Folks:

As I often do in these Q&As, I will answer this question in ways that far exceed the original question. The original question begs an explanation of the larger topic to which the question is but a small part. There are several issues to discuss that relate tangentially to George's question and others that relate directly to it. First, I will discuss the tangential issues.

For the sake of full disclosure this "question" comes from a person who knows me and does not like me, and who is very hostile (his own admission) to religion.. I have changed the names to protect the guilty.

This "question" was originally posted as a comment to one of my Radio Shows where I slammed liberalism and the "great messiah" Obama pretty hard. Such a question, in that context, was not germane to the topic of the radio show, thus I moved it here. 

The fact that this question was posted in response to the radio show is significant. Such a posting is what I call a Liberal Tactic of Obfuscation #289. It is a tactic, whether consciously and deliberately, intended or subconsciously created, that seeks to draw attention away from the real topic (that the poster does not like) by embarrassing the speaker or revealing information or in making negative innuendos about the speaker that seeks to damage the his credibility. This is done in hopes that the speaker's reputation is damaged in such a way that the audience will no longer think his arguments are credible.

We all have a tendency to use this tactic at times.

Let me illustrate. An opponent of a Presidential candidate named John, who is a Real Estate Broker by trade, is arguing all the reasons why this candidate should not be elected. A proponent of that Candidate, named Carl, disagrees but is losing the argument. Carl now resorts to a tactic of obfuscation to divert attention away from the real argument (to which he is losing) and onto an unrelated topic. That unrelated topic is designed not only to change the topic, but to damage the credibility of John so no one will listen to him. Thus, Carl spits out, "Aren't you a slum lord?" Carl will protest that it is "just a question", but it is not, it is an accusation. He hopes that the accusation causes the audience to distrust what John says. After all, no one likes a slum lord.

While this tactic can be very successful, the accusation or innuendo has nothing to do with whether or not John's analysis of the presidential candidate is good or bad. If Hitler were to say that 1+1=2,  he is correct regardless of the fact that he was a homicidal megalomaniac. Truth is truth no matter who says it.

This same phenomenon occurs in situations where the two parties are not in debate. In this scenario Carl listens to a speech by John. Carl thinks that John has no room to talk because of his own foibles. Thus, again to obfuscate the topic, Carl mentions some foible of John's, or at least makes an innuendo of a foible, that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic. Carl hopes that this will take John down a peg or two in the eyes of the audience. Carl perhaps hopes that this will cause people to doubt the veracity of John's analysis, or at least Carl has the satisfaction of knowing he knocked a few pegs off of John.

Either of these scenarios are made by people who 1) have not the courage to actually debate or intelligently rebut the issues, or 2) by people who have not the integrity to lose a debate gracefully, or to win the debate honestly, or 3) just wants to get in a dig because they do not like what the speaker has to say. All three possibilities are immature and intellectually cowardly.

It is within the context of a Liberal Tactic of Obfuscation, whether deliberately intended or subconsciously created, that this "question" was posted. Even if George has a genuine curiosity about Divine Laws it applies to being fat, which is highly suspect given his hostility to religion, the pretense of "caring" for my health that George asserts in his question is hugely disingenuous. If George really cared about my health he would have talked to me directly, which on this subject he never has.

We all need to watch ourselves concerning tactics of obfuscation. Liberals have made it an art form, but anyone who feels backed in a corner in a discussion or debate, or who just does not like what someone says,  may be tempted to use these tactics.

But the smoking gun in George's comments that he is lying when he says that he is is just curious about whether or not my eating habits and fatness is sin. As to his innuendo of my allegedly not going to confession or Mass, how can he possibly know this one way or the other? We have seen each other like 4 times in 20 years, and then for only few days, and he lives across the world in a different country. This remark is telling of his real motivations. I might add that this remark is also a mortal sin of rash judgment on his part. Of course, as a hostile unbeliever he could care less about that.

Now on to answer George's question directly: Being fat is not a sin, and a diabetic drinking coca cola is not automatically a sin nor is it a slow suicide. Since 70% of all illness can be traced to stress (at least in the U.S.), if anything is a slow-suicide that would be it. But, in actuality neither stress, nor a diabetic drinking coca cola, nor smoking, drinking alcohol in excess, or even using illegal drugs is slow suicide. Suicide is the deliberate and intentional act of trying to kill oneself.  Bad habits are just bad habits even if they eventually someday cause some life-threatening disease.

