GLUTTONY VS TEMPERANCE

Why is Gluttony a capital sin?

St. Thomas Aquinas: "Gluttony denotes, not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire... leaving the order of reason, wherein the good of moral virtue consists." (2, 148, ad 1)

Saint Alphonsus De Ligouri: "He that gratifies the taste will readily indulge the other senses; for, having lost the spirit of recollection, he will easily commit faults, by indecent words and by unbecoming gestures. But the greatest evil of intemperance, is that it exposes chastity to great danger. 'Repletion of the stomach,' says St. Jerome, 'is the hotbed of lust.'

New Advent says, "Clearly one who uses food or drink in such a way as to injure his health or impair the mental equipment needed for the discharge of his duties, is guilty of the sin of gluttony."

The folowing Scriptures advise against over indulging:

Pr 23:20-21 Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.

Pr 28:7 He who keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of gluttons disgraces his father.

Mt 11:18-19 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners."' But wisdom is proved right by her actions."

Php 3:18-19 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.

Temperance is the cure. 

Ven. Mary of Agreda: "Temperance includes the two virtues of abstinence and sobriety... Abstinence also includes fasting. These virtues take the first place in treating of temperance; for nourishment, being necessary for the preservation of life, is among the principal objects coveted by the appetites."

Saint Catherine of Siena: "without mortifying the taste, it is impossible to preserve innocence, since it was by the indulgence of his appetite that Adam fell."

Russian Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov said, "Wise temperance of the stomach is a door to all the virtues. Restrain the stomach, and you will enter Paradise. But if you please and pamper your stomach, you will hurl yourself over the precipice of bodily impurity, into the fire of wrath and fury, you will coarsen and darken your mind, and in this way you will ruin your powers of attention and self-control, your sobriety and vigilance."

LUST vs CHASTITY

While all capital sins are addictive or have addictive qualities, they also are a perversion of something good.

Lust is a perversion of love, in particular, it is a perversion of marital love.

Surprisingly, many believe that in marriage it is okay "to lust".  Outside of marriage lust is "bad", but within marriage it is "good".  This is not actually the case.

Lust is always an objectification of something. In marriage if one lusts after his/her spouse, he/she is looking at the other as on object of pleasure. It is an attitude of "what can you do for me" vs. "what can I do for you".

Love in marriage is always selfless.  It is a giving of oneself to another freely, and never "using" the other. Love is mutual expression. Lust is individual gratification.

New Advent, a Catholic encyclopedia, says this about lust: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09438a.htm
  

The wrongfulness of lust is reducible to this: that venereal satisfaction is sought for either outsidewedlock or, at any rate, in a manner which is contrary to the laws that govern marital intercourse. Every such criminal indulgence is a mortal sin, provided of course, it be voluntary in itself and fully deliberate. This is the testimony of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians, v. 19:

"Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, . . . Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God."

Moreover, if it be true the gravity of the offences may be measured by the harm they work to the individual or the community, there can be no doubt that lust has in this respect a gravity all its own... Lust is said to be a capital sin. The reason is obvious. The pleasure which this vice has as its object is at once so attractive and connatural to human nature as to whet keenly a man's desire, and so lead him into the commission of many other disorders in the pursuit of it. Theologians ordinarily distinguish various forms of lust in so far as it is a consummated external sin, e.g., fornication, adultery, incest, criminal assault, abduction, and sodomy. Each of these has its own specific malice--a fact to borne in mind for purposes of safeguarding the integrity of sacramental confession.

Of chastity, the virtue opposed to this vice, New Advent says: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03637d.htm

Chastity is the virtue which excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite. It is a form of the  virtueof temperance, which controls according to right reason the desire for and use of those things which afford the greatest sensual pleasures...Under Christianity chastity has been practiced in a manner unknown under any other influence. Christian morality prescribes the right order of relations. It therefore must direct and control the manner of relationship sustained to each other by soul and body. Between these two there is an ineradicable opposition, the flesh with its concupiscences contending unceasingly against the spirit, blinding the latter and weaning it away from the pursuit of its true life. Harmony and due order between these two must prevail. But this means the pre-eminence and mastery of the spirit, which in turn can only mean the castigation of the body. The real as well as the etymological kinship between chastity and chastisement then is obvious. Necessarily, therefore, chastity is a thing stern and austere. The effect of the example as well as of the words of Our Saviour (Matthew 19:11-12) is seen in the lives of the many celibates and virgins who have graced the history of the Christian Church, while the idea of marriage as the sign and symbol of the ineffable union of Christ with His spotless spouse the Church — a union in which fidelity no less than love is mutual — has borne its fruit in beautifying the world with patterns of conjugal chastity.

Links to help the sexually addicted & to prevent sexual addiction in youth:

http://sexrespect.com/about.html

http://dads.org/article.asp?artId=237