Gluttony

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
7 Dec 2008

Bus shelters around Sydney are adorned with posters of pudgy young adults with tape measures.  They are part of a campaign highlighting the link between being overweight and chronically ill.  The goal is to get young people to start paying attention to their waistlines before the spare tyre gets away from them.

I'm the last person to preach about being overweight.  My doctor told me once that I was "not grossly obese".  Good news as far as it goes, but hardly a ringing endorsement of my own slimming efforts.

There are many reasons for being overweight, some of them, like eating disorders, outside our control.  Not everyone who is overweight is a glutton.  But while there is no sin in being overweight, gluttony has always been regarded as one of the seven deadly sins.

The seven deadly sins are deadly and sinful because they set something else up in place of God.  It is possible to make a god out of one's appetite, giving it priority over everyone and everything else.  The lavish obsession in parts of the media with fashionable cooks, expensive restaurants and gourmet shopping has been labelled "gastroporn", which in its own way shows that food and eating can become gods for us if we don? keep things in perspective.

Greediness is another thing that makes gluttony a sin, something it shares with the lust and avarice.  Excess is also usually a part of it.  Together, greed and excess mean selfishness towards other people and their needs.

Gluttony is not simply a matter of how much we eat.  There are other posters around Sydney this week telling young people not to turn "a night out into a nightmare".  This campaign is focussed on excessive drinking at end of year celebrations, including end of school celebrations like Schoolies.

42 per cent of people seeking drug treatment services in 2006-07 did so because of alcohol abuse.  Binge drinking brings with it a host of medical problems, including an increased risk of seizures.  3000 Australians die each year from alcohol abuse.

It is also a powerful incitement to violence.  The problem has become so bad that in October the state government announced a range of restrictions, including a freeze on new 24 hour licences for pubs and clubs, and limits on the drinks that can be purchased after midnight in violence-prone premises.

Then there is the contribution alcohol abuse makes to other serious problems.  It plays a part in 50 per cent of domestic physical and sexual abuse cases, one third of road deaths, and 80 per cent of night time assaults.

Christmas is the time to enjoy the blessings of good food, a quiet tipple, and the company of friends and family (and prayer).  But like most good things taken to excess, eating and drinking too much have destructive consequences for ourselves and others.