On the subject of being fat, I write this not really to answer George, whom is quite unimportant and his hostility toward me utterly his own burden, but to all those out there who are fat and have to suffer from the bigotry that comes with being fat. In fact, fat people and Catholic people are the last two groups to which it is still okay to make fun and exact prejudice towards. Since I am a fat Catholic I take a double whammy. Well, I am also politically conservative, thus in the perverted, debauched, and morally bankrupt world of liberals that makes a third whammy.

Being fat, in-and-of-itself, is not a sin. St. Thomas Aquinas is the greatest Saint in the history of the Church, the man who more than any other developed the theology of the Church, and who is also one of the greatest philosophers of all time. St. Aquinas was so fat that it is said that he cut a semi-circle in the dinner table so he could get closer to the table. If a fat person can be a great saint (which means that he is also in heaven), then I do not think I am going to worry about it much.

The Bible does talk about physical health. For example, St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." This, however, was talking more about defiling one's body by such things as fornication, adultery, and debauchery, but nevertheless can extend to health.

The Apostle John says in 3 John 1:2 "Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul." St John is giving a standard greeting here and a hint that good health may be good for the soul.

These words by the Apostles are obviously a good ones, but physical health is not an absolute virtue. In the long run, physical health is meaningless without spiritual health, and spiritual heath comes only from God. As St. Paul also said in 1 Timothy 4:8 "For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come."

St. Peter, our first pope, reminded us of the true concern we should have in 1 Peter 3:3-4 "Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." The principle here can apply to the beauty of the body as well as that of attaching jewelry, hair styles, and clothing that we put on the body.

The health nuts are worried about the future, thus they worship the god of health and fitness. God, on the other hand tells us: "You cannot add any time to your life by worrying about it" (Matt 6:27); and "So don't be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time" (Matt 6:34).

And ultimately God tells us (Mark 8:36)  "For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world {money, fame, health and fitness, prestige, etc.) and suffer the loss of his soul?"

What is sin is Gluttony. Gluttons can be skinny, normal, or fat. Gluttony is no respecter of persons, it is an equal opportunity sin. Gluttony is the "inordinate desire for the pleasure connected with food or drink" (Catholic Dictionary). The operative word here is "inordinate."

The sin of Gluttony was originally described in the early Church as a sin of people who eat well in lieu of helping the poor and starving. Thus, it was a sin of selfishness in not sharing one's wealth with the poor. The fat man, St. Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, expanded the definition to include an obsessive anticipation of meals and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods. The operative words here are "constantly" and "excessively."

The Catholic Encyclopedia is instructive:

Gluttony: (From Lat. gluttire, to swallow, to gulp down), the excessive indulgence in food and drink. The moral deformity discernible in this vice lies in its defiance of the order postulated by reason, which prescribes necessity as the measure of indulgence in eating and drinking. 

This deordination, according to the teaching of the Angelic Doctor (St. Thomas Aquinas), may happen in five ways which are set forth in the scholastic verse: 
"Prae-propere, laute, nimis, ardenter, studiose" or, according to the apt rendering of Father Joseph Rickably:

• too soon, 
• too expensively,
• too much, 
• too eagerly,
• too daintily. (meaning fastidious, finicky about food prepare just so to be the most pleasing to the taste; eating for pleasure).    

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. It is incontrovertible that to eat or drink for the mere pleasure of the experience, and for that exclusively, is likewise to commit the sin of gluttony...    

Gluttony is in general a venial sin in so far forth as it is an undue indulgence in a thing which is in itself neither good nor bad. Of course it is obvious that a different estimate would have to be given of one so wedded to the pleasures of the table as to absolutely and without qualification live merely to eat and drink, so minded as to be of the number of those, described by the Apostle St. Paul, "whose god is their belly" (Philippians 3:19). Such a one would be guilty of mortal sin.    

Likewise a person who, by excesses in eating and drinking, would have greatly impaired his health, or unfitted himself for duties for the performance of which he has a grave obligation, would be justly chargeable with mortal sin... 

For myself, I mostly eat when I am hungry, not according to the clock. I generally have one meal a day, sometimes two. I eat normal to slightly above normal portions for a male (what is on a label as a serving size is not normal for just about any male). My meals consist of lean meats and vegetables. I am particularly fond of broccoli and carrots.

I do not drink a gallon of coke as cattily alleged, but I readily admit that I drink too much coke. Some people drink to much coffee and some too much tea. It's all the same thing—a bad habit. My coca cola habit, even as a diabetic (my glucose numbers are okay), does not impair my health to the point that I cannot fulfill the duties God has given me to do, which is the qualifier for gluttony. 

