For all you SEN haters -- this post should remind you of Lat's fallibility... (and more proof LAT and SEN are the same person)

Mistreating colleague from a ttt

Law firm sin 1 and 2 are dead on. 4 and 5 are mortal sins. 3 should be modified to include abuse of ANY firm freebies: cars, coffee, soda, office supplies, paralegals, etc.

Between 1 and 2 -- "pissing off a client" -- not as bad as 1, but worse than 2.

Isn't the Roman Catholic church "obscenely wealthy"? Typical Catholic rules... HYPOCRITS.

So sex is in? internet porn? abortion? FDA trials are out "experimenting on humans".

Define obscenly wealthy -- becuase even TTT lawyers are in top 1% of income earners globally.

sex with boys, oddly, did not make the list....

the pope did not approve this message

"causing social injustice"... Huh?!

"causing poverty"... so, the poor are all going to Hell? Sweet.

"becoming obscenely wealthy"... Being poor causes poverty, so the poor are damned. But apparently being rich is also sending us to Hell. Are the middle class God's new chosen people?

dumbest. pope. ever.

Homosexuality is cool with church? Damn it, what does a catholic school boy have to do to get expelled?!?!

12:19: you just earned your self-eternal damnation.

pope

As a committed Catholic, I find that it's best not to go by what the secular media reports on things like this, particularly when the tone of most of the stories so far -- and your post -- is comedic (Reuters, for example, posts the story on its Oddly Enough page). In addition, there seem to be very few direct quotes from Msgr. Girotti, who I'm sure did not say that failing to recycle a plastic bag is a mortal sin. Wait for a more official statement.

"ass-to-mouth" just missed the cut for top mortal sins -- enjoy it while you can!

pope's assistant

the roman catholic church is slowly molesting itself into bankruptcy

Law Firm Rule: ABUSE OF THE INTERNET (PORN, BLOGS, Etc.)

Pope fails to mention Brazilian phenom "Two Girls One Cup"

Is this tacit approval? Is the pope a fan?

Pope to internet porn!

P.S. Is 'nun porn' blaspemous?

Devout Catholic

Another Anti-Catholic hit-job

12:19,

I very much hope that your line "being poor causes poverty" was tongue-in-cheek. Without commenting on the poor people are hell-bound idea, I would like to point out the serious flaw in your reasoning. To the extent that your comment was an honest attempt at logic, I hope you work in transactions and do not have to write legal briefs or argue to juries. Even our HOT 1L guest poster has you beat in terms of reasoning power. Did I mention she was hot? Let's keep her (but on the condition that she always post a new photo).

Thou shalt not make anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim comments, but anti-Catholic comments are just fine.

Dear assclown,

Please feel free to explain to me how being poor is any less a "cause" of poverty than any other factor (e.g., capitalism generally, not paying a "living wage," refusing to disburse all property one claims into the common fisc until all are equally wretched).

Thanks in advance for your honest attempts at logic.

XOXO,

12:19

"genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy and taking drugs were all mortal sins"

isn't this exactly what the Church-sponsored Crusades/ colonization accomplished?

Like anything else, it is only bad if YOU can't do it (anymore).

Experimenting on reptiles is ok, even though they're animals and can't consent? I would think experimenting on consenting humans would be as acceptable as experimenting on creatures without cognitive functions.

And does this list reflect the "evolving" standards of decency among Catholics, or were these always mortal sins?

All I command is that you don't eat your own young and that you only lay around in the sun long enough to keep your body temp. up.

I didn't even know that this Catholic Church thing was still around.

1:00, I was pretty convinced it was just something Dan Brown made up.

Making exress or implied "anti" Catholic comments tends to be (rightly or wrongly) "just fine" in the eyes of many educated people because Catholics (or at least the Catholic Church and its most loyal doctrinal adherents) have tended to be so brutally "anti" towards members of so many other groups.

Many Catholics love to spit venom on gays. Many are stridently anti-abortion yet pro-death penalty (and/or pro war). Plenty are rabid racists. Of course, not all Catholics are this way (my mother isn't and my grandmother wasn't; my grandfather was), and much of it can be explained by socio-economic reasons (i.e. many in the working class are homophobic racists, regardless of religion), but not all of it (and not all working class Catholics are homophobic racists; many are only homophobic).

In short, NONE of the Catholic Church's more controversial, "anti" this or that policies through the ages (from viewing the Earth as the center of the universe, to the Crusades, to hating gays, etc.) were espoused by Jesus. A handful of men have determined the course of the faith. Today, now that the Pope can't simply order the death of heretics, we can come to ATL and knock the Church.

So what you're saying, 1:07, is that St. Peter was a rabbit?

