THE

SEVEN DEADLY SINS

At a time when invective poses as straight talk,

and the rant replaces reasoned discourse, Lawrence
Cunninghams brilliant new meditation on the seven
deadly sins is pure gift. Moral confusion may be the
defining weakness of our era, but here is a book that can
lead us back to the light.
Paula Huston

Author of Simplifying the Soul

Both conversant with the deep tradition and attuned to

the particular challenges of our time, Cunningham is at
his best in these fresh meditations on the seven deadly
sins. Prepare yourself to meet Cassian, Dante, and
Aquinas on one page, and contemporaries like Kathleen
Norris and Oliver Stone on the next. One could not ask
for a wiser or gentler companion in the joys and potential
pitfalls of the spiritual life than Larry Cunningham.
Christopher Pramuk

Author of Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton

THE

SEVENa visitor
DEADLY
s guide SINS

LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM
ave maria press

notre dame, indiana

____________________________________
2012 by Lawrence S. Cunningham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews,
without written permission from Ave Maria Press, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre
Dame, IN 46556.
Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province
of Holy Cross.
www.avemariapress.com
Paperback: ISBN-10 1-59471-340-5, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-1-340-8
E-book: ISBN-10 1-59471-359-6, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-359-0
Cover image Veer
Cover and text design by Brian C. Conley.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cunningham, Lawrence.
The seven deadly sins : a visitors guide / Lawrence S. Cunningham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-59471-340-8 (pbk.) -- ISBN 1-59471-340-5 (pbk.)
1. Deadly sins. 2. Catholic Church--Doctrines. I. Title.
BV4626.C86 2012
241.3--dc23
2012022140

Contents

Acknowledgments .. .................................................................................... vii

Introduction .. ....................................................................................................... 1
1. Some Gratifying Thoughts on Gluttony . . ........................ 11
2. Some Pure Thoughts on Lust ........................................................21
3. Some Generous Thoughts on Greed ................................... 33
4. Some Focused Thoughts on Sloth ........................................ 45
5. Some Joyful Thoughts on Envy ................................................. 55
6. Some Peaceful Thoughts on Anger ..................................... 63
7. Some Humble Thoughts on Pride ..............................................71
Epilogue: Purity of Heart ........................................................................ 81
Notes .......................................................................................................................... 109
For Further Reading .................................................................................. 111

Introduction

David Finchers 1995 film, Seven, chronicles a serial killer who chooses victims that exemplify each of the seven
deadly sins. To narrate a terrible story set in contemporary
times, Fincher examines a hallowed tradition of a moral
category whose history dates back to the late fourth century. An earlier retelling is the 1933 ballet The Seven Deadly
Sins, choreographed by George Balanchine, with music
composed by Kurt Weill and words by Bertolt Brecht. Its
the story of two sisters who committed the seven sins in
different cities. The ballets creative team and the filmmaker drew upon commonplace beliefs in the medieval
world. Dante used the seven deadly sins to organize his
Purgatorio, the second part of the Divine Comedy. In The
Canterbury Tales, Chaucer has the good Parson preach an
edifying sermon on the sins. In Bunyans The Pilgrims
Progress, we meet the sins personified. The sinful list has
lingered into our own time and, as we shall see, shows up
in various ways.
1

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

It was of significant interest to medieval thinkers that the

sins numbered to seven. With a keen interest in St. Augustines exploration into the mystical meaning of numbers,
medieval commentators were able to contrast the seven
deadly sins with the seven penitential psalms, the seven
petitions of the Lords Prayer, or, more typically, the seven
gifts of the Holy Spirit (Is 11:23) or the seven corporal
works of mercy (and, later, the seven spiritual works of
mercy) or the seven last words of Jesus upon the Cross.
That the naming of the sins and their counterparts did not
comport easily was of little concernit was the potency of
the number seven that counted, since the Bible opens with
the six days of creation and the added day of Sabbath rest.
Of more interest, however, is to explain the origins of
these seven death-dealing sins named traditionally as
pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. The
list as such has no single biblical warrant, although each
is mentioned as a sin in various books of the Bible. The
origins of the list are to be found in the work of that great
monastic writer and saint of late antiquity, John Cassian
(ca. 360435), who, with long experience in the Christian
East among the Desert Fathers, in 415 wrote the Institutes,
a treatise on the monastic life, after he had settled in Marseillewhere he had founded two monasteries.
Borrowing heavily from the writings of the Greek monk
Evagrius of Pontus (345399), John Cassian said that the
goal of the monastic life was to attain purity of heart
2

