I could as well argue that you’re wrong because I don’t check with a priest every time I want to shtupp my wife. You’re guilty of the fallacy of equivocation here, using “sanction” in different ways.
The Church defines - at least notionally - what ‘gluttony’ is. Eating outside that definition is gluttony. The Church defines where sexuality is appropriate, and outside of those lines is lust.
You chose to ignore the guidance the Church may offer on gluttony and sloth, and focus myopically on the guidance for sexual relations, and then proclaim there’s a vast difference afoot…
There is a vast difference, though, Bricker. I have sex outside of marriage once or twice a week with my boyfriend. This, by the standards of the Church, is lust, because we are not married, and we’re both men. You (for all I know) could have sex twice daily with your wife, and it’s never lust, simply because you have a marriage certificate. The sin isn’t denoted by the action itself, but by wether or not you’ve undertaken some marginally related secondary action before hand. This makes it noticably different from every other sin I can think of, where the action itself is what determines the sinfulness, not the lack of a particular ceremony before the action is undertaken. You and I could both have exactly the same loving, respectful, considerate relationship with our SOs, and I’d be sinning, and you would not, because you have a marriage. There’s no corresponding example where we could each eat fourteen Big Macs, and one of us would be guilty of gluttony, and the other would not. We could not stay in bed all day and shirk our jobs and responsibilities and have one of us be guilty of sloth, and the other not. There is a massive difference in how the Church regards one sin, and how it regards almost every other.
(Incidentally, does the Church do anything to combat sloth and gluttony in the world, the way it tries so very hard to make sure everyone lives up to their arbitrary standards of sexuality? Does the Church ever speak out against McDonalds or Sealy Posturepedic the way it does everytime someone dares to suggest that there’s nothing wrong with premaritial or homosexual sex?)
I’d be pretty surprised if the church regarded starving people overeating as the same as regularly well-fed people. Likewise, those who have some injury or ailment would likely not be faulted for staying in bed all day.
Well, I’ve been holding off on trying to define “Lust” as opposed to “Desire” because my own criteria are different than most orthodox views. But try this: That which is not entered into with mutual respect and love between committed parties, is Lust; that which is, is Desire.
As for Miller’s concern: A marriage is contracted by the two parties involved, before God if they believe in Him. What the state and the church may think of it is a far different matter – but IMO, a couple that has pledged themselves to marital union with each other, is married, regardless of whether they have the legal or ecclesiastical recognition of their union that would be ideal.
That’s bullshit because I’ve NEVER heard of anyone being reprimanded, church-wise, for being fat. Gluttony exists all over the fuckin’ church and no one’s being told they can’t be in the club. Typical christian bullshit.
Actually, I suspect that a starving person over-eating would be a worse sin than a regularly well-fed person. Starvation rarely affects only one person in a given region. If I eat fifteen Big Macs at a McDonalds in downtown San Francisco, it’s gluttonous, sure, but there’s still plenty of Big Macs for everyone else. If I did the same in Ethiopia, however, there aren’t more Big Macs for everyone, and my gluttony has materially harmed the other people in my society. As for sloth, a disabled person is still expected to take care of his responsibilities to the best of his abilities. His abilities may be diminished by his circumstances, but he can still act below those abilities and so be slothful. But when it comes to sex, I’m a sinner and Bricker isn’t, not because I’m having too much sex, or because I’m careless of the dangers of having sex, or because I’m insensitive to my partner’s needs and emotions and am using him for my own gratification: the only difference is that at some point prior to having sex, he engaged in a marriage ceremony and I did not. Unlike other sins, it’s got nothing to do with the harmful outcomes of the act.
Of course, it used to have everything to do with the (potential) harmful outcome of sex, back before there was easy access to reliable contraception and wide-spread knowledge on the nature of procreation. Back then, having sex with a woman outside of marriage could very likely result in that woman having a child for which she lacked the means of support, harming both her and the child, and if repeated often enough, society itself. But that’s not much of an issue any more now that we have reliable contraception, sexual education, and a society wealthy and equal enough that being a single parent is not an impossible hardship. The Church, however, opposes most of the measures that makes this possible: it seems to have a real problem with the idea that, in this area of human interaction, the centuries of tradition and the divine majesty that is the Catholic Church has been effectively supplanted by a balloon you put on your dick.
And if they pledge themselves to each other, with the stipulation that they can have sex outside the marriage, or have group sex, does that break the “rules”??
Actually, a curious fact about the Seven Deadly Sins is that all of them (with the arguable exceptions of gluttony and sloth) are by definition emotions, not behaviors. E.g., wrath is still wrath regardless of whether it ever moves you to strike a blow; and it might well damage your body if you feel it often enough without striking a blow (frustrated “fight or flight” response).
Come to think of it, the-thing-the-Church-defines-a-certain-way-and-got-translated-into-English-as-“Lust”-but-then-the-common-usage-changed would have to be not only an emotional state but also a pattern of thought and behavior, in order to qualify as “sin”, since that requires an exercise of the will and a purely visceral impulse doesn’t quite make it.
In any case I don’t live my life according to the Church definitions of things. But an institution should be indicted on the things where it does not do right, than on the ones where it does not sound right.
…and likewise, for instance, the initial flash of anger upon receiving offense is not really the sin, it’s holding on to the rage that gets you there. The person is supposed to rule his/her emotions, not let them rule him. When desire, or acqusitiveness, or anger rules you, instead of you ruling them, then the risk arises that they will become Lust, Avarice or Wrath.
Actually, under Catholic doctrine, I don’t think sin strictly requires an exercise of the will. (That’s why, without Christ’s grace, we cannot by any exercise of will escape from the taint of “original sin.”) Maybe a Catholic can correct me. But what St. Augustine wrote about having been a horrible sinner even as an infant certainly seems to support that conclusion.
Not if it’s a religious institution! What “sounds right” is highly essential there!
Salvation, forgiveness, and new life freed from old desire. In Christianity, this is supposed to be a gift of grace; in Buddhism, it’s a case of do it yourself, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Then what distinguishes Catholic morality from Buddhist morality?