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Vices |
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Vices are dispositions to commit sins. As repeated good actions produce virtues, dispositions to make good choices, so repeated sins produce dispositions to make bad choices: vices. Thus arise imprudence, injustice, intemperance, and cowardice – vices contrary to the four cardinal virtues. While sin itself is a positive act, a choice to do this or that for some good or apparent good, what makes the sin a sin, what makes it evil, is its lack of due order toward love of God and neighbor. Sin is not choosing some entity evil in itself, since there are no such things (evil being a lack of good in a thing that ought to be there). Rather, sin is choosing to pursue some good, but in such a way as to turn away from God’s plan: that is, love of God and neighbor. Thus the adulterer, the thief, even the sinner who envies the grace of others, begins with a love of some good – for example, this or that pleasure – but pursues this good in such a way as to turn away from love of God and neighbor. Still, one can have a disposition to perform an act with such a lack in it. Choices are not just transitory events. Rather, when we choose we shape our characters in this way or that, and in the case of evil, as in the case of good, that shaping or constitution remains unless we repent. We should examine our consciences for particular sins, but also for vices, the dispositions remaining in us from past sins. Penance and self-denial are needed to reorient such aspects of ourselves unintegrated with the commitment of faith.
See: Capital Sins; Evil, Problem of; Freedom, Human; Penance in Christian Life; Sin. |
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