12:19,

Saying being poor causes poverty is the same thing as saying X causes X. It is circular. Poverty does not cause itself, it is caused by something (forgive the passive voice all you gramarians out there). Thus, e.g. wrongfully firing somebody could cause that person to become poor (i.e. impoverished). Thus the employer would be guilty of causing poverty. Now, perhaps if the employee were not wrongfully discharged but had instead been discharged for stealing then they might cause their own poverty and thereby be guilty of causing poverty. But, in such a case, the cause of the poverty would be the underlying stealing . . . the cause would never be being poor itself. In short, and without descending into a metaphysical debate, something cannot cause itself.

Poor people clearly cause poverty: When poor people procreate, they increase the number of people in their household without increasing their income or wealth. If anything, from hospital bills to the cost of raising a child, procreation by the poor makes them even more poor. When the child, born and raised in poverty, becomes an adult, he is more likely to be poor himself, perpetuating poverty. Thus, the old message, "the meek will inherit the earth" is out; the new message is, "the meek will burn forever in the firey pit."

Now maybe the poor could prevent increasing poverty by putting their children up for adoption to wealthy people who have waited until their late 30s to have children and now spend obscene amounts of money on fertility treatments or overseas adoptions.

To 1:22 and all the other poor haters

Hey geniuses, if poor people hadn't reproduced, most of us wouldn't have been here. We're mostly serf-descended, geniuses.

"being poor" != "poverty"

Thanks for playing, assclown.

Thanks, 1:32, but the real point is that "the poor" isn't the same thing as "poverty."

The poor can and do cause poverty.

Failure to recycle as a “mortal” sin?

What a vivid illustration of how silly organized religion can be.

Lat, have a little self-respect. You attended one of the finest high schools in NYC on the Catholic Church's dime. Making lame jokes about Church doctrine based on secular media reporting is weak enough, but you also know that it inevitably draws out the usual assortment of gullible, knuckle-dragging, anti-Catholic morons among your readership. You can do better.

1:34, I think 1:32 is on your side, since he clearly was responding to 1:21, whose name is "assclown."

Being poor doesn't cause poverty. That's like saying being wealthy causes wealth. But people who are poor surely cause poverty (by creating more poor, e.g.), just as people who are wealthy cause wealth (by using their wealth to create more wealth, e.g.).

Poor: adjective
1. having little or no money, goods, or other means of support: a poor family living on welfare.
2. Law. dependent upon charity or public support.

Poverty: noun
1. the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence.

1:32 is thus correct but only to the extent that "being poor" and "poverty" are different parts of speech. So, thanks for playing!

1:34
The poor sure can and do cause poverty. So do the rich. That was not my point. My point was that something other than being poor causes people to be poor. Perhaps lack of educational or vocational opportunities causes poverty. But again, something cannot cause itself. I think your statement implicitly acknowledges that fact: "the poor can and do cause poverty" is not the same thing as saying being poor causes poverty. The two terms represent the same concept expressed in different parts of speech.

The one true cause of poverty is the laziness of those who are poor.

Planet Earth to 1:07, Planet Earth to 1:07: Go find a religion-debating website, dude.

season ticket on a one way ride!

/to 190

The Clinton Legacy:

Impeachment

Lewinsky

WhiteWater

Waco Slaughter

Paula Jones

Welfare "Reform"

Don't Ask Don't Tell

Healthcare Task Force Secret Meetings

Nannygate

Travelgate

"Talking" to Eleanor Roosevelt through a Psychic

Perjury

Failure to Hunt Osama

Republican Revolution

George W. Bush

Iraq War

-----------------------------

NO THANKS.

Hey, assclown:

"Being poor" is a gerund. Gerunds refer to what might be called a verb's action noun, which is one of the uses of the -ing form.

Therefore, "poverty" and "being poor" are both nouns and are, in fact, synonymous. Therefore, yet another of your arguments fails. Congrats.

is this a real article? It looks like something from one of the Onion's imitators that hasn't figured out how to write articles that are obvious jokes

This is REAL.. and you haters are going to hell... along with blacks and homos.

Pope

Grammarian:

Arguments as to grammar put aside, you've proved my point. Let's say "being poor" and "poverty" are synonyms (a point with which I implicitly agree in all of my posts . . .assuming you bothered to read what I actually wrote). If they are synonyms, my argument is even stronger. Here's how this works (and I'll try to keep it simple for you). If they're synonyms then my earlier assertion that X cannot cause X is directly applicable and "being poor" cannot cause "poverty" (unless you want to argue that something can cause itself). If they were not synonyms then my analogy is not as direct and would have to read something like: "X cannot cause something that is like, but not quite the same thing as X." That argument is, obviously, weaker. Next time, I suggest you do two things. First, read what was actually written. Second, think through what you have said. So, I will take your "congrats" as being genuine and I appreciate the boost that you gave to my arguments. Would you like to borrow my moniker? Perhaps it would fit you better.

1:07: We're not all in Opus Dei. Calm the fuck down.

Ceffeine is a drug. Nicotine's a drug.

Isn't communion wine a drug?

not that anyone actually cares enough to understand or read to get beyond their own knee-jerk responses, but here goes:

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=57130