Editing Seven deadly sins (section)

== Historical definitions and perspectives ==

=== Acedia ===
{{Main|Acedia}}
[[File:Acedia_(mosaic,_Basilique_Notre-Dame_de_Fourvière).jpg|thumb|''Acedia'' [[mosaic]], [[Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière]]]]
''Acedia'' is neglecting to take care of something that one should do. The term can be translated as '[[Apathy|apathetic]] listlessness' or [[Depression (mood)|depression]]. It is related to [[Melancholia|melancholy]]; ''acedia'' describes the behaviour, and ''melancholy'' suggests the emotion producing it. In early Christian thought, the lack of joy was regarded as a willful refusal to enjoy the goodness of God. By contrast, apathy was considered a refusal to help others in times of need.

''Acēdia'' is the negative form of the Greek term {{lang|grc|κηδεία}} ({{transliteration|grc|Kēdeia}}), which has a more restricted usage. ''Kēdeia'' refers specifically to spousal love and respect for the dead.<ref>Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised by Sir Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.</ref>

Pope Gregory combined acedia with ''tristitia'' to form sloth in his list. When [[Thomas Aquinas]] considered acedia in his interpretation of this list, he described it as an "uneasiness of the mind", which was a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and instability.<ref>{{Citation |title=From Gent to Gentil: Jed Tewksbury and the Function of Literary Allusion in A Place to Come To |url=https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/rpwstudies/vol2/iss1/6/ |last1=McCarron |first1=Bill |last2=Knoke |first2=Paul |journal=Robert Penn Warren Studies |date=2002 |volume=2 |issue=1 <!-- |article-number=6 -->}}</ref>

Acedia is currently defined in the ''[[Catechism of the Catholic Church]]'' as spiritual sloth—believing spiritual tasks to be too difficult.<ref>{{CCC|pp=2733}}</ref> In the fourth century, Christian monks believed that acedia was primarily caused by a state of [[melancholia]] that caused spiritual detachment rather than laziness.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/desert-fathers-sins-acedia-sloth|title=Before Sloth Meant Laziness, It Was the Spiritual Sin of Acedia|date=14 July 2017|work=Atlas Obscura|access-date=27 November 2017|language=en|archive-date=14 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210714204329/https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/desert-fathers-sins-acedia-sloth|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Vainglory ===
{{Main|Vanity}}
''Vainglory'' is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he merged vainglory into pride in his list of sins.<ref name="DelCogliano-2014"/> Vainglory is the progenitor of [[envy]].<ref name="books.google.com"/>

Professor Kevin M. Clarke observes that vainglory is technically different from pride: vainglory is “when we seek human acclaim”, while pride is “taking spiritual credit for what I’ve done, instead of ascribing one’s good deeds to God.”{{sfn|Clarke|2018|p=163}}

The Latin term {{lang|la|gloria}} roughly means 'boasting', although its English cognate ''glory'' has come to have an exclusively positive meaning. Historically, the term ''vain'' meant roughly 'futile' (a meaning retained in the modern expression ''in vain''); but by the fourteenth century, ''vain'' had come to have the strong [[Narcissism|narcissistic]] undertones that it retains today.<ref>''Oxford English dictionary''</ref>