"Pride" has suffered a fall since we began to learn in 2003 that boasting of our being the dominant power in the world and the most powerful in history did not help us in recent wars and now we even go running to little countries with big banks to stay alive financially. So it's bruised, but it'll be back.

"Sloth," which does not mean laziness-sloth, is always a candidate. It means, in Thomas Aquinas' concept, sadness in the face of spiritual good, the inability to "get up" for anything. It is benumbing, and indulging in it may be helpful in our quest to forget that we are in a war--"which no one noticed" at the mall.

"Lust" is colorful and gets tabloid attention but has its limits.

I vote for greed, which shows up on all pages of domestic coverage in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, etc. We Jesus-people have heard that we cannot serve God and Mammon, the god of material things like money, but we don't pay too much attention to that accent of Jesus, and devote energies to satisfying our greedy impulses which, by definition, cannot be satisfied. "Envy" goes with this one.

That takes care most of the seven "capital" (head of a column, not "deadly" originally) sins, leaving "gluttony," which is good for the diet industry and "anger," which readers may well show those of us who have not spoken of their favorite.