19. Why are they called Capital Sins?
Because they are also vices; that is, main sources from which all other sins take their rise.
20. When do we sin by 'Pride'?
When we think too much of ourselves, do not give God the honor due to Him, and despise our neighbor.
From pride spring especially: Vanity, ambition, hypocrisy, disobedience, and resistance to superiors; coldness and hardheartedness towards inferiors; an inordinate desire of ruling; quarrel and strife; ingratitude, envy, cruelty, infidelity and heresy, hatred of God. — Examples: Lucifer, Nabuchodonosor, Holofernes, Aman, Herod, the Pharisee, etc. 'Pride is hateful before God and men. It is the beginning of all sin; he that holdeth it shall be filled with maledictions, and it shall ruin him in the end' (Ecclus. x. 7, 15).
21. When do we sin by 'Covetousness'?
When we inordinately seek and love money or other worldly goods, and are hard-hearted towards those who are in distress.
Covetousness, or avarice, leads people to an excessive care for earthly things, to hardness of heart, lying, perjury, theft, fraud, usury, simony, treachery, superstitious seeking after hidden treasures, to manslaughter and murder. — Examples: Achan, Ahab, Giezi, Judas, Ananias, and Saphira. 'There is not a more wicked thing than to love money; for such a one setteth even his own soul to sale' (Ecclus. x. 10). 'They that will become rich fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires which drown men into destruction and perdition' (1 Tim, vi. 9).
22. How do we sin by 'Lust'?
By indulging in immodest or impure thoughts, desires, words, or actions.
The ordinary effects of lust, or impurity, are: Aversion to prayer and to all that is good; excessive fondness for amusement and dissipation; neglect of the duties of our state of life; great desire of attracting notice; insensibility and cruelty; all sorts of shameless excesses and of unnatural crimes; seduction of innocence; false promises and oaths; theft, ruin of health and of domestic happiness; enmity, duels, suicide or self-murder; and likewise atheism, sacrilege, worship of the devil, madness, and despair. (See the Sixth Commandment of God.)
