7. Gluttony

Gluttony is the inordinate indulgence in food or drink. The use of food and drink should be regulated by temperance according to right reason. As a standard right reason will be guided by the necessities of bodily health and strength, interpreted in a wide sense, and the uses of the society in which one lives. Inordinateness will come in if through appetite we anticipate the proper time for taking refreshment, or demand too exquisite dishes, or indulge in excess, or devour our food voraciously, or require too great care in the preparation of food, paying a chef as much as all the other servants put together.

Gluttony is of itself a venial sin, but it becomes mortal if it leads to violating precepts, such as those of fasting and abstinence, which bind under grave sin, or if it seriously injures health, or if it makes a man unfit to pursue his ordinary avoca- tions, or if eating and drinking become the end for which a man lives, whose God is his belly,¹ or if it causes complete loss of reason through drunkenness.

¹ Phil. iii 19.

Complete drunkenness which deprives a man of the use of reason, so that he cannot distinguish between what is right and wrong, is a mortal sin, for St Paul numbers it among those vices which exclude from the kingdom of God.¹ The malice of this sin does not consist merely in the depriving one’s self of the use of reason, for it is allowed to do that for a good cause, but in the depriving one’s self of the use of reason in such an unnatural way by the inordinate use of drink for a considerable time during which the recovery of the use of reason is out of one’s power, and without any just cause. Theologians more commonly teach that if there were a sufficient cause, it would not be morally wrong to make a man drunk as a substitute for the use of chloroform, or in order to counteract the effect of poison.

To drink to excess but not so as to be perfectly drunk is only a venial sin per se, but it may become mortal on account of the serious harm done thereby to one’s own health, or the spending in drink of money which is required for the support of one’s family or the payment of one’s creditors, or on account of grave scandal caused by such a sin, or on account of other sins to which it gives rise.

¹ Gal. v 21.

If a man could be prevented from committing a more serious sin, as murder, for example, in no other way except by making him drunk, many theologians teach that this would not be unlawful. For very probably I may induce another who is determined to commit some grave crime to be content with doing something which is less bad. Under such circumstances, to persuade another to do what is a less evil is a good action.¹

¹ St Alphonsus, 2, n. 57.

Bad actions committed in drink are imputable to the agent if they were foreseen in some confused way, for they are voluntary in their cause. The same must be said of blasphemy, indecent language, and other sins of word which retain their objective malice even when said by a drunken man. Mere abuse of others, inasmuch as nobody cares what a drunken man says, would not be sinful. However, when sins in word are committed in drink, there is so: nething wanting to them for their full and proper signification, and so, if blasphemy, for example, were punished by ecclesiastical censure or reservation, these would not be incurred for blasphemy uttered while drunk.

Morphia may be given to ease pain, and brandy to strengthen a sick person, even though they cause loss of reason. This follows from what has been said and from the principle of a double effect. It is not lawful to administer such medicines in order to deprive a dying man of the use of reason, so that he may die while unconscious. The time just before death is very precious; a sinner may then be reconciled with God and save his soul; one who is in the state of grace may very much increase his merit by a good use of that time. Euthanasia then, in this sense, is unlawful; it is virtually shortening a man’s life.

The terrible evil of drink should be combated by all the means, spiritual and temporal, which are at the disposal of the Christian. The general means which may be used are especially the frequent reception of the sacraments, the avoiding of dangerous companions and the occasions of sin, the cultivation of modes of taking innocent recreation while not at work either at home or outside, the joining of Catholic temperance societies whose members encourage each other by mutual example, and the taking of the pledge if its nature and obligations be properly understood.