Most Popular Deadly Sin? | Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:01]You ever been in denial?

[00:00:02]Did you ever hit bottom so hard that you can't be in denial anymore? Let me give you the most vivid example I know of of hitting bottom. A friend of mine tells me a story of uh visiting a pal in the Florida Everglades. They're going to take a boat ride in the swamps. They get into the boat and my friend's host says, "Uh gosh, I I forgot something in the trailer. Be right back." So, my friend is waiting and waiting and she looks under the seat and there's a bag of marshmallows. So, she opens the bag of marshmallows, eats another one, eats another one, scarfs down the whole bag of marshmallows furtively in one sitting.

[00:00:42]Friend gets back into the boat, looks around and says, "Hey, did you um did you see a bag of marshmallows anywhere?"

[00:00:48]My friend said she nearly died of embarrassment when she admitted that she ate the whole bag of marshmallows.

[00:00:55]Her friend turn pal says, "Oh my goodness, we got to get to the hospital immediately." And he said, "No, no, it's only marshmallows." He says, "No, you don't understand. Those marshmallows, they were soaked in alligator repellent.

[00:01:07]We were going to throw them out of the boat as we went along the swamps. We got to get to a hospital right now."

[00:01:13]And my friend said, "And that's when I knew that I had a problem."

[00:01:18]What happened next? Stay with me. I've got a story to tell. Hi, I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeigue, your host here every day at The Catholic Current, coming to you from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network. Let's take a closer look. Glad you're here. You know, I recently started a series of reflections on the seven deadly sins and I asked you to prioritize which sins you wanted me to talk about first. And by popular demand, you asked me to start with gluttony, which I thought was really interesting because in our shop till you drop culture, uh gluttony is just one form of greed.

[00:01:52]Now, my friend got her stomach pumped and then got into a 12-step program because she realized that she had a pretty serious eating disorder.

[00:02:02]And maybe it's not consuming food that's your issue, but it could be something else that you just can't get enough of.

[00:02:13]And I'm the kind of guy who's looked at the bottom of a bag of Doritos and say, "Where did they all go?"

[00:02:19]So, I get it.

[00:02:20]So, let's turn to Thomas Aquinas as he talks about the five dimensions of gluttony, and it could be an examination of conscience for you and for me. He warns against ardenter, uh what he calls too eagerly.

[00:02:36]When I used to get a little bit of money when I was a kid, I wanted to go out and spend it immediately. My mother would say, "That money's burning a hole in your pocket." Whatever our object of desire it is, whether it's food uh or drink or something involving electronic device, for example, when you rush to that, when you prioritize it above all else, above all other goods, that's a clue that there's something wrong.

[00:03:04]What's another dimension of gluttony?

[00:03:06]Aquinas talks about praepropere, uh too soon.

[00:03:11]Well, what does that mean?

[00:03:12]Well, remember when they used when the credit cards first became popular, it was, you know, "Buy now, pay later." As if you could have all the enjoyment up front and then somehow magically, without cost or pain, pay for what you consumed immediately.

[00:03:30]But as the singer Tom Waits once sang all those years ago, the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

[00:03:38]When we indulge ourselves on credit, there's always going to be hell to pay.

[00:03:45]That brings us to the third dimension of gluttony. Aquinas warns about something called laute, too expensively.

[00:03:53]My mother, who grew up in the depression and the Second World War, used to say, "We, people like us, don't shop at places where you don't have the prices."

[00:04:04]Well, what does this got to do with consumables, whether it's food or something else? There's a difference between having good taste and having good enough never being good enough. And there are some people who define themselves by how much they spend on this or that. In which case, it's not about the enjoyment of the thing, it's something else, something that can never really be satisfied.

[00:04:35]Quinasol talks about another dimension of gluttony called nemes, too much of the time.

[00:04:44]If whatever your object is, whether it's food or drink or electronic device, whatever it is, if you're spending the majority of your time thinking about it, planning for it, recovering from it, paying for it, if it's expanding to fill all the available space of your life, that is a problem as well. That's a clue something is out of order, something is out of proportion.

[00:05:14]And then the last one, the last dimension of gluttony, is uh hard to translate, hard to explain, studiose, uh what's translated roughly as consuming too daintily.

[00:05:28]So, with that in that uh sense, it's about the logo. It's about the brand. I mean, you can go on Reddit or YouTube videos, you know, where they're talking about bottled water. Only people who hate their children drink this kind of bottled water.

[00:05:46]And it's madness. It's madness. And even gosh, going back to when I was a boy, people were literally killing each other for bomber jackets or for sneakers.

[00:05:59]Because of that sense of studio say, the brand recognition. I want not just the thing, but I want all the things associated with the thing. Advertisers know this all the time. Uh remember Marlboro, the Marlboro man, the cowboy who was the, you know, the ultimate masculine macho cigarette. Yeah.

[00:06:23]Marlboro back in the day used to be a poorly selling women's cigarette. The manufacturers were going to discontinue it. And then advertisers said, "Let me help you with that." And people spent gazillions of dollars on Marlboro cuz they wanted other people to see them as the Marlboro man.

[00:06:42]What's the moral of the story?

[00:06:45]Stuffing ourselves, stuffing ourselves, stuffing ourselves, consuming, consuming, consuming, and trying to be noticed for what we consume, how expensively we consume it, on and on.

[00:06:57]It's it's a mania.

[00:06:59]And it's not about hunger. [snorts] Not really.

[00:07:05]It's about an empty heart.

[00:07:09]We have a god-sized, god-shaped hole in our heart. And we will not be at peace, and we will not stop our relentless craving, our frenetic consumption >> [music] >> unless and until Christ is enthroned on our heart.

[00:07:28]I suggest, speaking for myself, maybe you, too, we uh we should be doing some examination of conscience right now.

[00:07:35]Meanwhile, think on these things today, [music] take them to prayer, and talk about it with those you love.

[00:07:40]Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner. [music] Thanks for watching today. I release new videos on Mondays and Wednesdays. Check out the archives for more videos. You can listen to my podcast thestationofthecross.com and you can find my written work at heraldof the gospel.org.

[00:08:02]See you next time.