Question Six: On Gluttony

S. Th. II-II, q. 148.

977. Gluttony (gourmandise; gulzigheid) is an inordinate appetite or use of food or drink, insofar as it gives delight.

1. It is an inordinate appetite, that is, exceeding the order of right reason. The mode of reason in taking food is that a man take what is useful for right life and health, namely what is necessary or fitting for good health and for a proper disposition of mind. Therefore to seek delight from food more than is fitting, or to adhere to it as to an end, is inordinate.¹

¹ Gula is said from the throat, through which food passes to the stomach. - Proposition 8 of Innocent XI is condemned: "To eat and drink even to satiety, for pleasure alone, is not a sin, provided it does not harm health; because natural appetite can licitly enjoy its own acts." Cf. Luke 21:34; see above, p. 885.

2. It concerns food or drink, namely drink which is not intoxicating. If the excess is about food or non-intoxicating drink, it is called gluttony in the strict sense, crapula, or commessation; but if it is about intoxicating drink, it is drunkenness.

3. It concerns these insofar as they give delight, and so it is directly opposed to abstinence.

978. Species of gluttony. - There are five modes according to which gluttony can be committed: too soon, sumptuously, too much, ardently, and too carefully. These are not distinct species in the strict sense, but diverse modes arising from diverse motives opposed to abstinence.

For the inordination can be on the part of the food itself, if one seeks food more delicate or more costly than is fitting, and then he eats sumptuously; or if he seeks food prepared too carefully and tastily, and then he eats too carefully; or if he seeks too much food, and then he eats too much. It can also be on the part of the taking of food, if one takes it before or outside the due time, and then he eats too soon; or if he takes it voraciously and too avidly, and then he eats ardently.

There can also be other modes, by reason of an added species of sin; for example, to eat human flesh from a beastly appetite. This, however, is not illicit if it is done as medicine or from another just cause in extreme hunger; yet it is never licit to kill a man for this purpose.

979. Crapula is of itself a venial sin from its kind, even if it proceeds to vomiting, because it is merely an excess in the appetite for a thing indifferent. This remains true even if someone provokes vomiting so that he may eat or drink again, unless there is grave scandal, or unless this is a sign that he delights in food as in a final end.

Accidentally, however, it can be mortal:

1. If delight in food is held as a final end, explicitly or implicitly; for example, if one is ready to sin mortally, by stealing or in another way, for the sake of delight in food.

2. If one causes grave harm to health.

3. If one renders himself unfit for a grave office.

4. If one becomes unable to pay debts, or dissipates the goods of the family.

5. If through crapula he violates fasting or abstinence.

6. If it is the cause of another grave sin or of grave scandal; for example, if clerics publicly frequent banquets.

980. Observations. - 1. Gluttony taken broadly, insofar as it also includes drunkenness, is a capital vice.

2. The sins of gluttony are not among the greatest. This is so not from the matter, for sins about divine things are graver; nor from the side of the sinner, because they are alleviated by the necessity of food and by the difficulty of discerning and moderating what is suitable. Yet from the side of the effect they can have great magnitude, insofar as they are the occasion and accidental cause of many sins.