Nice, Squatter. I agree most with your last paragraph, and therefore with Dancing Hobbit; the Seven Deadly Sins were, and this makes a lot of sense, set down in the first place because they are more or less the main 'unvirtuous' aspects of humanity.
Examples of the commiting of the Seven Sins are found universally in our own world, and that is without a Catholic literary genius writing our history.
Therefore, since JRRT obviously included many examples of sin in his works, it is natural that the themes of the Seven Deadly Sins -- largely in a more complicated form, but as you say, still fundamentally there -- should be discernable in these sins. The philosophy of the Seven Sins was written to cover all sins in some way, and this extends to Tolkien's mythology.
(Again, good thought, Squatter. I'm going to have to have one of my own one of these days...)
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