Back to Basics: Sloth

The last of the seven deadly sins is sloth.

Sloth (sometimes called acedia) is laziness -- particularly when it concerns prayer and spiritual life. It centers on doing nothing or doing just trivial things. Sloth is always wanting to rest and relax, with no desire or intention of making a sacrifice or doing something for others. It's an aversion to work -- physical, mental, and spiritual. Sloth inevitably leads to lukewarmness and tepidity and then deteriorates into disinterest, discouragement, and finally despair. Sloth breeds indifference, which prevents joy from ever being experienced.

Spiritual laziness can only be overcome by practicing the virtue of diligence, which is the habit of keeping focused and paying attention to the work at hand -- be it the work of employment or the work of God. Diligent prayer and diligent worship can make you more reverent. Diligence in all things ensures that you don't become idle ...

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

I have to say that, upon finishing this little review of these seven core sins I was surprised to find definite identification with two of them specifically. For the moment at least that has resulted in an identification of them in my daily life and an effort to move away from them through practicing the virtue prescribed as a remedy. Perhaps this is a sign to myself that whenever I feel too complacent it is time again to read through the list of sins and virtues to see what else I find.

Back to Basics: Greed

The sixth of the seven deadly sins is greed.

Greed is the inordinate love of and desire for earthly possessions. Things are cherished above people and relationships. Amassing a fortune and foolishly trying to accumulate the most stuff is greed, which is sometimes called avarice. Next to anger, envy, and lust, more crimes have been committed due to greed than any other deadly sin. "It's never enough. I've got to have more." That's the battle cry for greed.

Greed is also a sign of mistrust. "I doubt that God will take care of me, so I try to gather as much as possible now in case no more is left later." ...

Generosity, however, is the best weapon against greed. Freely giving some of your possessions away, especially to those less fortunate, is considered the perfect antithesis to greed and avarice. Generosity promotes detachment from material things that come and go...

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

Next up, the last one in our list of seven deadly sins ... Sloth.

Back to Basics: Gluttony

The fifth of the seven deadly sins is gluttony.

Like lust, gluttony focuses on pleasure and finds it in food and drink... Both enslave the soul to the body, even though the soul -- being superior to the body -- should be in charge. Gluttons don't eat out of necessity or for social reasons, but merely to consume and experience the pleasure of taste...

Legitimate eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, aren't gluttony. They're medical conditions that require treatment and care. The sin of gluttony is freely choosing to over-consume. Gluttony is voluntary and merely requires self-control and moderation...

Periodic fasting, restricting the amount of food you eat, and abstinence, avoiding meat for some favorite food, are the best defenses against gluttony. Unlike dieting where the goal is to lose weight, fasting and abstinence are to purify the soul by controlling the desires of the body...

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

Downward and onward ... Greed will be up next.

Back to Basics: Anger

The fourth of the seven deadly sins is anger. This is one that I think our society has let get out of control in the name of healthy self-expression.

You have no control over what angers you, but you do have control over what you do after you become angry. The deadly sin of anger is the sudden outburst of emotion -- namely hostility -- and sustaining thoughts about the desire for revenge...

Patience, the virtue that allows you to adapt and endure evil without harboring any destructive feelings, is the best countermeasure for anger. When you give yourself the time and opportunity to cool off, anger dissipates and more practical concerns come to the front line.

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

And on we will go next to Gluttony.

Back to Basics: Lust

The third of the seven deadly sins is lust.

The Catholic Church believes that it's normal and healthy to be attracted to and appreciate the opposite sex. That's not lust, and it's not considered a sin.

Lust is looking at, imagining, and even treating others as mere sex objects to serve your own physical pleasures, rather than as individuals made in the image and likeness of God. Lust is having someone become something merely to please you, in fantasy or reality.

The Church says that lust depersonalizes the other person and the one having the lustful thoughts. It makes both parties nothing more than instruments of enjoyment instead of enabling them to focus on the unique gift of personhood. And it seeks to separate, divide, and isolate what God intended to be united -- love and life, the unitive and procreative dimensions of marriage...

Chastity, the virtue that moderates sexual desire, is the best remedy for lust. Chastity falls under temperance and can help to keep physical pleasure in moderation.

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

Next up ... Anger.

Back to Basics: Envy

The second of the seven deadly sins is envy.

Envy, another deadly sin, is the resentment of another person's good fortune or joy. Catholicism distinguishes between two kinds of envy.

• Material envy is when you resent others who have more money, talent, strength, beauty, friends, and so on, than you do.
• Spiritual envy is resenting others who progress in holiness, preferring that they stay at or below your level instead of being joyful and happy that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Spiritual envy is far worse and more evil than material envy.

Note that some spiritual writers and moralists make a distinction between envy and jealousy. They maintain that envy is the resentment of what others have, such as possessions, talent, fame, and so one, whereas jealousy is the fear of losing what you already have... Jealousy is considered to be as much a sin as envy, because it resembles that deadly sin a whole bunch...

The Church maintains that meekness or kindness can counter envy.

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

Next up ... Lust.

Back to Basics: Pride

The first of the seven deadly sins is pride. It also is the mother, the author, of all other sins. This was a new concept for me when I first came across it but so very obvious upon reflection. In the end it all comes down to a distortion of truth, does it not? How important am I? How much better am I than others? Easy to see and understand, yet this is so very hard to keep in check ... because it can manifest itself in any and every aspect of one's life.

The sin of pride is an inordinate love of self -- a super-confidence and high esteem in your own abilities. It's also known as vanity. It exaggerates your abilities, gifts, and talents, and ignores your weaknesses, frailties, and imperfections.

In Catholicism, sinful pride is the deviation or distortion of the legitimate need of self-affirmation. Liking yourself isn't sinful. In fact, it's healthy and necessary, but when the self-perception no longer conforms to reality, and you begin to think that you're more important than you actually are, the sin of pride is rearing its ugly head...

Pride is the key to all other sins, because after you believe that you're more important than you actually are, you compensate for it when others don't agree with your judgment. You rationalize your behavior and make excuses for lying, cheating, stealing, insulting, ignoring, and such, because no one understands you like you do. In your mind, you're underestimated by the world.

That's the extreme expression of pride. A subtler example is when you refuse to accept the authority of someone else over you, be it a parent, teacher, employer, pastor, bishop or pope. Most resentment toward those in authority has nothing to do with the occasional instances of abuse of power in the course of human history. Rather anti-authoritarianism is rooted in pride: "No one is going to tell me what to do." ...

Pride also prevents you from seeking, listening to, or applying advice from others. It fools the mind into thinking that it alone has or can discover all the answers without help from anyone...

The Catholic Church teaches that humility is the best remedy for pride. It's not a false self-deprecation ... It's not denying the truth ...

In other words, although acknowledging your talents is good, humility should remind you that your talents come from God. Pride fools you into thinking that you're the source of your own greatness.

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

Next up: Envy.

Back to Basics: The Seven Deadly Sins

The opposite of the cardinal virtues are the seven deadly sins. We'll be going through these one by one, as well as the virtues that remedy each, in future posts.

As you may have guessed, along with cultivating good habits, some bad habits need to be avoided. The Church maintains that seven vices in particular lead to breaking one or more of the Ten Commandments. These particular bad habits are called the seven deadly sins because, according to Catholicism, they're mortal sins -- sins that kill the life of sanctifying grace. The Church believe that if you commit a mortal sin, you forfeit heaven and opt for hell by your own free will and actions.

A mortal sin is any act or thought of a human being that turns away from God and which turns toward a created thing instead. In other words, mortal sin is the complete turning away from God and embracing something else in place... Three conditions are necessary for moral sin to exist.

• Grave Matter: the act itself is intrinsically evil and immoral. For example, murder, rape, incest, perjury, adultery, and so on are grave matter.
• Full Knowledge: The person must know that what they're doing or planning to do is evil and immoral...
• Deliberate Consent: The person must freely choose to commit the act or plan to do it. Someone forced against his will doesn't commit a mortal sin...

Venial sins are any sins that only meet one or two of the conditions needed for a mortal sin but do not fulfill all three at the same time, or they're minor violations of the moral law, such as giving an obscene gesture to another driver while in traffic. Venial sin is less serious than mortal sin...[they] aren't deadly to the life of grace, but like minor infections in the body, if casually ignored and left untended, may deteriorate into a more serious condition...

The seven deadly sins are pride, envy, lust, anger, gluttony, greed, and sloth and Pope Gregory the Great made up the list in the 6th century.

Catholicism For Dummies by John Trigilio

Recommended reading: Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft. He examines the virtues in depth and also looks specific virtues and Beatitudes as antidotes to each of the seven deadly sins. Not a new concept but one that he writes about superbly (as always).

Next up: Deadly Sin #1.