Introduction

because Jesus had said that those who attained purity of

heart would see God (Mt 5:8). However, there were obstacles to attaining purity of heart caused by phantasms
or passions (Evagrius called them, in Greek, logismoi)
that clouded the heart. Evagrius and John Cassian both
describe these logismoi as eight in number: gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, dejection (sadness), acedia (boredom), vainglory, and pride.
A later, seventh-century monastic writer named John Climacus described these obstructions and how they functioned by explaining how a certain suggestion comes to
the mind (e.g., let me seek out some unlawful pleasure)
while the mind plays with the desirability of the pleasure.
The mind then consents to the suggestion, and after an interior struggle (I should not do this, but maybe . . .), finally,
one is captivated by the temptation or, in the words of John
Climacus in The Ladder of Divine Ascent, the suggestion
captivates the heart.
For these monastic writers, the eight logismoi were not exactly understood as sins, but as powerful imaginative constructs or passions that clouded the mind (they would say
the heart) and led to misguided plans of action. If acted
upon, they did lead to sin. Those writers saw the eight logismoi as veils, illusions, and passions that clouded the
heart and, as such, blocked that purity of heart by which
one came to an experiential knowledge of God dwelling
in the heart. To read the Institutes is to read a treatise that
3

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

reflects a powerful psychological insight into wayward interior motives. In time, these subtle explorations into illusions would become known as deadly sins, but in their
origin they were considered more of a prelude to sin.
John Cassians works had a powerful influence on later
monasticism. The Rule of St. Benedictthe foundational
guide for subsequent monastic life in the Westpays tribute to Cassian. It was Pope Gregory the Great (ca. 540
604), himself once a monk and biographer of St. Benedict,
who changed the list of the eight logismoi into the seven
sins we know today. In a vast, sprawling work glossing
over the Book of Jobknown as the Moralia in Job
Gregory collapsed vainglory and pride into pride alone
and folded dejection (sadness) into acedia while adding
the sin of envy, thus making the list as we know it today.
Gregory also argued that the root of all these sins was
pride. Such was the authority of Gregory and his Moralia
that the list of seven sins became standard in the West. He
saw these sins as capital (from the Latin caputhead),
as the source of all other sins. St. Thomas Aquinas would
repeat Gregorys observation that from these sins all sorts
of other sins would come.

C assian to G reg o ry:

E ight Lo gism o i to S even S ins
J o hn C assian

G reg ory the G reat

Vainglory (pride)
Envy
Sadness (sloth)
Avarice
Wrath
Lust
Gluttony

Gluttony
Lust
Avarice
Wrath
Sadness
Sloth
Vainglory
Pride

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

Of course, there is nothing sacrosanct or doctrinally binding about the list. Indeed, the late political theorist and philosopher Judith Shklar, in her collected essays Ordinary
Vices, singled out cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal,
and misanthropy as particularly noxiousboth for individuals and society. It takes only a moments reflection,
however, to understand that something as powerful as hatred can flow from envy or wrath, just as egomania is but
a contemporary way of describing pride or greed. Those
permutations are numerous, and our only reason for writing these chapters on the traditional seven is to give us
latitude to observe behavior in our contemporary setting.
In other words, the list of seven sins is not normative but
suggestive.
Whether following the traditional litany of sins or not,
contemporary writers, both theologians and ethicists, have
exhibited a continuing interest in ruminating on virtues
and vices. Deadly Vices, a recent book by the British philosopher Gabriele Taylor, states that the seven deadly sins
are still worthy of consideration because, as Taylor writes
in her introduction, these so-called deadly sins were correctly so named and correctly classed together. Irrespective of their theological background they can be seen to
be similar in structure in their agents thoughts and desires
while differing in content depending on the vice in question, with focus primarily on the self and its position in the
world. They are similar also in that in each case, they are
destructive of that self and prevent its flourishing.1 The
6

