Posted on 02/26/2018 8:06:53 AM PST by Salvation
One of the more misunderstood of the cardinal sins is sloth. Most see it merely as laziness, but there is more to it than that. Let’s take a moment and consider some aspects of this cardinal sin.
The Greek word we translate as sloth is ἀκηδία akedia (a = absence + kedos = care), meaning indifference or negligence. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of sloth as sorrow for spiritual good. By it, we shun spiritual good as too toilsome (cf Summa Theologica II-II 35,2).
Some modern commentators describe sloth as a “don’t care” feeling. Some even say it is a kind of falling out of love with God and the things of God (cf Rev 2:4). On account of sloth, the idea of right living and the gift of a transformed humanity inspires not joy, but aversion or even disgust because it is seen as too difficult or as requiring the setting aside of currently enjoyed or sinful pleasures. Through sloth, many experience sorrow rather than joy or zeal in following God and receiving a transformed human life. They are distressed at the prospect of what might have to occur should they embrace the faith more deeply.
Sloth also tends to dismiss the power of grace, focusing instead on the “trouble” or effort involved in walking in the Christian way.
Again, sloth is not merely laziness; it is more properly understood as sorrow or indifference. And while sloth may sometimes look like boredom and a casual laziness about attaining spiritual good, it can also be manifested by a frantic “busyness” with worldly things so as to avoid spiritual questions or living a reflective life.
Consider, for example, a man who is a workaholic. Now suppose that this man has a wife and children. A man in this position has some very significant gifts and duties beyond his career. He is a husband, a father, and the spiritual leader of his home. He is also a disciple, one whom the Lord has summoned to a new life, to the great discovery of God, and to the deepest meaning and realities of his life. He also has the awesome responsibility to announce these truths to his wife and children. All of the duties of his vocation overwhelm and even scare him; the task seems too open-ended. He doesn’t want to reflect too much because it might summon him to ponder things he would like to avoid considering: moral questions, priorities, whether he is spending enough time with his family, whether his life is focused on the things that matter most. It’s all just too hard, too filled with uncertainty. Entering more deeply into the spiritual life is difficult. Work is easier and they call him “Sir” and do what he says.
So he buries himself in his work; this helps him to avoid prayer and reflection. Of course there’s no time for Mass or for praying with his wife and children. There’s no time for Scripture, retreats, and the like.
This man is not lazy but he is slothful. In the end, his workaholism is sloth, for it is sorrow at and aversion to the gift that the Lord offers him: to come out into the deeper waters and lower his net for a catch. In this example, the man’s sorrow for spiritual good is manifested in avoidance and is rooted in fear. Through sloth, he is not joyful at the invitation of the Lord or the Church. Instead he is sorrowful and averse to what he sees as toilsome and possibly raising uncomfortable things he would rather not think about. He does not hate God or the faith, but it is all just too much.
That said, sloth does often manifest itself as a kind of lethargy, a boredom that can’t seem to muster any interest, energy, joy, or enthusiasm for spiritual gifts. Such people may be enthusiastic about many things, but God and the faith are not among them.
Boredom seems to have increased in modern times and this fuels sloth. We are overstimulated in the modern world. The frantic pace, the endless interruptions, the abundance of entertainment, the fast-paced movies and video games all contribute. From the time we awaken until we fall into bed at the end of the day, there is almost never a moment of silence or a time when we are not being bombarded by images, often flickering and quickly changing.
This overstimulation means that when we come upon things like quiet prayer or adoration, when we are asked to listen for an extended period time, when the imagery is not changing quickly enough, we are easily bored.
Boredom feeds right into sloth. The “still, small voice of God,” the quiet of prayer, the simple reading of Scripture and the pondering of its message, the unfolding of spiritual meaning through reflection, the slower joys of normal human conversation in communal prayer and fellowship—none of these appeal to those used to a breakneck pace. Sunday, once the highlight of the week for many (due to the beauty of the liturgy and the music, the hearing of the sermon, the joy of fellowship, and the quiet of Holy Communion), is now considered boring and about as appealing as going to the dentist. Thus, sloth is fueled by the boredom our culture feels at anything going at less than full speed.
In his book Back to Virtue, Peter Kreeft says,
Sloth is a cold sin, not a hot one. But that makes it even deadlier. [For] rebellion against God is closer to him than indifference … God can more easily cool our wrath than fire our frozenness, though he can do both. Sloth is a sin of omission not commission. That too makes it deadlier, for a similar reason. To commit evil is at least to be playing the game … Sloth simply does not play God’s game, either with him or against him … It sits on the sidelines bored … Better to be hot or cold than lukewarm [p. 154].
Sloth, of course, gives rise to many other sins and bad habits: not praying, skipping Mass, not going to Confession, not reading Scripture. We do not grow in our spiritual life and thus we fail to become the man or woman God made us to be. In some sense every sin contains an element of sloth, for when we sin we show a kind of aversion to the perfecting graces that God offers us. Rather than seeing the moral law of God as a great summons to freedom, we reject that call as “too much trouble.”
