Question III: Concerning Gluttony

I. Gluttony is the inordinate appetite for food or drink. It is called:

1. an inordinate appetite, that is, exceeding the mode prescribed by right reason. But the mode prescribed by reason is that nourishment be taken so that it may be useful for right life and for preserving health; namely, insofar as foods are necessary or fitting for preserving good health and a fitting disposition of the mind for its functions. Therefore one who exceeds this mode on account of delight and seeks that delight more than is fitting, or even adheres to it as an end, so that he rests in it and wills it for its own sake, acts inordinately;

2. for food or drink, and indeed drink whether non-intoxicating or intoxicating; whence there is distinguished: a) gluttony strictly so called, which is also called crapula or excessive feasting, and is the inordinate appetite for food or common drink; b) drunkenness, which is the inordinate appetite for intoxicating drink.¹

¹ St. Thomas, II-II, q. 148, a. 1; cf. Luke 21:34.

II. The species and gravity of gluttony. - There are five diverse modes by which the delight of gluttony is unduly sought: too soon, sumptuously, too much, ardently, daintily. These are five distinct and proper species of gluttony, because they proceed from diverse motives opposed to the very virtue of temperance. For the appetite for nourishment can be inordinate a) as to the nourishment itself, either 1. concerning the substance, by seeking, namely, delicate or too costly foods, attention being given to the state of the man (sumptuously); or 2. as to the quality, by seeking foods too carefully and tastily prepared (daintily); or 3. as to quantity, by exceeding too much in the very quantity (too much); b) as to the taking, either 4. when it is done before or outside the due time (too soon); or 5. when it does not observe the due mode, but is done voraciously and with excessive eagerness (ardently).²

² St. Thomas, II-II, q. 148, a. 4.

Gluttony strictly so called is per se a venial sin from its genus, even if it be carried through even to vomiting, because it is only an excess in the appetite for a thing of itself licit. Whence the five aforesaid modes are distinct venial species, and consequently they are not necessarily to be declared in confession.

Per accidens, however, other modes can be present from the conjunction of another species, by reason of which gluttony can even become mortal: a) if someone establishes his last end in it, whether explicitly or implicitly; b) if he is prepared to sin mortally, for example to steal, so that he may have the delight of food (Phil. 3:19); c) if he inflicts grave harm on his health; d) if he renders himself unfit for fulfilling an office to which he is bound under grave obligation; e) if he renders himself unable to pay debts, or dissipates the goods of the family; f) if for the sake of excessive feasting he violates the precept of fasting or of abstinence from flesh-meats; g) if excessive feasting is the cause of another grave sin, for example of grave scandal, as if a cleric casts himself into public banquets.

Several add: if someone provokes vomiting so that, for serving pleasure, he may be able to eat and drink again, because this is more than bestial and greatly dishonors a rational creature. We indeed admit that this is rather often an indication that he is delighted in foods as in the last end; nevertheless this is not necessarily and always so, and consequently it is not always mortal, unless it were grave scandal to others.

III. Drunkenness and its gravity. - Drunkenness is the inordinate appetite for intoxicating drink, or voluntary excess in intoxicating drink.

It is called:

1. an inordinate appetite or excess, because it is a species of intemperance;

2. in intoxicating drink, that is, violently inducing privation of the use of reason. Thus drunkenness is distinguished from gluttony strictly so called, which is excess in food or in non-intoxicating drink;

3. voluntary, whether intended in itself, when someone expressly wishes to be deprived of the use of reason, for example in order to forget pains, or only in the cause, when someone foresees that from it perhaps he will be deprived of the use of reason and nevertheless prefers to incur drunkenness rather than to abstain from drink.

Fully voluntary drunkenness is a mortal sin from its genus, both on account of the grave intrinsic disorder of the act by which someone voluntarily and without necessity deprives himself of a most excellent good, namely the use of reason and the proximate power of recovering it, and renders himself unfit for acting in a human mode and according to virtue; and on account of the grave evils which it brings with it, such as lust, blasphemies, quarrels, grave affliction of the family, neglect of children, defrauding of creditors, omission and neglect of the duties of Christian life; and the drunken man, if he has foreseen these at least in a confused way, is guilty of them.³

³ Cf. Gal. 5:21; 1 Cor. 6:10; Rom. 13:13; Luke 21:34; Isa. 5:11; Prov. 23:20, 21, 29. The printed text has "Prov. XXII, 20, 21, 29"; the cited drunkenness passage is Prov. 23.

