The Capital Sins and Opposing Virtues
Seven roots of sin — and the remedies that uproot them
The capital sins are called "capital" from the Latin caput, head — not because they are the worst sins, but because they are heads or sources from which other sins flow. A single root, untreated, bears a whole harvest.
The Church's tradition numbers seven: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth (CCC 1866). St. Thomas Aquinas, following Gregory the Great, teaches that each has an opposing virtue — a habit that, cultivated, starves the sin of its soil.
The spiritual life is not merely the avoidance of sin but the deliberate cultivation of its opposite. To fight pride is to practice humility; to fight avarice is to practice liberality. The remedy is never only negative.
The Seven Capital Sins
Pride (superbia). Inordinate love of one's own excellence. The first and deepest sin — the refusal to receive oneself as a gift. Pride hides behind humility, behind service, behind even apparent piety; it is the hardest to see in oneself.
Avarice (avaritia). Inordinate love of earthly goods, especially money. Not wealth itself but the grasping — the inability to let go, to give, to trust providence.
Envy (invidia). Sorrow at another's good, as if his flourishing diminished one's own. Envy hates what love rejoices in; it corrodes communion.
Wrath (ira). Disordered desire for revenge or injury. Not the just anger that hates sin, but the anger that hates the sinner — that lingers, broods, and plots.
Lust (luxuria). Disordered desire for sexual pleasure detached from its true ends — the self-gift of spouses and the gift of life. Lust uses persons; love honors them.
Gluttony (gula). Disordered attachment to food and drink — eating not to live but to escape, to numb, to fill a hunger no meal can reach.
Sloth (acedia). Sorrow at the divine good — a weariness of the things of God, a resistance to the labor of love. The desert Fathers called it the "noonday devil" for its tendency to strike the soul at the middle of its course.
The Opposing Virtues
Each capital sin has a corresponding virtue that, practiced deliberately, displaces it.
| Sin | Opposing Virtue | |-----|-----------------| | Pride | Humility — truth about oneself before God | | Avarice | Liberality — free and generous giving | | Envy | Kindness (or brotherly love) — rejoicing in another's good | | Wrath | Patience (or meekness) — steady love under provocation | | Lust | Chastity — love rightly ordered toward the other's whole good | | Gluttony | Temperance — moderation that frees the soul | | Sloth | Diligence — zeal for the things of God |
St. Paul gives the rule in a word: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom 12:21). Examination of conscience should not stop at naming the sin — it should move to asking which virtue to plant in its place, and what single act of it I will make today.