COMMENTARY ON THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF DANTE ALIGHEIRI: GLUTTONY
Dante places gluttony as the second-to-the-last or sixth terrace of Mount Purgatory, and if we were to rearrange the terraces according to the changes submitted in this expository series, gluttony should occupy the last or seventh terrace.
Our rearrangement for the terraces based on the gravity of the sins is as follows:
Why does sloth precede gluttony?
Habitual sloth, which we have defined as “the deficiency or absence of due effort in the spiritual life,” presents a grave risk to the salvation of the unrepentant sinner.
Revelation 3:15-19 emphatically warns the lukewarm.
“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.”
Jesus’ words (Matthew 25:26-27, 30) energetically condemn the slothful.
“You wicked, slothful servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter? Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return? Throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
True, we come across strong words of condemnation elsewhere in the New Testament for gluttony.
Saint Paul warns in Philippians 3:18-19, “Many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach.”
His pastoral epistle to Titus intones, “A bishop as God’s steward must be blameless…not a drunkard…temperate…and self-controlled” (Titus 1:7-8).
We observe that the quantity a person may consume, whether in food or drink, is notably limited.
Consequently, whenever food or drink is consumed to excess, the overindulgence is also somewhat constrained.
We would argue that for this reason, among others, the sin of gluttony is of lesser gravity than the other deadly sins.
The Catholic Encyclopedia contends that gluttony is generally a venial sin.
“Gluttony is in general a venial sin in so far forth as it is an undue indulgence in a thing which is in itself neither good nor bad.”
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06590a.htm
—J. Delaney, “Gluttony,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909)
According to Aquinas, gluttony is a mortal sin if the consumption of food or drink is treated as an end in itself, which, we observe, would happen in the case of drug addiction.
“If the inordinate concupiscence in gluttony be found to turn man away from the last end, gluttony will be a mortal sin. This is the case when he adheres to the pleasure of gluttony as his end, for the sake of which he contemns God, being ready to disobey God's commandments, in order to obtain those pleasures.”
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3148.htm#article2
—Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 148, Article 2
If we expand our understanding of gluttony to include drug addiction—it encompasses addiction to alcohol, a commonplace barbiturate—then drug addiction has the potential to so impair the freedom of a person that the substance abuse becomes an end in itself.
Worse, the addiction can lead the person to commit serious crimes, such as robbery or murder, in order to supply and maintain the addiction.
Drug addiction has been identified by Roman Catholic exorcists as one of the “doors” by which the devil acquires dominion over sinners through possession. See:
“Habitual sin” (13:30)
—St. Paul Center, “8 Ways People Give the Devil a Foothold,” YouTube video, 21:34 minutes, October 27, 2021
We suggest
that in at least some cases drug addiction would constitute a mortal sin.
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