Virtue and sin

Choose an option and you are told at once whether it was right. The answer and the reason wait behind “Show the answer”.

A watercolor of a lamb sitting on the ground and pulling a thorny vine off the exposed roots of a tree hung with red fruit

Which of these describes a virtue most exactly?
1. An inborn temperament, a cast of character no amount of effort will change
2. A generous good deed, done on one occasion
3. A firm and habitual disposition to do good, one that has become second nature
4. Getting through life quietly without committing any serious wrong
Show the answer
Answer ③ A firm and habitual disposition to do good, one that has become second nature
Human virtues such as the four cardinal ones grow as repeated choices settle into habit; the theological virtues are gifts God pours in. The first choice turns virtue into an accident of birth, the second shrinks it to one moment's resolve, and the fourth mistakes doing nothing at all for virtue.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1803
Which four are the cardinal virtues, the ones that hold up the whole of human virtue?
1. Faith, hope, love and humility
2. Prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance
3. Poverty, chastity, obedience and silence
4. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving and pilgrimage
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Answer ② Prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance
The name says it — cardo is Latin for the hinge of a door, and every other virtue swings on these four. The first choice mixes them up with the theological virtues; the third names the vows of religious life and the fourth the practices of Lent, and neither of those sits on the same level as virtue itself.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1805, 1834
Why are faith, hope and love set apart from the rest and called the theological virtues?
1. Because they are easier to keep than the other virtues
2. Because they are found only in the New Testament and not in the Old
3. Because they are asked only of priests and religious
4. Because God pours them into the soul, and they have God himself for their origin and their end
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Answer ④ Because God pours them into the soul, and they have God himself for their origin and their end
The cardinal virtues are built up by teaching and by repeated action, but the theological virtues are infused — God places them in the soul as a gift — and God is the one they are turned toward. Making them the portion of one class of people, as the third choice does, narrows what every baptized person has received together.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1812-1813
Prudence is the caution that keeps clear of anything risky and puts a decision off.
1. Yes
2. No
Show the answer
Answer ② No
No. Prudence is not a drawing back but the virtue that disposes practical reason to recognize the true good and to choose the right means of reaching it — which is why it is called the charioteer of the virtues, steering all the rest. Shrinking away from what is hard lies closer to the cowardice that fortitude has to deal with.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1806
Why is charity called “the form of all the virtues”?
1. Because charity binds all the other virtues together, sets each in its place and keeps them alive
2. Because charity is the easiest of the virtues to put into practice
3. Because once you have love you can do without faith and hope
4. Because charity wells up of its own accord out of warm feeling
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Answer ① Because charity binds all the other virtues together, sets each in its place and keeps them alive
Take charity away and the other virtues are left as a bare skeleton. The third choice rubs out two of the three theological virtues, and the fourth lowers charity to a mood — charity is the settled choice to love God for his own sake and one's neighbor for God's sake, not the temperature of a feeling.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1822, 1826-1827
Which of these says most exactly what sin is?
1. A wrong that gets you found out and punished
2. The desires the body feels, in and of themselves
3. An offense against reason, truth and right conscience, and a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor
4. Breaking whatever rules the society of the day has laid down
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Answer ③ An offense against reason, truth and right conscience, and a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor
Sin does not hang on whether anyone found out, and it does not turn into something else because the times have changed. Calling desire itself a sin, as the second choice does, leans back into the old error of treating the body as evil — sin arises where a person freely consents to that desire.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1264, 1849-1850
Which conditions have to be met together before a sin is a mortal sin?
1. The same wrong has to be repeated more than three times
2. The matter has to be grave, the person has to know full well that it is grave, and has to consent to it freely
3. Grave matter is enough on its own — it is a mortal sin whether the person knew or not
4. It has to do somebody visible harm
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Answer ② The matter has to be grave, the person has to know full well that it is grave, and has to consent to it freely
Grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent: all three have to be there together. The third choice is the commonest misunderstanding, since where someone acted in ignorance, or where fear, habit or illness has narrowed their freedom, responsibility is lessened to that same degree.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1857-1859
Someone who has committed a mortal sin can still repent and receive God's forgiveness through the sacrament of Penance.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ① Yes
Yes. Mortal sin is grave — it costs a person sanctifying grace — but it cannot bolt the door of forgiveness. Treating God's mercy as though it had a limit is exactly the attitude the Church names despair and has always warned against.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1856, 1861
Venial sins committed again and again pile up in number until they become a mortal sin of their own accord.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ② No
No. Counting them up does not change what a sin weighs. Even so, venial sin repeated and left unrepented dulls the conscience little by little and tilts a person toward mortal sin, so none of this means a light sin can be left where it lies.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1862-1863
Why are pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth called the capital sins?
1. Because they are the seven gravest sins a person can commit
2. Because these seven alone cannot be forgiven, not even in confession
3. Because they are seven articles lifted out of the Ten Commandments and reworded
4. Because they are the root that breeds one sin after another
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Answer ④ Because they are the root that breeds one sin after another
“Capital” comes from caput, the head: it says these sins are the source the rest spring from, not that they are the heaviest. The first and second choices misjudge how grave they are and whether they can be forgiven, and pairing the list with the Ten Commandments, as the third does, leaves it unexplained why there should be exactly seven.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1866