I cannot afford expensive food very often. I am hardly "eager" to eat. I find having to stop my work to fix a meal to be an annoyance. Many times I find myself having gone all day without any food (sometimes even without coke) as I am busy working. Then at 10pm I realize that I have not eaten all day so I then prepare a meal. As a diabetic I am suppose to eat like 5 times a day. That idea is above my pay grade. Nurses are in wonderment when I want an afternoon appointment after fasting all night. They seem to find it in awe that I can last that long without eating.

Gluttony consists of excessive eating habits and a love of food in an inordinate way. While I do have a small handful of favorite foods, I do not get anxious or worried about not having those foods. My income also limits my choices. It is common for the poor to buy starchy food as it is the cheapest and satisfies hunger.

As for coca cola, I fully admit an addiction. It is really about the only item that I truly overindulge on a regular basis. This one item, however, does not constitute gluttony, but rather a bad habit. If there is a sin in this, it is a venial sin, not a mortal one. Of course, we are not to commit sin at all, but I never claimed to be sinless.

The Saints were not sinless. Most of the Saints had all kinds of bad habits and human foibles. It is not perfect habits or impeccability or even holiness per se that necessarily makes a Saint. As one old priest said one time, "A saint is a person to whom God has given a task and he persevered in that task until the day he died." This is what love is — doing something, not doing something, for love and for the greater glory of God in perseverance until death.

On the causes of obesity it is a myth that is it as simple as calories in, calories out. Obesity is a complex set of dynamics. A major link in understanding obesity found by researchers is that obesity is more about stress, than how much one eats. In fact, up to 70% of all illness in the United States is attributable to stress. If drinking too much coke is a sin, well I am in good company of sinners who allow too much stress in their lives, which is at least equal, if not more dangerous to health than my drinking coca cola.

Researchers have also discovered a link in what is called a "ATP-Sensitive potassium channel" as reported in the journal Cell Metabolism by Leonid Zingman, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa, Alexey Alekseev, PhD, assistant professor at the Mayo Clinic, and a team of other scientists at the University of Connecticut and New York School of Medicine.

The point is that there are many factors in why people become obese. It is not always lack of will-power or self-discipline.

Now, I do not mean to make excuses like the guy speeding down the highway telling the police, "but that car was speeding too!" It matters not what others do. What matters is what I do, and that is between me and God alone. 

The reason I am as big as I am today, which is heavier than I have ever been before, is that I have been disabled for more than 12 years. Before becoming disabled, which severely limits my mobility, I use to ride a bicycle at least 10 miles a day, take long walks, play racquetball, backpack, and other activities. In backpacking, I remember taking a young friend out for a backpacking trip. He was a strapping and fit man ten years my junior. I walked rings around this guy despite being overweight. It is a myth that the overweight are automatically unfit. I did the same with my sister once. She is 15 years my junior and I walked rings around her too. While my fitness could have been greater, I was rather fit at that time, despite the weight (which is much less than I am today).

When several medical conditions developed I became very sedentary by no fault of my own. The weight began to increase. Diabetes did not come for several years later.  To suggest that I do not take care of myself, as George said in an email, is indicative of a fat bigot. He thinks that obesity = gluttony = "not taking care" of self. This is typical, but a myth. I no longer have the capacity to ride a bicycle, take walks, play racquetball, etc. Well, I probably could ride a recumbent bicycle, but haven't the money to buy one. George, buy me a recumbent bicycle and I will ride it daily, just for you.

As for problems with cognitive abilities and the like, that is not related to weight or diet. Those are symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a common ailment of people who tend toward working too much, though its cause is unknown. CFS afflicts the skinny and the fat alike. If I lost all excess weight, I will still have CFS. My most debilitating afflictions are the CFS and degenerative diseases of the joints and Lumbar spondylosis, a degenerative condition which affects the lower spine. None of these conditions are cured by losing weight. While losing weight may alleviate the severity of the joint and spine conditions, it will not cure it. I will still have a disability even with no excess weight.  It should be pointed out that even when I was 100 pounds lighter I still suffered disabilities of mobility. 

About the only conditions I have that can significantly be affected by weight loss is the diabetes and hypertension. The hypertension actually seems to be healing despite my weight. My blood pressure is so good that medications are being reduced so they do not have a negative effect as there have been times my pressure was as low as 79/40 and my pulse as low as 36. My blood sugars are mostly under control even with drinking coke.

Whatever the reasons for how I got here at this weight, the fact remains that there are only so many hours in a day. To lose serious weight takes a great deal of time and energy. People who do this spend about as much time or more than an athlete in exercise and other healthy concerns. For me to set aside that much time and effort to lose weight, assuming my disabilities did not exist, I would have to neglect the work God has given me to do. 

