The Vatican chimed in on the ills of the day:

This latest update on how God’s law is being violated in today’s
world comes from Msgr. [Bishop in the non-Vatican term] Gianfranco
Girotti, head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary.

He pointed to ’‘violations of the basic rights of human nature’’
through genetic manipulation, the use of drugs that ’‘weaken the mind
and cloud intelligence’’ and the vast disparity between rich and poor.

’‘If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it
has a weight, a resonance, that’s especially social, rather than
individual,’’ Girotti said in an interview published Sunday in the
Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano about what he views as the ’‘new
sins.’’

I love the “penitentiary” business. Not as in Stateville, be it known,
but as in penance, which we do for our sins whether eligible for
Stateville or not. This agency also gives indulgences, for which no
Lutherans need apply. Just the other day, it reiterated the anti-Masonic
ruling that says no Catholics need apply for lodge membership – one
thinks of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney – and in fact may not do so.

The monsignor’s [bishop’s] “vast disparity between rich and poor,”
however, is a throwaway reference. Ever since capitalism “grew” (made
grow) the wealth of nations, enriching some beyond previous imagining
and allowing the masses to grow also numerically, far less ravaged by
disease and starvation, that’s been an issue. But what about the
Salamanca Jesuits?

They flourished in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, led by one
named Molina – no relation to the three brothers who play catcher for
the Yankees, Giants, and Cardinals as far as we know – who had a
fascinating definition for the just wage, namely what the market decides.

[In this] inflationary 16th century, theologians were appealed to
repeatedly on economic affairs, particularly the status of contracts in
those confusing economic times. In an effort to lay down guidelines for
commercial practice and focusing on practical notions of the public
good, they moved away from past dogma and approached their questions in
the spirit of natural law philosophy.

Dominicans were in on this too, with the Jesuit Johnnie’s-come-lately.
Together they defined the just price as no more and no less than the naturally exchange-established price. Their analysis led them to trace a scarcity theory of value and employed supply-and-demand with dexterity. They
rejected [the Franciscan] Duns Scotus’s “cost of production” conception of the just price, arguing that there was no objective way of determining price.

Say wha’? No objective way? Not even by an office of price control or senate committee holding hearings about “obscene” profits, etc.?

The good monsignor of the Penitentiary speaks of “new sins,” does he?

But they are very old ones, as the Salamanca Jesuits and Dominicans
could testify if they were not turning over in their graves even now.

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The Sun-Times story linked above is very cleanly written by its newly designated religion reporter, Mike Thomas, so designated after
seven-plus years of spot-feature writing, including a series about
Chicago neighborhoods.

So that newspaper is not leaving religion coverage to AP and its
apparently part-time columnist and former full-timer, Cathleen Falsani, who did some good reporting in her day but has done nothing for us lately.

The opening was there since the veteran, much-traveled and
-accomplished Susan Hogan/Albach was downsized out of her job in January.

**
Jim Bowman is the Religion Correspondent for the Chicago Daily Observer