CAPITAL SINS

Certain sins are called the capital sins, not because they are the most serious – indeed they are not always mortal sins – but because they often lead to other sins. They are the “heads” (Latin: capita) of other sins, in the sense that they provide the goals for the sake of which we are tempted to commit other, perhaps more serious, sins. They have sometimes also been called deadly sins, because they are the sources of our other sins and of our overall sinfulness. The traditional list is: pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth.

The doctrine on the seven capital sins explains how sins typically arise, and so an examination of them can be a good diagnostic tool, to see the weaknesses and defects in our moral and spiritual life. “Capital sins” refers both to the acts and to the vices or dispositions to perform such acts.
Sin is not to be thought of as if it were the choice of an evil thing. No things are evil in their nature; evil as such is the privation or eating away of what is good. So, in sinning, one wills something that is in itself good, but one does so in an inordinate way. The sin is choosing some good in such a way as to turn away from a full respect for some other good or goods and so turn away from God’s plan. Thus, one of the traditional definitions of a sin is “the willing of a changeable good in an inordinate way, so that it involves a turning away from the unchangeable God” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 84, a. 1).

Pride is called the beginning of all sins (Sir 10:13). It involves an inordinate desire for status, for praise and reputation among others. Pride can lead to an unwillingness to depend on God or others, and thus leads to many other sins that involve exalting oneself. Pride of course is quite different from a well-ordered and genuine love of self, a type of love required of us (we are to love our neighbor as ourselves). Pride is the desire for a status for its own sake, rather than as a concomitant of our real situation. Having lost its essential connection with our real fulfillment, pride can even move us to desire an unrealistic and harmful independence.

The inordinate desire for wealth is avarice, which is called the root of all vices, since it enables one to commit the other sins (1 Tm 6:10). The inordinate desire for pleasures of food and drink is gluttony. The inordinate desire for sexual pleasure is lust.
These four are desires for goods with evils attached to them. The last three capital sins are aversions from goods, because of some difficulty or threat attached to them. Thus, sloth is the aversion to one’s own moral or spiritual good because of the difficulties in its pursuit. Envy is sorrow at another’s good because it is perceived as threatening one’s own excellence. And anger is the inordinate desire for vindication or vengeance.

The capital sins have the convergent effect of producing a selfish, spiteful character, bent on one’s own comfort and praise, with the result that what is genuinely good is hated because it threatens to dispel one’s own or others’ illusions.
The contemporary culture should be considered in assessing the way capital sins can gain a foothold in our life. In our culture the very idea of objective moral norms is thought to be intolerant. What is important in life is identified with pleasant and comfortable experiences; any obstacles to such experiences should be removed. Heaven, then, seems unreal and hell must be a fiction, an unpleasant, backward, and intolerant idea. The result is a culture in which power, wealth, and pleasure are the only intrinsically important goals.

Pride takes the form, not so much of pursuing a socially respected status, as of being “one’s own true self,” unencumbered by the fiats and commands of moral authorities. Moral truths are thought of as arbitrary rules threatening one’s unique personality. Pride becomes a real effort to become one’s own sovereign. Lust, the demand for finer foods and exquisite drinks and snacks, avarice (including the willingness to neglect one’s children to attain the things one has come to expect), anger (e.g., at “right wing extremists”), resentment (envy) of virtuous persons dismissed as “holier-than-thous” – these have become socially acceptable dispositions in our culture.

The doctrine on the capital sins makes clear some basic truths about the moral life. First, sin involves an inordinate choice of a good. All of the things pursued in the capital sins are objects that, if pursued appropriately and wisely and in accord with the other goods of the kingdom, would be quite reasonable and morally good. Thus, a status fitting one’s vocation, pleasure in healthy food and drink, pleasure in sexual acts of husband and wife that truly embody and actualize their marital communion, and so on: these are goods which it is fitting to pursue. It is the pursuit of status, pleasure, comfort, and so on as independent from the kingdom planned by God that is the source of sin. Sin is the shriveling of one’s concern to certain objects one wants, no matter what their relation to the kingdom.

See: Concupiscence; Sin; Vices.
Suggested Readings: CCC 1865-1866. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pt. I-II, q. 84. G. Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles, pp. 440-442. 

Patrick Lee




Russell Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright © 1997, Our Sunday Visitor.

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Last Updated: Sunday, April 01, 2001 03:24:19 PM