So, okay, I am fat and I am not prioritizing losing weight. I am willing to give up the extra 10-15 years of my lifespan to help the tens, even hundreds of thousands, of people that I am helping, which I could not help if I spent the kind of time and energy it would take to lose serious weight. I can do what I can do in little ways, but I just do not have the time for a major effort. I choose others over myself. 

To the argument that better health leads to longer life leads to doing more ministry and helping more people, I say that I can help more people by prayer from heaven (assuming that is where I go) than by extra years on earth. The Bible tells us that the prayers of a righteous man has great impact (James 5:16). There are none more righteous than those men and woman in heaven. So what I cannot do on earth because I may die sooner than my normal lifespan, I can do with much greater effect from heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas died before he could finish his Summa, the greatest theological work ever written, but he does more to help people today from his position in heaven than he did here on earth. Besides, God has the ultimate power and decision as to when any of us die. He can let nature take its course or He can extend our life beyond what it would have been otherwise. He is the sovereign over life and death.

I am not saying this to avoid or make excuses, but to put things into perspective. This perspective cannot be understood by a unbeliever, especially a hostile unbeliever.

The reason all this is an issue in our culture is that when one believes this life on earth is all there is, and doesn't believe in an afterlife, it is natural to do all one can to live as long as one can, because death brings nothingness. People of faith do not have that fear and do not have such an obsessive need for health and fitness. That is not to say that health and fitness is not a good thing, it is, but it is not the all-in-all.  

Unbelievers, like George, do not have that hope. Thus, they must worry about making the best in this life alone. That makes George a slave, a slave to his lifespan. I, and others like me, have freedom. We have the freedom to accept a shorter lifespan with grace if need be, or even to accept martyrdom voluntarily because we are not slaves or even citizens of this world, but rather we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. Heaven is our real home. As mentioned, once we are in our real home we can help others with far greater effect than when we did ministry on earth. Wow, what a freedom! Praise God.

This "friend" posted his challenge about all this to take me down a peg, thinking that I was self-righteous in spouting off as hard as I did about others (liberals and the "messiah" Obama). If one has to be perfect and sinless before making a hard criticism, then George, how are you qualified to post these remarks about me? I find a hypocrisy here. I am not a hypocrite on this score. I think it is perfectly okay to post harsh criticism about someone, even me, and not be perfect before doing it. But, if one is going to believe that one is not qualified to offer harsh criticism unless he is perfect, then one better be prepared to be perfect yourself before pointing out the foibles of others.  I am reminded of the words of Jesus, (Mt 7:3) "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but don't notice the log in your own eye?" The operative admonition here is to judge others when one does not take notice of one's own failings.

I am fully aware of the logs in my own eye, and am one of the very small few on the Internet, who is not a big-time famous celebrity, that truly lives in a glass house, exposing all my dirty laundry and doing so voluntarily. I tell it all, and in my forthcoming autobiography, Life and Other Monsters, it will tell even more, leaving no stone unmoved and no log in my eye left unnoticed or hidden. I am the biggest of sinners and I have huge logs in my eye. I admit it publicly. George, do you have the courage to live as openly?

I point out splinters in others' eye when they refuse to admit they have one, when what they do damages our society, contributes to the culture of death, facilitates the destruction of moral and family values, conducts unethical business practices, violates the Christian ethic, and especially when Catholics, including Catholic bishops, do things that run counter to Church teaching and/or worldview.

In the case of the liberals and progressives in politics and the Church, who seek to destroy the Church, seek to destroy the American constitutional republic as our Founding Fathers defined it in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and lead us toward neo-socialism, even the relatively mild European socialism, which runs counter to our Founding Fathers and our governing documents, I will speak out even if I have a log in my eye. I can do that, according to Jesus, because I am aware of the log in my own eye and because Jesus gives us the mandate to do that.

The admonishment is not that one has to be free of the log. Rather we are to be aware of our own log before speaking to splinter in a brother's eye. Keeping always aware of our own logs, we have a solemn moral imperative to speak out in the public square. As the famous saying goes, "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." This doesn't say that those men need be free of logs. Rather we must speak out against all forms of evil always mindful of logs in our own eyes.

What should you do? Express a genuine concern based in knowledge, not rash judgment. But, mostly you need to take care of your own log that is far more dangerous than mine. Your primary log is that of lack of the salvation of your soul. All the health and fitness in the world is useless if one spends eternity in hell.

(Mark 8:36)  "For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world {money, fame, health and fitness, prestige, etc.) and suffer the loss of his soul?"

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary