What are the 7 Deadly Sins and how did they come about? How to avoid them?

In the fourth century, Pope Gregory the Great and Saint John Cassian put together a list of some vices of conduct that, for the Catholic Church, were considered the precursors of all other sins. They would serve as a starting point for correcting human failings and promoting God’s teachings. Thus emerged the 7 Deadly Sins.

A few years later, in the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas published the Summa Theologica, where he explains a little more about the 7 Deadly Sins. This work is considered one of the main philosophical references of scholasticism, a method that emerged in the Middle Ages that sought to reconcile the Christian faith with a system of rational thought.

What are the 7 Deadly Sins?

• Avarice
• Greediness
• Envy
• Will
• Laziness
• Lust
• superb

According to Saint Thomas, pride is the worst of all the 7 Deadly Sins, as it is where the Original Sin fits in. Adam and Eve would have tasted the forbidden fruit to equal God.

Explaining the 7 Deadly Sins is very important to the Catholic Church as they are part of Christian moral teaching. From these seven vices, other sins can arise (some mistakes we make are a mixture of two or more from the list). For example, if we bring this topic to the present day, we can see that corruption, very present in the news, comes from avarice. Street violence is the result of anger and drug abuse is linked to gluttony.

To keep people away from the 7 Deadly Sins, the Church created the Seven Virtues, which theoretically would be the antidotes. They would be:

• Humility
• subject
• Charity
• Chastity
• Patience
• Generosity
• Temperance

But Virtues are not as successful as the 7 Deadly Sins. If we stop to think about it, we all commit some sin every day. On weekends, we eat too much or don’t want to get out of bed. If a friend gets the job we wanted, we can’t help but feel a little jealous. If we are in love, we make lust our thinking.

This theme is so impregnated in our imagination that movies and books have already been written involving the subject. The movie Seven, for example, brings Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as police officers who need to find and arrest a serial killer who kills people following the order and concept of each of the Seven Deadly Sins. It’s a scary movie, but it makes you think.

A nice approach made with the sins was that of the publisher Objetiva. She gathered 7 important authors for literature and asked each one to write a work based on one of the 7 Deadly Sins. This is how the Plenos Pecados collection came about, a way to reflect, learn and have fun with this topic.

Is that you? What is your Capital Sin? See below for more details on each of the 7 Deadly Sins:

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