Introduction

key idea in Taylors statement is that these sins retard or

destroy the flourishing of the self. In a nutshell: succumbing to these passions is not wholesome. They shrivel us as
humans.
The following essays on the seven deadly sins originally appeared in a much-abbreviated form in the magazine
Notre Dame Business. Carolyn Woo, then dean of the
Mendoza College of Business, thought that the magazine
ought to have a theological voice and invited me to write
for it. When the series was complete, the editors of Ave
Maria Press thought it might be useful to expand the series into a brief book for more general circulation. I was
happy to comply with that request. My intention is not to
add new insights into a vast collection of literature on the
seven deadly sins, but to think about them in a pastorally
sensitive fashion. To do that means that we must consider
both the sins themselves and their mirror opposites: the
virtues that correspond positively to them. Two more sections have been added as the essays have been expanded.
A chapter to conclude the book has been included on that
primordial virtue of purity of heart, lest the seven sins
have the last word. After that chapter, a bibliographical excursion has been offered to give the reader a small glance
into the vast scholarship and commentary on the seven
deadly sins.
The editors made the brilliant suggestion that the subtitle be A Visitors Guide to honor Dantewho did visit
7

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

the territory of purgatory where these sins were expiated.

Dante climbed the seven terraces of the mount and at each
terrace encountered each of the sins and examples of their
virtuous remedy. I would only add that, since we are all
visitors on this earth, we too will eventually meet the seven
sinseither directly or in their many disguises.
An inside joke within our department: a colleague would
inquire, What are you working on? My reply would be:
Lust. At a more serious level, however, it was a pleasure to rummage around in the history of the theological
tradition that is rooted in monastic theology, to muse over
the ways, literary and visual, that the seven deadly sins
became treated, and to have the chance to enter, albeit with
great caution, into the area of Christian ethicswhile, at
the same time, being aware that a daily inspection of the
news or even a daily examination of conscience reminded
me that the human capacity for sin seems unabated. With
this caution in mind, I must point out to the reader that I
am neither an ethicist nor a moral theologian by profession
or training. My interest in this topic arose out of interest in
the history of Christian spirituality in general and monastic spirituality in particular. I have no particular expertise
in the area of Christian ethics. Indeed, I have been stung
by a comment once made by Meister Eckhart when he
commented on the Pauline demand to put on the armor of
God. Eckhart said that too many have the armor closed in
a closet or on a stand for display. He then added: There
are those who have virtues in their notebooks or who only
8

Introduction

know and talk about them. With that admonitory thought

in mind, I write on the virtues needed to cultivate as one
confronts the deadly sins.

ONE

Some Gratifying
Thoughts on Gluttony

Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach.

Philippians 3:19

Although I confess to a mild predilection for watching

sports on television, certain events cause me to reach immediately for the remote because of their sheer capacity
to bore. I would rather look at old magazines in a dentists
office than watchthis is a selective listpoker, bowling,
or golf on television. In my random cruising around the
channels, however, a new phenomenon has caught my eye
that is beyond boring; it is disgusting: competitive eating.
Whatever possesses people to try to eat dozens of hot dogs
in a limited period of time? Is there not something revolting about such an enterprise?
To my queasy horror, not only have hot-dog-eating contests become popular on television, but also they have
11

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

actually been deemed sporting contests. To add insult to

injury, there was a series on the Travel Channel featuring
a rather porcine young man who accepted challenges in
various eateries around the country to finish impossible
confections of food in a set period of time. It is evidently
thought that a human being sitting down in front of a sixpound sandwich with appropriate sidesand stuffing the
mixture in his face in an houris a feat to be admired.
I often wonder who it is who wishes to watch these folks
shovel food in their faces, not for nutrition or pleasure, or
the joy of eating in company, but simply to ingest large
quantities of food. If there is any sign of the coming
apocalypse, in my estimation, eating contests rank high on
the list. Such contests constitute a travesty against the very
nature of eating; they dramatically demonstrate the classic definition of gluttony: the inordinate appetite for food.
Such feats are neither for nutrition nor for hospitality, but
for the sheer purpose of stuffing food into the body. Furthermore, such feats abuse the very notion of food in itself and, in the process, abase food. When moms told their
children not to waste food (Think of the starving children
. . .), as moms often did, they articulated a profound truth.
To my mind, one of the greatest human pleasures is to eat
good food, and especially if that eating is done in the company of people. After all, the word companion means
one with whom we share bread. That kind of eating, as
the traditional Catholic blessing rightly says, is a gift that
12

