The capital vices are they that produce other vices, specially, by way of final cause. It is a quote of Thomas Aquinas, and it explains why the list of the seven deadly sins continues to reuse in sermons, paintings, novels, and screens through centuries.
They were never intended as a neat shortlist of the worst things that an individual can do. They act as a kind of diagnostic sheet: repetitive desire perversities creating dozens of minor decisions, habits, and justifications. This is why the tradition refers to them as capital vices; root patterns having branching effects.
The very history of the list itself has a history. Early monastic authors followed the patterns of recurring thoughts and temptations; the logic of theology had later improved the plan to the more common seven. The wisdom which remained was the wisdom that spiritual life is not usually lost in any one dramatic gesture, but inordinarily in the common drift.
1. Pride (superbia)
Pride in traditional Christian doctrine is not primitive self respect or enjoyment of work well done. It is the self-absorbed stance that makes the self the ultimate point of reference-credit, control and status oriented around me. The role of governor was repeatedly held with pride by medieval authors, who spoke of it as a kind of overseer of all the other vices, Aquinas, and according to subsequent tradition, as a root by which other disorders spread.
The vice may be concealed within seemingly decent situations: the necessity to appear correct, the unwillingness to be proven wrong, or the tendency of making any achievement evidence of the superiority. Even in the old tongue, even vainglory was recognized as the desire to be applauded, whereas pride took the spiritual-credit of what one has been given and has accomplished. The classical balancing force is humility-sightedness of one before God and other people.
2. Greed / Avarice (avaritia)
Greed is usually reduced to money talk, but historical theology was more widespread: the excessive love of acquisition, protection and profit. Gregory the Great notoriously came to the realization that it was not only things that can be coveted, but also titles and ranks, so that it is more a status-hunger than a shopping problem.
Since greed is a capital vice, it is significant since it conditions the mind to perceive life as a lack: lacking time, lacking acknowledgement, lacking cushion against risk. Its practical application has the potential to make relationships transactions and gratitude anxiety. The contrary practice called in the custom is charity–generosity which is based on trust and not upon amassing.
3. Wrath (ira)
Anger has been differentiated in Christian moral teaching since wrath. Anger is a reaction to actual injustice; the wrath is anger hardening into injustice, overreaction that attempts to hurt, punish, or kill. The wording of the Catechism is harsh: anger becomes massively contrary to charity when it turns into a conscious intention to kill a neighbor or to severely injure him.
Wrath too is socially infectious. It redefines the imagination in such a way that the adversaries become the enemies and the punishment turns out to be the revenge. It is a well-drilled exercise in the contemporary life; through the comment boards, media diets of complaints, and self-toxic monologues which leave the body in a constant position of response to attack. Patience is the classical cure, associated with the exercises of slackness in reaction, and the expansion of perception.
4. Envy (invidia)
Envy is not merely a desire of what the other person possesses, but it is the resentment of what the other person is well off in, and in most cases a desire to see it reduced. In revising the previous lists of monastic, Gregory substituted sadness by envy, which he said was satisfaction in the happiness of a neighbor and exultation in his calamity.
This vice is hard to recognize as it may even put on some clothes of discernment, humor, or being realistic. It also is quite compatible with the highlight-reel culture that promotes continuous comparison. The counter-virtue of the tradition is kindness: the developed gift of good-will toward another man, the good that is personally awkward.
5. Lust (luxuria)
The presence of attraction is not lust as it was conceived by older theologians. The disordering of relation desire to pleasure per se, without reference to individual personhood and dignity. According to the Catechism, lust is a pattern of desire, or an inordinate affection of relation pleasure, and not a single feeling.
Since it is capital, lust is assumed to be generative: it is capable of giving rise to secrecy, duplicity, exploitation, and dysfunctional ability to recognize others as fully human. The classical list has remedied it in chastity, which is not the loftiness of feeling toward the flesh but the art of desiring and being devoted and loving.
6. Gluttony (gula)
Traditional descriptions tend to take gluttony as being a broader slavery to appetite, food and drink as ingredients to be received, not as gifts. Aquinas even talked about gluttony forms that relate to choosiness, hurry or overindulgence, which express how consumption can become nervous, demanding, or obsessed.
Gluttony is an important spiritual pattern as it trains the heart not to tolerate but to escape pain, undermine attention, thankfulness and restraint. The opposite vice is moderation: the ability to feel pleasure without being controlled, to cease without bitterness, to make decisions without self-discipline.
7. Sloth / Acedia (acedia)
Indolence is not being simply averse to tasks. Within the tradition, acedia refers to a weariness of spiritual good a kind of drag in prayer, service, and moral effort that causes one to feel that it is meaningless or burdensome. Aquinas even associated it with sadness and he defined sloth as a form of sorrow that renders a person lazy in spiritual practices.
The importance of such framing is that it distinguishes acedia and normal fatigue. Corporeal fatigue is remediable by rest; acedia remains even in the presence of rest, since the underlying problem is not meaninglessness and escapism. The other quality is diligence: in faithfulness to the good, which is continued, voluntary, when it is dry.
The seven sins taken collectively create a roadmap to common human perversity: I over God (pride), I get over I give (greed), I take vengeance over I take justice (wrath), I compare, I should be thankful (envy), I use, I would have loved (lust), I would be free (gluttony) and I would avoid, I should serve (sloth).
The tradition paired them with “remedial” virtues humility, charity, patience, kindness, chastity, temperance, and diligence not as slogans but as practiced alternatives. The enduring value of the old list is its clarity: it names what people keep trying to rename, and it describes how small interior choices become a life.”
