Today we hear about one of the Seven Deadly Sins, gluttony. Screwtape talks about how this vice can be disguised so that it can go completely unnoticed by the patient!
S4E34: “Food, glorious food!” (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:12 – Welcome
00:41 – Chit-Chat
05:49 – Song-of-the-week
07:09 – Quote-of-the-week
08:08 – Drink-of-the-week
09:39 – Patreon Toast
10:43 – Chapter Summary
11:38 – Discussion
50:18 – Unscrewing Screwtape
51:54 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
No Skype Session today!
Show Notes
Chit-chat
- Matt and I chatted about the recent tribute to Walter Hooper.
- Matt shared the books he’s been reading recently…
- Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C. S. Lewis by Chris R. Armstrong, which I gave him for Christmas. Matt will be interviewing him shortly.
- When the Church Was Young: Voices of the Early Fathers by Marcellino D’Ambrosio, which is my favourite introductory book to the Early Church. While discussing it, I quoted St. Ignatius of Antioch:
Permit me to be an imitator of the passion of my God.
St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans (AD ~107)
- There was a discussion about Lewis on podcast What God Is Not about an upcoming Screwtape letter where Screwtape discusses possessiveness and particularly possessiveness of time. I’m trying to get Sister Natalia to be guest co-host on that episode since I think it’ll be really interesting to have a monastic talking about that subject since they take a vow of poverty…
- Fr. Michael used to be on the Catholic Stuff You Should Know podcast.
Song-of-the-week
Today’s song-of-the-week was a no-brainer… “Food glorious food” from the musical Oliver:
- Listener John Marr did come up with some solid alternative options though for the song-of-the-week:
- The Finer Things by Steve Winwood
- My Way by Frank Sinatra (a song often mentioned by Dr. Peter Kreeft)
- Another listener, Cody Quanbeck suggested Fabulous from High School Musical 2.
Quote-of-the-week
“The great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence…’puts him out’, for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
Drink-of-the-week
- For the drink-of-the-week, Matt and I were drinking Talisker 10 Year:
- Nose: Pungent / smoke accented
- Body: Full and slightly syrupy
- Palate: Smoky and malty and very big Pepperiness
- Finish: Huge / long / peppery
Patreon Toast
- One of the benefits for Gold-level supporters on Patreon is that we toast one of them each episode. Today we are toasting Kamil Sosinski:
Kamil, when Screwtape tries to tempt you with indulgences not being satisfied, may you remain steadfast in your charity and compassion!
Patreon Toast
Chapter Summary
- This is the one-hundred word summary of Letter #17, which was first published in The Guardian on 22nd August 1941:
Screwtape criticizes his nephew for under-appreciating the vice of gluttony. He explains the difference between Gluttony Of Excess and Gluttony Of Delicacy, pointing to the latter’s manifestation in the Patient’s mother. She has embraced an “All-I-Want” attitude which results in her being particularly pernickety and fussy about her meals. The inevitable daily disappointments produce in her ill-temper and fractured relationships. Screwtape suggests that Wormwood nurture the Patient’s vanity, turning him into a food connoisseur, and thereby setting him on his own path towards gluttony. Screwtape concludes the letter by saying that gluttony can be an excellent preparation for attacks on chastity.
One hundred word Summary
Discussion
Wormwood and Gluttony
- Screwtape opens this letter by criticising Wormwood’s lack of appreciation for gluttony. In fact, Screwtape thinks that Hell is doing marvelous job on this front:
One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- I looked up to see what St. Thomas Aquinas had to say about this in his great work, the Summa and I found some gold. I’ll share some more later, but here’s the definition he uses:
Gluttony denotes, not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire.
St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa (Question 148)
- Gluttony is one of the “Seven Deadly Sins” which was a classification which originated with the Desert Fathers, especially Evagrius Ponticus and popularised by his pupil John Cassian.
- Bishop Barron has a really good series of talks on them called Seven Deadly Sins/Seven Lively Virtues.
- I tested Matt on the Seven Deadly sins and shared my pneumonic, “WASP LEG”:
- Wrath
- Avarice
- Sloth
- Pride
- Lust
- Envy
- Gluttony
- We spoke about what Screwtape loves so much about gluttony, the weakening of the will and self-discipline.
