Sins that cry to Heaven for Vengeance
four specific sins for which God will deliver his justice (murder, sin of Sodom, oppression of the poor, defrauding workers)

In Christian hamartiology, the sins that cry to Heaven for Vengeance (Latin: peccata clamantia, lit. 'screaming sins') are four specific sins which are listed by the Bible.
While the Bible only refers to specific acts by Biblical characters as "crying to Heaven for Vengeance", in Western Christianity, these references are expanded upon and treated as establishing a category of particularly serious sins. Along with the seven deadly sins and the eternal sins, the sins that cry to Heaven for Vengeance are the most serious transgressions against the Law of Christ.
Catholic Church
The expression is referenced in the Jewish Bible, particularly in Genesis 4:10 ("The Lord said to Cain [...] the voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth"), Genesis 18:20–21, Exodus 22:21–23, and Deuteronomy 24:14–15. The sins are numbered as being either four or seven; they are listed in the Catechisms as follows:
The "blood of Abel": homicide, infanticide, fratricide, patricide, and matricide
The "sin of the Sodomites": (cf. Jude 1:7).
The "cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan": oppression of the poor.
The "injustice to the wage earner": taking advantage of and defrauding workers (cf. James 5:4).
Laurence Vaux's 1583 work, A Catechisme of Christian Doctrine, explains them as follows:
The first is voluntary or willful manslaughter.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sins that cry to Heaven for Vengeance” as four specific sins for which God will deliver his justice (murder, sin of Sodom, oppression of the poor, defrauding workers). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as four specific sins for which God will deliver his justice (murder, sin of Sodom, oppression of the poor, defrauding workers). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1497418. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1583.
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