Lenten Series: The Seven Deadly Sins
By Jeri Holladay2/24/2009
Catholic Online (http://www.catholic.org/)
In the privacy of our own consciences, we admit that shadows lurk within our hearts. Like St. Paul, we lament, “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.” (Romans 7:18)
The terms “sin” and “vice,” often used interchangeably, are not really identical. Sins are specific acts of commission or omission. Vices are character traits. Like virtue, vices are developed through habit and practice and produce a person’s basic disposition.
WITCHITA, Kansas (Catholic Online) - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel prize winner and long-term prisoner of the Russian Gulag, said that “the battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.”
It’s too easy to divide good and evil between we good guys and those bad guys, when, as Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” In the privacy of our own consciences, we admit that shadows lurk within our hearts, the concupiscence that makes sin appear to be an attractive choice. Our motives are always mixed. Like St. Paul, we lament, “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.” (Romans 7:18)
The desert fathers meditated long and hard on the human condition. Pope St. Gregory the Great, building upon the work of Evagrius and St. John Cassian, devised the list of what we call today The Seven Deadly sins. Sin, however, is not quite the right term for these deadly traits in the depths of our souls.
The terms “sin” and “vice,” often used interchangeably, are not really identical. Sins are specific acts of commission or omission. Vices are character traits. Like virtue, vices are developed through habit and practice and produce a person’s basic disposition. (The Catechism Glossary and #1813, 1866, 1849, 1853, 1854 offer the proper definitions of virtue, vice and sin.)
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See also:
Lent Call Out - What Are You Made Of?
Pope Benedicts' Call to Fasting
Getting Ready for Lent
posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 1:29 PM
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