Vices and Virtues

I will add the text, but for now I will just add the slides.

We talked about what a virtue is and how we categorize some as natural virtues because we can make sense of them by our own human powers. We categorize some as theological virtues because they operate above our natural reasoning abilities and are gifts from God.

We talked about the natural virtues, and we noted some of the specialized words we will encounter when we read the Doctors of the Church teach on moral theology. “Appetite” does not mean “what we can eat” but is used to describe a “sense faculty” (what we can do with our senses).

We talked about the virtues that are given to us by God.

We talked about how Pride is the worst vice. It is its own proper sin and also common to all the other vices.

We talked about how over time thinkers settled on seven capital (at the head of the lists) sins but used different words for the same idea.

We did not get to but will talk next about how each vice has an opposing virtue. This is a helpful framework for us if we can identify the vice that is assailing us because it points us to the virtue habit to practice.

Sin and Habit, According to St. Thomas

For the form of a natural thing produces, of necessity, an operation befitting itself; wherefore a natural form is incompatible with the act of a contrary form: thus heat is incompatible with the act of cooling, and lightness with downward movement (except perhaps violence be used by some extrinsic mover): whereas the habit that resides in the soul, does not, of necessity, produce its operation, but is used by man when he wills. Consequently man, while possessing a habit, may either fail to use the habit, or produce a contrary act; and so a man having a virtue may produce an act of sin.