, is now arguably the greatest individual force for good around the world?"