Sloth (deadly sin)

Lore & Background

In Catholic teaching, sloth is defined as 'sorrow about spiritual good' and 'facetiousness of the mind which neglects to being good,' according to Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that 'acedia or sloth goes so far as to refuse joy from God and is repelled by goodness.' Unlike other capital sins, sloth is a sin of omission, being a lack of desire and/or performance, and may arise from any of the other capital vices. Henry Edward Manning argued that while the state and habit of sloth is a mortal sin, the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain circumstances.

Reader's Guide

Sloth's significance lies in its complex nature as a sin of omission that hinders spiritual progress and charity. Theologians have noted that sloth not only subverts the livelihood of the body but also slows down the mind, halting attention to matters of great importance. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the slothful are encountered on the fourth terrace of Mount Purgatory, where they purge their vice through continuous running after good, following the logic of contrapasso. The sin has also been linked to depression by Christian author and clinical psychologist Dr. William Backus, who noted that depression involves aversion to effort and that the moral danger of sloth lies in this characteristic. The Philokalia uses the word 'dejection' instead of sloth, for the person who falls into dejection will lose interest in life. Geoffrey Chaucer counted the characteristics of the sin to include despair, somnolence, idleness, tardiness, negligence, indolence, and wrawnesse (peevishness).

Did You Know?

• The word 'sloth' is a translation of the Latin term acedia, meaning 'without care'.
• Two commentators consider the most accurate translation of acedia to be 'self-pity'.
• According to Peter Binsfeld's classification, Belphegor is the chief demon of the sin Sloth.
• Sloth is a sin of omission, unlike the other capital sins.