Confession: I had to consult my “Catechism of the Catholic Church” today to review what, exactly, is a mortal sin:

A grave infraction of the law of God that destroys the divine life in the soul of the sinner (sanctifying grace), constituting a turn away from God. For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must be present: grave matter, full knowledge of the evil of the act, and full consent of the will.

But what is grave?
Paragraph 1858 of the Catechism states:

Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother.” The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

I think that was the intention of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confession and plenary indulgence, in addressing what grievous sin looks like today. Polluting the environment. Drug trafficking. And the greatest “danger zone” for the modern soul: bioethics.
According to Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary and the Vatican’s number two man:

(Within bioethics) there are areas where we absolutely must denounce some violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control.

I read that definition today feeling somewhat guilty. Because while I haven’t participated in any In Vitro Fertilization Pre-Embryo Transfer, I did ask Eric to get a vasectomy. And while I do go to church every Sunday, and try to be a good Catholic, I do disagree with the Vatican in some areas—like birth control.
That makes for a lot of awkward moments, like today when Eric called me from his urologist’s office, where the doctor who performed his vasectomy wanted to tell me how much he enjoyed the book I co-edited with Mike Leach, “I Like Being Catholic.”
“So glad you liked it. . . . Everything’s okay, right?”
But I have good reason to challenge the paragraphs about sex in the Catechism because, as a woman with irregular periods, I can’t depend on the timing of my menstruation to prevent procreation. And given all the complications from the births of David and Katherine (that I’m still working through today)—not to mention the baggage of my bipolar disorder–it would be a much greater sin for me to get pregnant a third time, than to have Eric get fixed. And I think God knows that.
However, I’m still glad that those paragraphs on sexual intimacy and procreation are in the Vatican’s rulebook. Because they serve as a guide, and promote the general philosophy that lurks behind all of the paragraphs of the Catechism: to love God with our hearts, mind, and spirit, and to love others as ourselves.
I realize most media outlets are having a grand old time rehashing the seven deadly sins, and making fun of those old-fashioned Catholics. But in all honesty, I applaud the Vatican for helping us see what sin looks like today. Because it HAS changed. And not all of us are insightful enough to recognize dangerous social patterns and choices.
What Archbishop Girotti articulated in his recent interview echoes what Pope John Paul II wrote in 1987 as part of his encyclical “On Social Concerns”:

When individuals and communities do not see a rigorous respect for our moral, cultural and spiritual requirements, based on the dignity of the person and on the proper identity of each community, beginning with the family and religious societies, then all the rest—availability of goods, abundance of technical resources applied to daily life, a certain level of material well-being—will prove unsatisfying and in the end contemptible.

And what the pontiff wrote eight years earlier in his apostolic exhortation, “Catechesis in Our Time”:

Fashion changes, but a profound reality remains. Christians today must be formed to live in a world which largely ignores God or which, in religious matters, in place of an exacting and fraternal dialogue, stimulating for all, too often founders in a debasing indifferentism, if it does not remain in a scornful attitude of “suspicion” in the name of the progress it has made in the field of scientific “explanations.”
To “hold on” in this world, to offer to all a “dialogue of salvation” in which each person feels respected in his or her most basic dignity, the dignity of one who is seeking God, we need a catechesis which trains the young people and adults of our communities to remain clear and consistent in their faith, to affirm serenely their Christian and Catholic identity, to “see him who is invisible” and to adhere so firmly to the absoluteness of God that they can be witnesses to Him in a materialistic civilization that denies Him.

Maybe I’m Catholic AND weird, but I’m thankful for the reminder.