Dorothy Day and Dorothy L. Sayers on the two types of sins, and which is worst

The respectable ones are the worst

Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker movement in the thirties and has been declared by the Vatican a Servant of God, the first step in the process of canonization. Best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries and her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dorothy L. Sayers was also a lay theologian of weight in the Church of England. Dorothy Day’s insight appears in her diaries, published as The Duty of Delight. Dorothy L. Sayers’ appears in her address “The Other Six Deadly Sins,” given in 1941 and published in Creed or Chaos?.

Dorothy Day

It is a sad fact of human nature that avarice, which builds up wealth, is accompanied by envy — two most unlovely vices. Lust and gluttony seem playful and superficial by comparison, attractive in their early stages, and more easily redeemable by the natural disgust of satiety. But is there ever any end to envy and avarice?

Dorothy L. Sayers

The Church, then, officially recognizes six other capital or basic sins — seven altogether. Of these, three [lust, wrath, and gluttony] may be roughly called the warm-hearted or disreputable sins, and the remaining four the cold-hearted or respectable sins.

It is interesting to notice that Christ rebuked the three disreputable sins only in mild or general terms, but uttered the most violent vituperations against the respectable ones. Caesar and the Pharisees, on the other hand, strongly dislike anything warm-hearted or disreputable, and set great store by the cold-hearted and respectable sins, which they are in a conspiracy to call virtues.

And we may note that, as a result of this unholy alliance between worldly interest and religious opinion, the common man is rather inclined to canonize the warm-hearted sins for himself, and to thank God openly that he is broad-minded, given to a high standard of living, and instinct with righteous indignation — not prurient, strait-laced or namby-pamby, or even as this Pharisee.

It is difficult to blame the common man very much for this natural reaction against the insistent identification of Christian morality with everything that Christ most fervently abhorred.

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