Recently
Matthew Fox spoke at
Jubilee, in Asheville. He spoke of
an affliction of our time: “Couchpotatoitis.” He also used an old word for this
condition, “sloth,” and it reminded me of an article I had written years ago:
When I read Kevin Phillips’
Wealth and Democracy a passage
jumped out at me: A research firm called SRI International had written that the
Catholic Church’s “seven deadly sins”—pride, gluttony, envy, sloth, greed,
lust, and wrath—are capitalism’s virtues.
I think this is a profound observation.
For a long time I have felt there is a flaw in capitalism but struggled to find
a way to express it, and this may be it.
Early in its history the Catholic
Church developed a classification system for sins: some were minor and could be
forgiven easily but others were “mortal”; these carried the threat of eternal
punishment. These mortal sins are the seven deadly sins and were obviously
extremely serious transgressions.
In the Medieval era artists
helped to warn Christians of the peril of committing one of these sins, for an
example see “
Seven
Deadly Sins,” by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1480, above). In
Inferno
(written around 1315), Dante Alighieri envisioned nine circles of Hell. Sinners
condemned for the relatively less serious sins of the flesh (lust, gluttony, and
avarice) were in the upper circles, while those condemned for sins of the
spirit (sloth, anger, envy, and pride) were placed in the deepest circles of
Hell.
Why did the Church consider
these feelings so deadly? By looking at them in terms of relationship to God we
can discover some answers. Three can be seen as choosing the material world
over the spiritual: greed, gluttony, and lust all imply an unhealthy desire for
more money or food or sex than the body needs.
The other four can be seen as
sinning in thought against God. Envy means you desire something someone else
has and you don’t—in other words you are saying God made a mistake in your
creation. Wrath likewise implies a judgment that something is wrong with God’s
creation. In medieval times sloth didn’t mean general laziness like we think
today, it meant laziness towards the things of the spirit. Thus it was a
rejection of God. Pride has been called the “deadliest sin.” Pride means
wanting to set yourself above everyone, including God.
What do we think of these “sins”
today?
A yogi went into the woods to find a cave to live in. At the
same time, a group of four thieves were walking through the woods on their way
to find something to rob. The yogi went into a cave, and just as the thieves
passed by came running out, yelling “There’s a killer in there!” The thieves
were intrigued and entered the cave. There they found a pile of treasure. Each
of the four immediately started plotting how to get all the treasure for himself.
The two senior members sent the younger ones off for a cart to haul the loot,
and then lay in ambush and killed them on their return… 
