Why is gluttony a sin?

Sister Rejane  
This Random Nun Clip is brought to you by A Nun's Life Ministry.

Sister Shannon  
Sister Max, we have another question. This one comes from Sara. Sara says, "Of the seven deadly sins, the one I just do not understand is gluttony. What is it? What does it mean? And why is it a sin?"

Sister Maxine  
Sara, thank you for sending that question in. You know, it's a good question related to Lent, when people think about giving up things, food and drink. So the sin of gluttony. I think we could start out talking maybe about the seven capital sins, and then the virtues. And I know, you're probably way more familiar with the virtues in your life, Shannon.

Sister Shannon  
I would like to think so. Thank you, Jesus. But I don't know. I think the term "deadly sins," which is the phrase that was traditional and what Sarah said here--maybe that's worth a little look at, because why would we call them deadly? This is gonna kill you if you do these things? But there is a sense in which the church recognizes its overall effect on our moral development. So if these are the kinds of practices that we engage in, we lose the sense of otherness in the community and caring about others, no matter what they are. May I just name them for all of the listeners, so they remember what are these seven deadly sins? I think there was actually a movie about them at one point, but the first one is pride. The second is greed. The third is lust. Envy, gluttony, anger, sloth. So any one of those, if they are habitual in our lives, really could be a problem for us.

Sister Maxine  
The Catechism--for those who are interested--the Catechism lists those as the capital sins; again, because of their magnitude, and because of their capacity to really impact our life and the lives of people around us in highly negative ways.

Sister Shannon  
So Sara asks specifically what is gluttony. In a sense, it's habitual greed. It's often associated with excess eating or excess drinking. Another term for it might be over-indulgence, or lack of self-restraint. I think we can see it in a lot of ways in our lives.

Sister Maxine  
Not just related to food or drink, necessarily. We quickly add, we are not talking about people who may have a health problem, an eating disorder, any issues like this. We just would want to make that clear.

Sister Shannon  
We're really talking about those bad habits that we get into.  

Sister Maxine  
The choices we actually can make. 

Sister Shannon  
That's right. It's a kind of an addiction that takes over. And, again, I'm not talking about addiction that really is a clinical problem. But we can get caught up in video games, we can get caught up in watching TV, we can get caught up in lots of things. And it restricts the time that we have for growth, for others, for evolution, for becoming a better person. And sometimes it causes us to block others out. That lack of self-restraint where you can’t stop shopping on the shopping network, that's a kind of gluttony where you just want more and want more and want more.

Sister Maxine  
I've had friends who have struggled with what I would call exercise gluttony. Regular exercise--great thing. But when it affects your family life, your social life, because you feel so compelled to get out there and exercise, I think that's what we're talking about here with gluttony and the other seven deadly sins. It is literally not life-giving to a person. And so it's not a sin, like, if you do this, you're, so to say, going to hell, it's like you can experience hell in your life if these things have control over you.

Sister Shannon  
We're not talking about a one-time sin that is going to end us. But the problem with many of these capital sins is that they become habitual in our lives. So we begin when we're young, perhaps, or maybe later to make bad choices, and then they get easier and easier and easier to make. So we drink too much, we like how it makes us feel, then we drink too much again, and then pretty soon we've had a powerful effect on others around us, as well as on ourselves. Same thing with food. We know it's not healthy for us, but we overindulge and we lose our sense of temperance, which is sort of the opposite of gluttony, right? That self-restraint or that control that is important in our lives.

Sister Maxine  
The balance of the virtues. People may be familiar with Dante's Inferno, and gluttony is one I think the third circle of hell. And Dante's commentary too--a lot on the nature of power--so it can even be overindulgence in one's power.

Sister Shannon  
When you think about those that abuse the fact that they have wealth, they can have any food, they can waste food without thinking about it too much, they can spend money to gain--then they begin to lose their sense of temperance or their sense of, "If I'm eating like this, there's somebody else in the world that's not eating today." You begin to lose that sense of other outside of yourself.

Sister Maxine  
As we're talking about it, gluttony--again, an overindulgence--it also leaves us less satisfied with life, because you always need more. 

Sister Shannon  
That's right. 

Sister Maxine  
To consider these a capital sin is because of not just what they do to our relationship with God, but what they do to us, our relationship with ourselves, and to know when it's time to really look at these things. Now, as you mentioned earlier, we also have the virtues to balance those off. Do you have the list of the virtues?

Sister Shannon  
I do!  

Sister Maxine  
Oh, good. I didn't even think you needed the list, Shannon!

Sister Shannon  
Well, I just want to make sure I get them in the right order. So to balance pride is the habit of humility, an important virtue in our lives. Or to balance greed, charity, giving to others, caring about others. To balance lust is chastity, that sense of self and care for the other. To balance, envy, gratitude, an important virtue to develop in our lives. To balance gluttony, as I mentioned earlier, temperance or self-restraint. To balance, anger, patience. And to balance sloth, diligence, our ability to work hard for others and for our own development. That's a very deep part of Catholicism, that development of those habits, those virtuous habits, so that they're not just a one-off kind of thing. But something that we do regularly. I was thinking about the Olympics, because I've been enjoying watching them, and the discipline that enters into what it means to become an elite athlete, and the day-to-day sacrifices that they make in order to prepare themselves and to be ready for the great moment when they participate in the Olympics. But there's that discipline, and they make it a habit. And that's, I think, what we're called upon as Catholic Christians to do: to make the virtues habits in our lives. And when the capital sins begin to creep in, to rectify that, by realizing and coming back to making the choice toward good habits.

Sister Maxine  
Kind of helps us find that middle of the road. As you're describing it, you know, it's developing that disposition so it is our first choice. Just through practice, through habit, through consciousness, that we can orient ourselves for what is good in our lives. Now, as we were talking a little bit before the podcast, that doesn't mean you can't go overboard on some virtues in a weird kind of a sense.

Sister Shannon  
Sure.

Sister Maxine  
You know, like, humility: "I am just not going to have any attachment to anything--no opinion, no nothing." And then you know, too much of that, and then then it's like being a doormat, or you lose your self-respect. You've got to look at these things and realize the virtues are meant to keep you going in a good path.

Sister Shannon  
I was thinking about the interesting thing about gluttony that Sara raises for us: you get feedback pretty fast on gluttony. You eat too much, and you get a stomachache, or you don't feel very good, or you get sluggish, or you gain weight, which maybe you don't like. Or you drink too much, and you get a hangover, or you get a headache, or you do things that you wish you hadn't done, because you were intoxicated, or because you weren't in total control of yourself. So that's an interesting thing about gluttony, that we get feedback right away, from ourselves, that this is not a virtuous way to live our lives.

Sister Maxine  
That's true. And it's a source of unhappiness that we could choose--again, not a medical condition--but if we can choose to take ourselves in a different direction. These are not things that are that are like commanded on high like, "You should not do that for no reason at all." These are things, if we look into our own heart, we can see the wisdom of that.

Sister Shannon  
It was a good question, Sara. When I first read it, I wondered, well, what will we talk about? But you offered us an enriching way to sort of look at the choices we make in our day-to-day lives.

Sister Rejane  
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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.