Editing Seven deadly sins (section)

=== 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>