There are many social manifestations of sloth as well. Two that are common in the modern world are secularism and relativism.
1. Secularism – By secularism, I am referring to a preoccupation with worldly things (rather than the more current meaning of hostility to religious faith). It is amazing how passionate we can get about worldly things. Perhaps it is football, or politics, or the newest electronic device. Perhaps it is our career, or the stock market, or something in the news. Yes, we are passionate people, and even the most reserved of us have strong interests occupying our mind.
Yet many of these same people who rejoice at a basketball game that ends thrillingly, or are passionately engaged at the political rally, or are excited about the latest twist on their favorite television show, can muster no interest whatsoever in prayer, Mass, or Bible study. If they do get to Mass, they look as if they’re in agony until it’s over.
This is secularism and it is a form of sloth. We have time and passion for everything but God. It is a very deep drive. We are mesmerized by many things of the world but bored and sorrowful (and thus slothful) over the things of the spiritual life. Where is the joy? Where is the zeal? Where is the hunger for completion in God?
This is not merely depression or boredom; it is sloth. It is a sorrow toward the spiritual gifts of God. It is a deep drive of the flesh and it must be resisted; only God and openness to His grace can ultimately save us and bring us more alive.
2. Relativism – Many today indulge a notion that there is no such thing as absolute or unchanging truth to which we are summoned and must ultimately conform. This is relativism. Many who practice it actually pat themselves on the back for their “tolerance” and “open-mindedness.” They think of their relativism as a virtue. More often than not, though, relativism is simply sloth masquerading as tolerance. If there is such a thing as truth (and there is), then we should joyfully seek it and base our life on its demands and promises.
Many indulge in relativism because it is an easy way out. If there is no truth, then we are not obliged to seek it nor base our life upon it. Many are averse to and sorrowful toward the truth because they find its demands irksome. This is sloth. Their sorrow is directed toward a precious spiritual gift of God: truth. Instead of joyfully seeking the truth, the relativist is sorrowful and avoids the gift, couching his sloth in words such as “open-mindedness” and “tolerance.”
To be sure, there is a place for tolerance, but the true virtue of tolerance is often misunderstood: it is not the same as approval. The proper understanding of tolerance is “the conditional acceptance of or non-interference with beliefs, actions, or practices that one considers to be wrong but still ‘tolerable,’ such that they should not be prohibited or unreasonably constrained.” The key point that is often lost today is that the tolerated beliefs or practices are still considered to be objectionable or wrong. If this objection component is missing, we are not speaking any longer of “tolerance” but of “indifference” or “affirmation.”
Hence, relativists who dismiss that there is truth to be found cannot rightly call their position “tolerance.” It is in fact indifference and is a form of sloth.
For all of our modern claims of being tolerant and open-minded, a better description is that we are just plain lazy and slothful when it comes to seeking the truth. Collectively speaking, we do not love the truth but rather shun it, sorrowfully regarding its possible claims on us. Jesus said rightly, This is the judgement: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God (Jn 3:19-21).
Coming to recognize sloth for what it is, calling it by name, and learning how it entraps us is one of the first steps on the road to healing. Sloth is one of those drives that are so deep that we must fall to our knees and beg deliverance from the Lord, who alone can heal us.
The gift that the Lord offers us is promised in this beatitude: Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt 5:6).
We must also ask for and seek the fruits of the Holy Spirit, especially love, joy, and peace. These gifts kindle a fire of love in our hearts for God and for the gifts He offers.
Because sloth is such a deep drive, we must throw ourselves to the care of God with great humility, recognizing our poverty and seeking His miraculous grace to give us grateful, loving, and passionate hearts.
Finally, because sloth can also be caused by the feeling of being overwhelmed at the perfection of our call, we do well to consider two points:
Pray for zeal, joy, hope, confidence, and a hunger for holy things. The Christian journey is meant to be a thrilling one, as we experience how God is utterly transforming us.
Something tells me that after a heavy post like this one it’s time to listen to the Bach Gigue Fugue. Because sloth is sorrow, joy is an essential solution. Here is Joy in G Major!
Monsignor Pope Ping!
That guy CLEARLY just got off of work (note the work clothes) and is just depressurizing.
Other than completely taking off the tie that is me evey day pretty much until I was married. After a 10-12 day. Which was every day, 5 days a week and I was exempt so no OT.
I am serious -- that is just wrong.
But what if tie-guy is a Democrat?
>>But what if tie-guy is a Democrat?<<
He works for a living — what are the chances?
Besides, this is about sloth, not mental health. :)
Sloth is the difficult experience on the path through the “Dark-Night-of-the-Soul” as you are letting go of the old self and “dying daily,” but have not yet found the Light of God within.
Sloth happens when I lose my old self identity and the motivation associated with it, but have not yet found my new identity and motivation in following God’s Will and experiencing God. It’s a tough place to be.
For all of our modern claims of being tolerant and open-minded, a better description is that we are just plain lazy and slothful when it comes to seeking the truth.
Did you read the comments in the original article about “workaholics?”
