Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What are the seven virtues?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines virtue as "a habitual and firm disposition to do the good."[1] Traditionally, the seven Christian virtues or heavenly virtues combine the four classical cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and courage (or fortitude) with the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. These were adopted by the Church Fathers as the seven virtues.
Michelle de Villiers mixed media work, "Celestial Sandwich Septych", is described as a "sandwich consist[ing] of several layers: the seven days of creation; the seven heavenly virtues; seven greek vowels-alpha to omega. The seven virtues will balance the seven Deadly Sins." The 14 collected painting are to be installed so as to "juxtapose the seven sins with the seven virtues, to create balance, which is a fine line down the middle of the space."
A list of seven virtues that oppose the seven deadly sins appeared later in an epic poem titled Psychomachia, or Battle/Contest of the Soul. Written by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, a Christian governor who died around 410 AD, it entails the battle between good virtues and evil vices. The enormous popularity of this work in the Middle Ages helped to spread the concept of holy virtue throughout Europe.
Christian scholars frequently add the four Greek cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage) to the theological virtues to give the seven virtues; for example, these seven are the ones described in the "Catechism of the Catholic Church", sections 1803–1829.
With Christianity, historic Christian denominations such as the Catholic Church and Protestant Churches, including the Lutheran Church, recognize seven virtues, which correspond inversely to each of the seven deadly sins. 
Confession is the act of admitting the commission of a sin to a priest, who in turn will forgive the person in the name (in the person) of Christ, give a penance to (partially) make up for the offense, and advise the person on what he or she should do afterwards.
Philosophers recognized the interrelatedness of the virtues such that courage without prudence risks becoming mere foolhardiness. Aquinas found an interconnection of practical wisdom (prudentia) and moral virtue. This is frequently termed "the Unity of the Virtues."[7] Aquinas also argued that it not only matters what a person does but how the person does it. The person must aim at a good end and also make a right choice about the means to that end. The moral virtues direct the person to aim at a good end, but to ensure that the person make the right choices about the means to a good end, one needs practical wisdom.[8]
MacIntyre holds that "After Virtue" makes seven central claims. It begins with an allegory suggestive of the premise of the science-fiction novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz": a world where all sciences have been dismantled quickly and almost entirely. MacIntyre asks what the sciences would look like if they were re-assembled from the remnants of scientific knowledge that survived the catastrophe. 
In 410 CE, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens listed seven "heavenly virtues" in his book Psychomachia (Battle of Souls) which is an allegorical story of conflict between vices and virtues. The virtues depicted were:
While the seven sins are based on the seven deadly sins, only two of the seven virtues correspond to the seven heavenly virtues.
They became known through Benjamin Franklin's autobiography.Marc Jackson in his book "Emotion and Psyche" puts forward a new development of the virtues. He identifies the virtues as what he calls the good emotions "The first group consisting of love, kindness, joy, faith, awe and pity is good" These virtues differ from older accounts of the virtues because they are not character traits expressed by action, but emotions that are to be felt and developed by feeling not acting.
Ayn Rand held that her morality, the , contained a single axiom: existence exists, and a single choice: to live. All values and virtues proceed from these. To live, man must hold three fundamental values that one develops and achieves in life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem. A value is "that which one acts to gain and/or keep ... and the virtue[s] [are] the act[ions] by which one gains and/or keeps it." The primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality, which as Rand meant it is "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action." These values are achieved by passionate and consistent action and the virtues are the policies for achieving those fundamental values. Ayn Rand describes seven virtues: rationality, productiveness, pride, independence, integrity, honesty and justice. The first three represent the three primary virtues that correspond to the three fundamental values, whereas the final four are derived from the virtue of rationality. She claims that virtue is not an end in itself, that virtue is not its own reward nor sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil, that life is the reward of virtue and happiness is the goal and the reward of life. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality, not the degree of your intelligence but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
Patience is a virtue is a proverbial phrase referring to one of the seven heavenly virtues typically said to date back to "Psychomachia," an epic poem written in the fifth century.
In popular culture, "Patience is a Virtue" can refer to:
Consequentialist and deontological theories often still employ the term 'virtue', but in a restricted sense, namely as a tendency or disposition to adhere to the system's principles or rules. These very different senses of what constitutes virtue, hidden behind the same word, are a potential source of confusion. This disagreement over the meaning of virtue points to a larger conflict between virtue theory and its philosophical rivals. A system of virtue theory is only intelligible if it is teleological: that is, if it includes an account of the purpose ("telos") of human life, or in popular language, the meaning of life. Obviously, strong claims about the purpose of human life, or of what the good life for human beings is, will be highly controversial. Virtue theory's necessary commitment to a teleological account of human life thus puts the tradition in sharp tension with other dominant approaches to normative ethics, which, because they focus on actions, do not bear this burden.
Seung elucidates the poem's thematic unity by using three principles essential to medieval Christian thinking. The first principle is the medieval classification of virtues and sins. It provides the framework for understanding the formal structures of the three realms. Seung shows that Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise are structured in accordance with the medieval table of seven natural virtues and three supernatural virtues, which are implicitly celebrated in the ten spheres of Paradiso. The natural virtues are humility, mercy, meekness, fortitude, liberality, temperance, and chastity, and the supernatural virtues are the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. The contraries to the natural virtues are the seven deadly sins of pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust, and they are condemned as sinful acts in the various sections of Inferno, and on the seven terraces of Purgatorio they appear as vicious dispositions being purged into their virtuous opposites. Moreover, in the beginning of Inferno the supernatural virtues are thematized as being absent; in the beginning of Purgatorio they appear as distorted; near the end of Purgatorio they are celebrated as regained; and finally in the last cantos of Paradiso they are presented in full display.