Hence a) perfect drunkenness, which totally removes the use of reason, is of itself mortal; nevertheless it could be venial either on account of a certain inadvertence or ignorance of the drink, which nevertheless cannot be admitted in those having a habit; or on account of lightness of matter if the drunkenness does not last long but only for some moments. This, however, scarcely holds in practice, because no one can know how long it will last;

b) imperfect drunkenness, which only somewhat disturbs reason, is of itself a venial sin; per accidens it becomes mortal either on account of scandal, or on account of an evil end, or on account of damage to be inflicted on health or family, or on account of grave sadness to be brought to wife, children, or parents, or on account of the danger of another grave consequence.

Signs of drunkenness are customarily indicated by authors:

1. The signs of perfect drunkenness are: a) if someone by reason no longer discerns between moral good and evil; this is a certain sign, while the rest are conjectural, namely b) if he does unusual things which he would never do while master of himself, for example swears, speaks shameful things, stirs up quarrels, breaks vessels, strikes his wife; c) if the following day he does not remember notable words or deeds, for example what quarrels he excited, how he returned home, by what road, with what companion; d) if someone scarcely, or hardly even, suffices for directing common or easy actions; e) if he has lost the use of the senses and members, for example of sight, walking, speech.

2. On the contrary, probable signs of imperfect drunkenness, or ambiguous signs, are: staggering of gait, some stammering of the tongue, an apparent whirling of things, the sight of doubled objects, forgetfulness of minute things, difficulty in executing due offices, a certain disturbance of the head or of the imagination, vomiting; for these also occur while sufficient presence of reason remains.

IV. Warnings for confessors. - 1. Penitents who accuse themselves of eating or drinking for pleasure are not always guilty. For it is not illicit to intend and seek the pleasure which God willed to be present in foods and drinks, provided that it is ordered, at least implicitly, to the principal honorable end of sustenance; but it is a sin to eat for pleasure alone, sought for its own sake and by resting in it, excluding the principal end, or principally for pleasure, not for an honorable good, so that the honorable good is subordinated to delight.

2. Rarely do penitents sin mortally from gluttony. More easily they sin from drunkenness, not in the sense that they often drink even to the privation of the use of reason, indeed if this happens once or again, commonly it happens beyond intention, but that certain persons too much given to drinking, by this reason, fail in their duties and functions, create grave affliction for the family, dissolve its bonds, do not provide for the education of offspring, cannot pay debts, etc. The confessor, nevertheless, can presume drunkenness to have been voluntary in him who is accustomed frequently to become drunk, for example ten times in single months. But if some man sufficiently intelligent confesses that within a month he was drunk once or again, let him be asked whether he foresaw the drunkenness. One who has been drunk once or a second time, without any habit, is to be presumed not to have foreseen the drunkenness.

3. Drunkenness, even when carried to perfect privation of the use of reason, is not so essentially evil that it cannot be induced in any case; but it can be licit to commit oneself to drunkenness, if it is a necessary means for obtaining a proportionate good, for example for driving away a disease, such as typhus, or for restraining the force of poison from the bite of a serpent, because the good of the part yields to the good of the whole man. On the contrary, it can be a sin, although per accidens privation of the use of reason does not follow. Whence, says St. Alphonsus, Theologia Moralis, book V, n. 78, he is not excused from mortal sin who takes a quantity of drink of itself apt for inducing perfect drunkenness, although, before he is deprived of his senses, he commits himself to sleep, by which he escapes the effect of the wine; because that drinking of itself is intrinsically evil, since of itself it is apt to deprive that man of the use of reason, and it is per accidens whether he is deprived of his senses by sleep or by intoxication. Namely, he posited the whole cause of the evil, and there will remain an incapacity of recovering the use of reason which would not have arisen from natural sleep.

4. A sin similar to drunkenness is to bring on privation of the use of reason from another cause than from drink, for example by smoke, the smoking of tobacco, the odor of hops, the use of opium or morphine, etc., concerning which it was said above, c. 2, sec. B, q. 1, IV and VI.

5. Those sin gravely, by cooperating in the drunkenness of others, who invite others to draughts by which they are probably foreseen to become drunk; likewise those who provoke or compel them to equal draughts with probable danger of drunkenness; likewise those who without grave proportionate cause minister drink to drunkards or to those near drunkenness. Nevertheless it can be licit, for a grave cause, to set wine before another with foresight of drunkenness. But those who lead others to drunkenness by their example alone sin by the sin of scandal.