But on the other hand, part of Msgr. Pope’s article addresses the choice of turning on the television to “depressurize,” rather than some other option, such as a cup of tea while sitting on your porch, listening to relaxing music while holding a cat, or being ignored by a cat ... or praying the Rosary.
The convenience of television makes it an easy first option when one is tired, bored, or stressed, but does one really feel better after a half hour of drivel (or worse)?
Sloth[edit]
Main article: Sloth (deadly sin)
Sloth
Parable of the Wheat and the Tares by Abraham Bloemaert, Walters Art Museum
Sloth (Latin, tristitia or acedia (”without care”)) refers to a peculiar jumble of notions, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states.[30] It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.[31]
In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as “sorrow about spiritual good”.[2]
The scope of sloth is wide.[30] Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God.
Mentally, acedia has a number of distinctive components of which the most important is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation,
Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.[30]
Sloth includes ceasing to utilize the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Spirit (Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord); such disregard may lead to the slowing of one’s spiritual progress towards eternal life, to the neglect of manifold duties of charity towards the neighbor, and to animosity towards those who love God.[5]
Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one should do. By this definition, evil exists when “good” people fail to act.
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) wrote in Present Discontents (II. 78) “No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Unlike the other capital sins, which are sins of committing immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. It may arise from any of the other capital vices; for example, a son may omit his duty to his father through anger. 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.[5]
Emotionally and cognitively, the evil of acedia finds expression in a lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self. Acedia takes form as an alienation of the sentient self first from the world and then from itself. Although the most profound versions of this condition are found in a withdrawal from all forms of participation in or care for others or oneself, a lesser but more noisome element was also noted by theologians. From tristitia, asserted Gregory the Great, “there arise malice, rancour, cowardice, [and] despair...” Chaucer, too, dealt with this attribute of acedia, counting the characteristics of the sin to include despair, somnolence, idleness, tardiness, negligence, indolence, and wrawnesse, the last variously translated as “anger” or better as “peevishness”. For Chaucer, human’s sin consists of languishing and holding back, refusing to undertake works of goodness because, he/she tells him/her self, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too grievous and too difficult to suffer. Acedia in Chaucer’s view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work.[32]
Sloth not only subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no care for its day-to-day provisions, but also slows down the mind, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of human’s undoing.[32]
In his Purgatorio Dante portrayed the penance for acedia as running continuously at top speed.
Dante describes acedia as the failure to love God with all one’s heart, all one’s mind and all one’s soul; to him it was the middle sin, the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love. Some scholars[who?] have said that the ultimate form of acedia was despair which leads to suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins
From the article, it has a variety of interpretations. The above gives a little more of the history.
I picked up on that statement too.
**For all of our modern claims of being tolerant and open-minded, a better description is that we are just plain lazy and slothful when it comes to seeking the truth.**
Or just sitting and holding the baby while listening to that music?
Thus allowing mom to finish the dinner preparations.
I agree on avoiding the television......what do you gain in a half hour of watching any TV?
("A habitual" or "an habitual"?)
Freedumb2003 did say he was referring to events before his marriage, so one hopes there was not a baby. But there might have been a cat who needed to reestablish his overlordship by ignoring the hoomin.
One way to make a good choice instead of the easiest one (they teach us in Weight Watchers) is to set up the good choice in advance. If you know you’re going to come home from work exhausted and stressed, have your CD already in the player, your tea ready in the fridge (or coffee maker on a timer, depending on the season), a good spot for your cat, perhaps a pleasant book or magazine ready.
Truth in advertising: I am better at describing these steps than executing them!
Sloth isn’t laziness. It is avoiding God in your life.
Regional variants, I think. I always say "a habitual," because I would say "a habit." However, the contraction "an 'abitual" doesn't make my fillings fibrate, so it's not a true error such as "nucular" or "mischievious."
Then, he comes up with stuff like this.
It sickens me that he is lecturing on sloth when he has no idea how the modern world puts many, many, lay professional people on a treadmill from childhood to old age.
Schooling that is really, really HARD not puff courses and feelgood self-examinations like he did to earn his credentials.
Ridiculous hours training for me but not for priests in training.
Taxes of half our earnings. Not so much for them.
Millions of others stateside and around the world with their hands out. Nice sermons browbeating us to give up our wealth or suffer the consequences.
Millions and millions of illegals coming here, living off the fat of the land, popping out kids by the truckload.
And the Roman Catholic Church and Msgr. Pope endorses it all. More illegals, more, more, more. We have so much to give them!
Revolting hypocrisy for him to criticize normals in this essay. He ought to be cracking on welfare queens who pop out offspring so they can get guaranteed support from the Great Society that the Church endorses with its Catholic votes.
Scum illegals who sell drugs and get on the dole here, and, of course, procreate like vermin to amplify their government support payments.
And some poor SOB like me working 70 hour weeks to support them all.
It's OK though, I get breaks every now and then to be told by the TV that I am what is wrong with America.
Or, I get to read Msgr. Pope tell me that I am lazy.
>>Did you read the comments in the original article about “workaholics?”<<
Missed that — just reacted to the picture since it looked so much like me :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.