Some Gratifying Thoughts on Gluttony

comes from Gods bounty. More than half-a-dozen times

in Lukes gospel, Jesus enjoys the hospitality of others. He
shares bread with both sinners and Pharisees. Lukes marvelous account of the Emmaus encounter (Lk 24:1333)
insists that the companions of Jesus recognized him in the
breaking of bread. The British theologian Nicholas Lash
once remarked of that meeting on the road to Emmaus that
the Church was born in an act of hospitality. Jesus Christ
is a companion (from the Latin cum panea bread sharer)
and a brother (from the old Germanic root brtbread).
And, not to put too fine a point on it, he gives us himself as
bread: Take and eat. . . . Eating, in that sense of the term,
is fundamental to a full human life.
One could make the argument that the sheer joy of eating a
festive mealthink of Christmas dinneris a dim mirror
of the Eucharistic meal that stands at the core of Christian
practice. It involves sharing, eating and living relationships. In fact, artists have made much of a festive dinner
spoiled (think of the heartbreaking, ruined Christmas dinner in James Joyces novel A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man) by the eruption of hatred or family argument.
Eating beyond the need to provide oneself with nutrition is
radically a communal event. A little test proves the point:
think of the best meal you have ever had. Chances are, it
was not a meal taken alone.
Among the seven deadly sins, gluttony alone is described
as bringing in its wake both physical and psychological
13

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

results noxious for human beings. In a curious reflection on gluttony, St. Thomas Aquinas defines gluttony as
an inordinate desire for food and drink and says that it
brings forth five daughters: inappropriate pleasure, surliness, uncleanliness, stupidity, and hebetudo mentis, which
may be understood roughly as mental slowness.
Dante, describing his exemplar of gluttony in the Inferno,
notes that Ciacco the Hog stays stupefied on a pile of
garbage with his head down and afflicted with strabismus
(crossed eyes)symptomatic, according to medieval medicine, for hebetudo mentis. William Langland, the writer of
the allegorical narrative poem Piers Plowman, has a more
vivid description:
And to drink all days in diverse taverns . . .
to gobble food on fasting days
before the fitting time,
and then to sit supping until
sleep assails them,
and to grow portly as a town
pig and to repose in soft beds
Till sloth and sleep sleek their
sides.

The constant stuffing of food and drink brings with it observable results: obesity, dullness, and the odd pleasure
of eating for the sake of eating. Langland also notes that
gluttony leads to another deadly sin: sloth. Of course, this
14

Some Gratifying Thoughts on Gluttony

ancient literature must be allowed its rhetorical excess, but

what all these writers have in common is the conviction
that gluttony has its consequences beyond lethal damage
to the body.
Our media and our health-care workers are full of warnings about our contemporary obesity pandemic. They also
point out consequences beyond getting fat, such as diabetes, heart problems, and other conditions. Obesity, diabetes, or high cholesterol, however, is not the same as gluttony, or evenif there is such a thingfood addiction.
Many things have contributed to our national disease of
obesity. They are constantly enumerated for us: our predilection for fast food; our penchant for sugar-laced soft
drinks; our lost opportunities for actual physical work; our
hunger for greasy food, coupled with our lack of enthusiasm for vegetables and fruit; the siren song of television
advertising (think of the cereal ads aimed at children). In
other wordsand not to harp on the subjectobesity is
a by-product of profound cultural shifts in a largely postagricultural and postindustrial society. Lumberjacks may
require four thousand calories a day, but store clerks,
stockbrokers, and college professors do not. Obesity is,
paradoxically, a symptom both of the rich (we can afford
to eat whatever we want) and the poor (we eat lots of starch
because it is cheap).