Gluttony of Delicacy
- Screwtape says that Hell has done such a good job regarding gluttony in recent years because they have focussed on what he calls the…
…gluttony of Delicacy, not the gluttony of Excess
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- Screwtape explains these different kinds of gluttonies to his nephew by referring him to the work of Glubose, the demon assigned to the patient’s mother. Glubose has apparently been doing exceptional work subtly fostering her gluttony of Delicacy:
She would be astonished — one day, I hope, will be — to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- So the patient’s mother is a glutton, but not because she consumes a lot of food – the amounts of food are small, but the results are still the same. Screwtape says:
But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness [a tendency to complain], impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- Screwtape says that, as a result of her gluttony she is “a positive terror to hostesses and servants”. He describes how:
She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile “Oh please, please… all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast”. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- Matt mentioned the movie, Caddyshack:
- Earlier I mentioned Aquinas’ Summa on this subject in Question 148. Aquinas loves to draw on the Early Church Fathers, so in his response he quotes St. Gregory the Great (6th Century) who speaks about this particular kind of gluttony:
“The vice of gluttony tempts us in five ways. Sometimes it forestalls the hour of need; sometimes it seeks costly meats; sometimes it requires the food to be daintily cooked; …”
St. Gregory the Great, Moral (xxx, 18)
- He goes to explain that she also balks at the serving sizes in restaurants, sending the dish back to the kitchen under the pretense of avoiding waste, but Screwtape explains what’s really at work here:
…she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
Glubose’s results
- Screwtape says that Glubose success can be seen in his results:
…her belly now dominates her whole life.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
This reminded me of Philippians 3:19:
Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
Philippians 3:19
- Glubose has now put the woman in what Screwtape calls the “All-I-Want” state of mind:
All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted.
But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things “properly” — because her “properly” conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- Screwtape says that these memories aren’t true, she’s just remembering a time when she was more easily pleased and she had other kinds of non-food-related pleasures in her life.
- Anyway, her continued disappointment to get what she wants has some beneficial side-effects for Screwtape, namely a bad temper which causes stains in all of her relationships. All this is very reminiscent of similar characters in Lewis’ work, such as The Mother in The Great Divorce, or Mrs. Fidget in The Four Loves.
The Vicar says Mrs. Fidget is now at rest. Let us hope she is. What’s quite certain is that her family are.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Defending against God counterattack
- As you would expect, the forces of good would not be idle throughout this. Fortunately, Glubose has a ready-response:
If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn’t mind what she eats herself but “does like to have things nice for her boy”. In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
How to proceed?
- So, now that Screwtape has established the wonderful results of gluttony in the patient’s mother, he turns to the patient himself.
- Interestingly, Screwtape says that there is a difference between the sexes when it comes to this particular vice:
Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the “All I want” camouflage. Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really “properly” cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- How does one care about food, take an interest in nice food and drink and not go down this road?
- I mentioned the movie The Hundred-Foot Journey, which Matt had actually watched!
The goal
- Screwtape ends this section saying that, however Wormwood approaches it, he must remain focussed on his goal, to take the patient to a point where a denial of any of his refined indulgences (whether that’s champagne, tea, cigarettes or sole colbert which is a fancy fish dish), a delay or denial of any of these things annoys him, and wears away at his charity, justice and obedience.
Preparing for attacks on chastity
- Screwtape ends the letter by saying that…
Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- I wasn’t quite clear if he was saying which kind of gluttony was best preparation for attacking chastity.
- I think it’s still delicacy, given what he says afterwards about what he’s been eating or drinking, rather than how much.
Keep the patient clueless
- As always, Screwtape says that the patient must be kept ignorant.
Never let him notice the medical aspect. Keep him wondering what pride or lack of faith has delivered him into your hands when a simple enquiry into what he has been eating or drinking for the last twenty-four hours would show him whence your ammunition comes and thus enable him by a very little abstinence to imperil your lines of communication.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- In the Summa, Aquinas quotes St. Gregory who offers us this sage advice:
Gregory says (Moral. xxx, 18) that “unless we first tame the enemy dwelling within us, namely our gluttonous appetite, we have not even stood up to engage in the spiritual combat.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa (Question 148)
…and this reminded me of this passage in the Catechism:
“[Fasting is] an apprenticeship in self-mastery…is a training in human freedom… [E]ither man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph #2339
From gluttony to chastity
- Screwtape then ends with some comments about the “medical side of chastity”.
If he must think of the medical side of chastity, feed him the grand lie which we have made the English humans believe, that physical exercise in excess and consequent fatigue are specially favourable to this virtue. How they can believe this, in face of the notorious lustfulness of sailors and soldiers, may well be asked.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- We discussed what Screwtape means by the “medical side of chastity”. I thought that by “medical side” I think he means the basic physiological element involved in the formation of vice or virtue. In this particular case, I think Screwtape is promoting the thought that excessive exercise and exhaustion leads to a nurturing of chastity… which obviously has some problems with it. Lewis basically says that this idea was nurtured by gym teachers as an excuse for sports!
But we used the schoolmasters to put the story about — men who were really interested in chastity as an excuse for games and therefore recommended games as an aid to chastity.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #17)
- I thought that there’s also a really interesting point here about excess and moderation. It’s easy to see virtue as the polar opposite of a corresponding vice, but this approach only encourages excess. Rather, authentic virtue is not excessive, but temperate. Aristotle called virtue “the golden mean” between opposing excesses. When I’m living a life which is not moderated and balanced, I’ll be more prone to sins against chastity.
Unscrewing Screwtape
- Do nurture healthy habits (food, sleep, and exercise)
- Do experience genuine pleasures
- Do fast!
- Do not forget to say “thank you”! Foster gratitude.
Closing thoughts:
- Check out the recent lectures of former guest of the show, Dr. Jason Lepojärvi:
- I asked for suggestions for Pints With Jack merchandise.
- We also spoke about our plans to have a monthly gift lottery for our Patreon supporters.
