opinion

The eye of the needle

by Raúl Leis R. --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

Don't pollute the environment. Don't provoke social injustice. Don't cause poverty. Don't enrich yourself to obscene levels at the expense of the common good.

These are four of the new capital sins announced a few weeks ago by the Holy See. They add to the seven sins announced by Pope Gregory I 15 centuries ago, to wit: lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy and pride, which were later made into the work "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri.

The Vatican chose to update and modernize the menu of sins to include those whose commission goes against justice in relations among persons, between people and the community, and between the community and people. "To sin is to violate man's relationship with God," said the Franciscan Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, who was responsible for explaining the new capital sins.

The bishop posed the subject by expounding that "The modern sins have a social resonance in addition to an individual one. It's more important than ever to pay attention to our sins."

If we examine our Panamanian reality, it's easy to locate the "new" sinners:

All of the national and international private investors who are preying upon or contaminating the environment, directly or indirectly, with open pit mines, tourism, polluting industries and other works. Those who seek high profit margins without caring about people's well-being and quality of life. Those who speculate and manipulate the market at the expense of others.

The national and local authorities who shirk their duty to the community by permitting or helping all of this to happen, or who injure the common welfare and increase poverty by their corruption, which costs Latin America some $24 billion per year.

The political parties that neither fix their attention upon nor concentrate their action upon attacking these evils, but in practice perpetuate them.

Those groups and individuals who sin by omission, indifference or complicity and allow all this to occur by not turning into an active citizenry disposed to question these social sins, to listen and be vigilant, and to act for an agenda of necessary changes that are consonant with the nation's needs and aspirations.

Let us hope that the pastors and the churches valiantly take on these social sins with the same intensity that they preach about the traditional sins.

Bishop Girotti says that 60 percent of the faithful don't go to confession. We're dealing with, then, not only the confession of social sins but of making amends with participation and transparency, by way of a determined effort for sustainable and equitable development, integrity, and effective social policies to combat poverty. Look in the eye of the needle.