Question

How are the virtues useful to you in understanding the cultural context of the Seven Deadly Sins? (Lust, Sloth, Anger, Pride, Envy, Gluttony, and Greed). In what ways could the virtues be seen as problematic or even "sinful"?

Answer 1

How are the virtues useful to you in understanding the cultural context of the Seven Deadly Sins?

Virtues help in understanding the cultural context of the seven deadly sins because virtues are meant for the human excellence whenever human is facing fear and risk due to these deadly sins. These virtues can be utilized as the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Spirit to deal and counter these deadly sins by properly acknowledging their ill-effects.

In what ways could the virtues be seen as problematic or even "sinful"?

Virtues can be seen as problematic in following sense:

Pleasure and pain are indicators of virtue and vice (sin). As moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones (virtues). At that moment when we run behind pleasure by taking it as an indicaor of morality, virtues does not guide us to abstain bad things and thus they become instead problematic & ineffective in dealing with sins.