Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I used my Visa card 12 times and my Mastercard 8 times. I took out a second mortgage on my house, and I accepted $2,000 interest on my IRA. Though such a confession might seem ludicrous to us today, it is nevertheless true that the Catholic Church once exacted the same penalties for usury -- charging interest on a financial loan -- as it does today for the sexual sins of lust and adultery.

It sometimes seems that we Catholics belong to the church of the sex-obsessed, that issues of sexuality and gender are at the forefront of our ecclesiastical life. Homosexuality, birth control, divorce, a male-only priesthood -- these issues apparently define contemporary Catholicism; they are the main topics of debate in our church both within clerical circles and among the laity. Meanwhile the poor continue to go hungry, the rich grow richer, and a bloated nuclear arsenal persists in spite of the end of the Cold War.

If the church is so concerned about the morality of sexual issues, there should be a deeper recognition regarding the use of sex by the corporate principalities in advertising and entertainment to enhance the consumer ethos. There should also be a deeper sense of compassion for the individual 'sinner' who is constantly assaulted by a sexual environment.

Despite its ubiquity, sex may not be the essential moral issue of our age. On the other hand, the moral issue of credit and debt, the very foundation of our world financial system -- the issue of usury -- once a prominent issue within church circles, is debated not at all. We have chosen to join sexuality with money because we believe that within the Christian community a critique of power and mammon should take precedence over a personal morality.

As theologian William Stringfellow once wrote: 'Human sin is quickly transposed into human willfulness or human selfishness or human pride -- greed, duplicity, lust, dishonesty, malice, covetousness, depravity, and similar vices. Yet human wickedness in this sense is so peripheral in the biblical version of the Fall that pietistic interpretations that it represents the heart of the matter must be accounted as gravely misleading.'

Overemphasis on sex and gender issues obscures the larger moral issues of justice, equality, and disarmament. We wish to decry the moral casuistry that allows the church to live comfortably with war makers, bomb builders, and the architects of world famine but has such difficulty with homosexuals, women priests, and practitioners of birth control.