15

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

There is nothing wrong with taking pleasure at table, but

the glutton separates out the pursuit of pleasure as fundamental with no reference to nutrition or conviviality. Gluttony is a solitary pursuita kind of alimentary self-abuse.
What the ancient Christian tradition most objected to about
gluttony was that it struck against common humanity with
consequences for the individual and society. It is a sin and
not merely an addiction. A famous late-medieval painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicts the seven deadly sins.
In portraying gluttony, Bosch has a corpulent man gorging
himself at a table, while off to the side stands another man
guzzling from a wine jug. The key to the painting, however, is a child fruitlessly pulling at the seated figure and
begging for something to eat. Boschs point is that the glutton is so preoccupied with his own needs that he cannot see
the needs of another. That scene tells it all. It is a striking
image of the old definition of the sinner: incurvatus in se
turned or curved inward on the self.
Gluttonys opposite is the virtue of temperance. All of us
require a certain temperance with respect to food and drink,
and, most often as a New Years resolution, we pledge to be
temperate, if for no other reason than good health. Given
our ability to be globally aware, however, there is another
good reason to resist excess and cultivate more awareness
of how and what we eat: the rampant hunger in the world.
It is fundamental to the teaching of Jesus that we turn to
the other when we think of food. That Jesus fed the crowds
at the multiplication of the loaves and fish (Mk 6) struck
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Some Gratifying Thoughts on Gluttony

the gospel writers as so important that all four of them recorded the event. In his last great sermon on the end times
recorded in Matthews gospel (chapter 25), Jesus says that
when we give food to the hungry we are, in effect, giving
food to him. The Christian tradition has always, from its
beginnings, taught that feeding the hungry is one of the
great acts of mercy and justice. Jesus tells of the rich man
and Lazarus in chapter 16 of the Gospel of Luke. It begins
with the poor man fighting with dogs for scraps from the
rich mans table. The unspoken point, of course, is that the
rich man is a true villain in the storycompletely indifferent to the plight of the poor.
Although the glutton may not be conscious of it (and,
given his preoccupation for the self and its satisfactions,
he would typically not be), the abuse and misuse of food,
even for personal gratification, is an affront to the poor
of the world. It would be wrong, then, to look at gluttony
solely in terms of the harm that it does to the individual.
Food is, in a radical fashion, a social reality. The teaching
of the contemporary Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh,
who argues that all humans must learn mindfulness, has
always impressed me. He says that we need to cultivate
awareness of where our food comes from, learn who has
produced it for us, and, finally, be mindful of those who
have no food. That sentiment is similar to one that the early
medieval monk Alcuin of York prayed: Whenever we eat
we should give thanks to You. And having received from
your hands, let us give with equally generous hands to
17

The Seven Dea dly Sin s

those who are poor, breaking bread and sharing our bread
with them. For you have told us that whatever we give to
the poor, we give to you. Amen. Even more pointed about
the sources of our food is this old blessing from Scotland:
No ordinary fooda sacrament awaits us / on our table
spread / For men are risking lives on sea and land / that we
may dwell in safety and be fed! One of the most recommended spiritual customs in Catholic life is to offer words
of gratitude before meals. That simple act is, in itself, a
talisman against the abuse of food, and gluttony is high on
the scale of such abuse.
Gluttony and Fasting

In Matthews gospel, Jesus recommends three ascetic

practices: prayer, almsgiving, and fasting (Mt 6:116).
The point of fasting, however, needs to be correctly understood: one abstains from food or drink for a time, not
because food and drink are bad, but precisely because they
are good. To limit a good for a pure purpose is to order
rightly the appetites. At my university, everyone observed
a common custom during Lent to limit ones food to the
calories found in the diets of the poor of the world on a
given day and to make a financial sacrifice (to be put into a
cardboard rice bowl) of the cost, say, of a hamburger, for
the poor. By combining fasting and almsgiving into a single act, we exhibited solidarity with the poor of the world.

18

Some Gratifying Thoughts on Gluttony

To order rightly our eating and drinking is not only an exercise of temperance but also a profoundly Christian act.
St. Paul reaches for the metaphor of food to make the point
that the right use of food (and he has in mind, especially,
the Eucharist) has profound implications that involve both
our common humanity and our bonds with the risen Lord:
Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are
one body, for we all partake of the one loaf (1 Cor 10:17).

19