The Bhagavad Gita - considered one of the epitomes of historic Hindu discussion of virtues and an allegorical debate on what is right and what is wrong - argues some virtues are not necessarily always absolute, but sometimes relational; for example, it explains a virtue such as Ahimsa must be re-examined when one is faced with war or violence from the aggressiveness, immaturity or ignorance of others.
Virtue epistemologists differ in what they believe epistemic virtues to be. Some accounts are Aristotelian, drawing a relationship between intellectual virtue and character in a similar way to the way moral virtue is related to character, while "weak" virtue epistemology have an account that doesn't require any particular commitment or cultivation of intellectual virtue. Abrol Fairweather argues that these "weak" virtue epistemologists "merely [use] virtue theory as a novel lexicon for expressing an independent epistemic theory".
Later, in the High Middle Ages, some authors opposed the seven virtues (cardinal plus theological) to the seven capital sins. However, “treatises exclusively concentrating on both septenaries are actually quite rare.” and “examples of late medieval catalogues of virtues and vices which extend or upset the double heptad can be easily multiplied.” And there are problems with this parallelism.
Jesuit scholars Daniel Harrington and James Keenan in their "Paul and Virtue Ethics" (2010) argue for seven "new virtues" to replace the classical cardinal virtues in complementing the three theological virtues, listed as "be humble, be hospitable, be merciful, be faithful, reconcile, be vigilant, and be reliable", although they don't explain why it has to be an either/or matter of replacing the cardinal virtues rather than supplementing them.
It should be noted, however, that these seven virtues do not correspond to the seven heavenly virtues arrived at by combining the cardinal and theological virtues. Furthermore, efforts in the Middle Ages to set the seven heavenly virtues in direct opposition to the seven capital sins are both uncommon and beset with difficulties. “[T]reatises exclusively concentrating on both septenaries are actually quite rare.” and “examples of late medieval catalogues of virtues and vices which extend or upset the double heptad can be easily multiplied.” [9] And there are problems with this parallelism.
There are several different schema of vice and virtue. Aquinas adopted the four cardinal virtues of Aristotle (justice, courage, temperance and prudence), and added to them the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity (from St.Paul, ). Other schema include the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven virtues. For more see Christian philosophy and Biblical law in Christianity.
After Pope Gregory released his list of seven deadly sins in 590 AD, the seven virtues became identified as chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Practicing them is said to protect one against temptation from the seven deadly sins.
The opposition between the virtues and the vices to which these works allude despite the frequent inclusion of other schemes may seem unproblematic at first sight. The virtues and the vices seem to mirror each other as positive and negative moral attitudes, so that medieval authors, with their keen predilection for parallels and oppositions, could conveniently set them against each other. . . . Yet artistic representations such as Conrad’s trees are misleading in that they establish oppositions between the principal virtues and the capital vices which are based on mere juxtaposition. As to content, the two schemes do not match each other. The capital vices of lust and avarice, for instance, contrast with the remedial virtues of chastity and generosity, respectively, rather than with any theological or cardinal virtue; conversely, the virtues of hope and prudence are opposed to despair and foolishness rather than to any deadly sin. Medieval moral authors were well aware of the fact. Actually, the capital vices are more often contrasted with the remedial or contrary virtues in medieval moral literature than with the principal virtues, while the principal virtues are frequently accompanied by a set of mirroring vices rather than by the seven deadly sins.[10]
Virtue (, "arete") is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual greatness. In other words, it is a behavior that shows high moral standards. Doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong. The opposite of virtue is vice. 
The four classic cardinal virtues are temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. Christianity derives the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love (charity) from 1 Corinthians. Together these make up the seven virtues. Buddhism's four brahmavihara ("Divine States") can be regarded as virtues in the European sense. The Japanese Bushidō code is characterized by up to ten virtues, including rectitude, courage, and benevolence.
In both Catholicism and Anglicanism, courage is also one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. For Thomas Aquinas, Fortitude is the virtue to remove any obstacle that keeps the will from following reason. Thomas Aquinas argues that Courage is a virtue which, along with the Christian virtues in the Summa Theologica, can only be exemplified with the presence of the Christian virtues: faith, hope, and mercy. In order to understand true courage in Christianity it takes someone who displays the virtues of faith, hope, and mercy. Courage is a natural virtue which Saint Augustine did not consider a virtue for Christians. Thomas Aquinas considers courage a virtue through the Christian virtue of mercy. Only through mercy and charity can we call the natural virtue of courage a Christian virtue. Unlike Aristotle, Aquinas’ courage is about endurance, not bravery in battle.
The Rev. Brian Shanley contrasts the gifts to the virtues this way: "What the gifts do over and above the theological virtues (which they presuppose) is dispose the agent to the special promptings of the Holy Spirit in actively exercising the life of the virtues; the gifts are necessary for the perfect operations of the virtues, especially in the face of our human weakness and in difficult situations."
Virtue ethics differs from both deontology consequentialism as it focuses on being over doing. A virtue ethicist identifies virtues, desirable characteristics, that the moral or virtuous person embodies. Possessing these virtues is what makes one moral, and one's actions are a mere reflection of one's inner morality. To the virtue philosopher, action cannot be used as a demarcation of morality, because a virtue encompasses more than just a simple selection of action. Instead, it is about a way of being that would cause the person exhibiting the virtue to make a certain "virtuous" choice consistently in each situation. There is a great deal of disagreement within virtue ethics over what are virtues and what are not. There are also difficulties in identifying what is the "virtuous" action to take in all circumstances, and how to define a virtue.