On Gluttony
July 22, 2015
IN Sin Revisited, Solange Hertz describes three forms of gluttony:
1. The first one consists in eating whenever we please. This might mean often or seldom, ahead of time or later, never or simply constantly nibbling between meals. Habitually indulged in, this form of gluttony quite predictably disposes its victim to restlessness and dissatisfaction with his state in life. It feeds instability.
2. The second form is being choosy about what we eat. In the world this might win us an international reputation as a gourmet, or simply as a weight-watcher, depending on whether our eye is on the menu or the calories, in other words, whether we are motivated by sensuality or vanity. There is no more refined form of gluttony than dieting from motives of pride. The dazzling authority on haute cuisine could fall into this category, but so might also the dear little old lady who insist on turning the host’s kitchen upside down looking for a piece of dry toast, or the health fanatic who will consume only roots, berries and spring water. It’s hardly surprising that this particular type of gluttony breeds covetousness, because its victims are orientated always to looking for something they haven’t got at the moment. It’s directly opposed to the perfect abnegation of Christ, who told his disciples to “Eat such things as are set before you” (Luke 10:9).
3. The third type of gluttony is usually the one we think of as gluttony proper: eating as much as we want. Its victims are more likely to be fat, I suppose, and therefore more in evidence. Because there’s a limit to what the stomach will hold, the Fathers tell us this one by a kind of inner necessity leads most directly into lust and sexual impurity, the next capital vice after gluttony. They were fond of quoting the prophet Ezechiel, who revealed that Sodom fell into the unbridled license with which her name became synonymous as a result of “fulness of bread and abundance” (16:49). No one with eyes could fail to see the relation between the glutting affluence of modern society and the so-called sexual revolution.