6. To the gluttonous and drunken properly, or rather grossly, so called, let there be recalled to mind the proximate effects of gluttony and drunkenness in body and soul: in the body, uncleannesses and illnesses; in the soul, dullness of mind and the defacing of the image of God. To them let there be strictly prescribed avoidance of occasions, mortification of the flesh, prayer to God, confession after relapse, together with a severe penance voluntarily imposed on themselves; and sometimes enrollment in a society of sobriety or abstinence will be counseled. For the vice of drunkenness is counted among those from which men emerge with difficulty, unless they labor in eradicating it with all their strength and divine help.

7. To spiritual men who manifest a propensity to gluttony, let there be earnestly commended the avoidance of incitements of gluttony, the subtraction at table of some food more pleasing to the palate, moderation of the appetite which is borne toward foods more ardently than is just, serious expiation of faults of gluttony, even slight ones, and the reduction of the quantity of foods to a just estimation to be taken from experience.

8. Let priests strive in every way against the vice of alcoholism, insofar as they can, by warning parents that they turn their children away from it; by inculcating strength of soul and mortification, by which virtues of the will they are disposed to resist strenuously the temptation of abusing liquors; by frequently teaching temperance and sobriety in the pulpit and also in the sacred tribunal; and by corroborating the doctrine by their own example.

V. Gluttony is a capital vice. - A capital vice is a sin from which others arise according to the account of final cause, insofar as it has a most appetible end, whence from the appetite for it man is excited in manifold ways to sin. But that end is very appetible in which there is some condition of happiness; but delight pertains to happiness. Whence gluttony, which is concerned with the principal delights, namely of touch, is a capital sin.

Food indeed is a means to an end, namely to the conservation of life; but because this end, which cannot be conserved without food, is most appetible, thence food itself also is most appetible. Moreover and chiefly, it is appetible on account of delight.⁴

⁴ St. Thomas, II-II, q. 148, a. 5; Quaestiones disputatae de Malo, 14, a. 5.

This is to be understood of gluttony taken in the broad sense, which also comprehends drunkenness.

VI. Gluttony has five daughters. - St. Gregory, Morals, book 31, c. 45 (or 17), enumerates five daughters of gluttony. For gluttony, through the immoderate taking of food or drink, produces a disturbance of the inferior part of man, and thus impedes reason and consequently those things which ought to be directed by reason.

Hence a) it produces in the soul: 1. as to reason, whose keenness is dulled from immoderation of food and drink: dullness of mind, that is, stupidity as to speculative things; 2. as to the appetite, which, the helm of reason being lulled to sleep, is inordinately affected: foolish joy, or wandering and uncomposed joy, by which man rejoices concerning those things which according to the judgment of right reason are not naturally apt to cause delight; as to external acts: 3. many words, by which man cannot restrain words; and 4. scurrility, that is, a certain jesting arising from defect of reason, which cannot restrain or compose external gestures; b) but in the body it produces 5. uncleanness, that is, the inordinate emission of any superfluities, especially of semen; for although vomiting is useful, for example, after superfluous eating, nevertheless it is vicious that someone subject himself to this necessity through immoderate food or drink.⁵

⁵ St. Thomas, II-II, q. 148, a. 6; Quaestiones disputatae de Malo, 14, a. 4.

Nor does it stand in the way that the aforesaid sins are not means for procuring the delight of gluttony, and thus are not desired for the sake of gluttony, nor that gluttony is not their final cause. Nevertheless they are means to gluttony in this sense, that man subjects himself to them and accepts them, provided that he may obtain the delight of gluttony. For the gluttonous man does not hesitate to incur foolish joy, many words, uncleannesses, etc., provided that he obtains the end of gluttony, that is, the delight of food and drink.

This also holds concerning certain sins which arise from lust or anger.

VII. Remedies against gluttony. - The principal remedies are customarily enumerated as the following:

1. to beware of the incitements of gluttony, such as seasonings or delicate foods, and not to mingle oneself with the gluttonous;

2. to grow accustomed to common foods, not to eat or drink outside the time of refection, sometimes to fast, or at least at table to subtract something from one's own will; to set for oneself the measure of foods;

3. to meditate upon the examples of Christ poor, fasting in the desert, thirsting on the cross; the vileness of those things which are desired; and the basenesses and miseries which greediness carries with it;

4. to pray to God before approaching the table.