Are they still considered deadly if they are done in moderation? Are there other “Not so deadly sins”?
The “Seven Deadly Sins” aren’t really “sins” as defined by the Catholic Church (at least they’re not what I was taught – direct violations of the Commandments of God and of the Church), but their very definitions imply excess, not moderation.
It’s Gluttony*, after all, not “Eating”
and Sloth, not “Laziness”.
I infer that Envy is much more than the feeling that you want your neighbor’s CD, and Lust goes beyond watching the Playboy channel.
To get an idea, look at the engravings of the Seven Deadly Sins by Breughel – a fat guy forced to wheel his overfed belly in a wheelbarrow, insatiable sex addicts with no self-control and monsters in the shape of sex organs.
Nobody’s going to hell because he eats a lot. But obsession with eating will lead to bad things in many ways. And the same goes for obsession with the other “sins”. So, no, in moderation, sex, food, hot tempers, etc. aren’t bad. But the very natutre of the “sin” is excessive indulgence of these.
If they really were “Deadly” I sure as hell wouldn’t be around!
"The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, were first introduced when Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus drew up a list of eight offenses and deadly human passions, the sins as eight “passions”, and they were, in order of increasing severity: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, acedia, vainglory, and pride. Evagrius saw the escalating severity as representing increasing fixation with the self, with pride as the most egregious of the sins. Acedia (from the Greek “akedia,” or “not to care”) denoted “spiritual sloth.”
In the late 6th century, St. Gregory the Great reduced the list to seven items, folding vainglory into pride, acedia into sadness, and adding envy. His ranking of the Sins’ seriousness was based on the degree from which they offended against love. It was, from least serious to most: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride (abbreviated into the mnemonic palegas).
“Capital” here means that these sins stand at the head (Latin caput) of the other sins which proceed from them, e.g. avarice gives rise to theft and lust gives rise to adultery. Later theologians, most notably Thomas Aquinas, would contradict the notion that the seriousness of the sins would be ranked.
The capital sins are not to be confused with mortal sins."Seven Deadly Sins
This Straight Dope column by Cecil Adams may be of interest: Why are the “seven deadly sins” so deadly?