Is it permissible to steal for food

[bpd_stl]

As others have noted, the OP’s question is quite vague (either intentional or not). I think others have weighed in quite nicely with responses in regards to hypothetical situations.

I can only speak as an American living in the Midwest. Many years ago when I was a seminarian, I spent some time working with the local St. Vincent de Paul as a large homeless shelter operated by the diocese, so I was given some exposure the the realities of the working poor, the homeless, habitual drug use and untreated mental illness. Opened my eyes for sure.

So…sometimes, it’s a matter of impaired decision-making (drugs/alcohol/mental illness) that leads to extreme hunger. What money they get was spent fueling their drug habits. Theft of everything else (including sometimes food) is a consequence. Are they culpable? Good question.

 

[Bluebright]

Well I am assuming the US is like the UK for this answer.
People can (and do) starve to death in a 1st world country amongst people and charities. It happens, so sorry to burst your bubble. You wouldn’t, yes. For starters you speak English and have a phone and are native to the country you’re living in and presumably are legal there. If a person is not these things then they may be too afraid of authorities to ask for help and or not know how or where to ask for help. Sometimes there are other reason too, such as being illegal, mental or physical health problems etc. These people are often found by charities and churches where they do feel safe but they can easily fall through the cracks. Our culture is generally one that looks the other way, sadly. So it happens that people are found dead.

 

[Anesti33]

If we are going to go into the distinction between “hungry” and “starving” and “dying of malnourishment”, then I would question whether it is even possible to steal enough food to remedy malnourishment before dying and before being jailed for the crimes.

 

[Freddy]

When the hunger reaches a certain point, and the food is not otherwise available, I think an excellent case is made for the hungry person having the “primary right”.

Something of a debatable point I’d say. Can you determine the morality of the action by how hunvry someone is?

 

[Freddy]

Along with their concept of makruh (“not quite a sin, but not the best thing either, something you should avoid, something to be disliked”)…

I wasn’t aware of that concept. But it seems like an excellent idea. Something can be forbidden (stealing your neighbours lawn mower) and it would be ‘haram’ to do it. But something that is not recommended and to be avoided (stealing fruit from his garden because you are hungry) might be makruh.

I might start a thread on the five rulings (haram and makruh) to see if there are equivalents in Catholicism.

 

[Peebo]

Here in the US it would be wise to ask rather than steal or you’d stand a good chance of being shot.

 

[John10]

I think this article address this issue

https://christianity.net.au/questions/christian-steal

While there might be circumstances that make stealing understandable it is not ok. The reality of why so many people suffer hunger is two fold:

1.- Earth has more than enough resources to provide food for everybody, we just need to be less selfish and help those less fortunate accordingly to our income. We all can make a small sacrifice and give something to the poor, if we really wanted to.

2.- There is a huge amount of food waste, mostly in developed countries (along with an obesity pandemic) while under developed countries (such as Africa) people are literally dying of hunger. It all boils down to the imbalances that capitalism coupled with excessive greed can create.

Christ challenged us to look beyond only caring about ourselves (although it is licit to do so), we must also strive to always think of those less fortunate than us.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

When the hunger reaches a certain point, and the food is not otherwise available, I think an excellent case is made for the hungry person having the “primary right”.

Something of a debatable point I’d say. Can you determine the morality of the action by how hunvry someone is?

I think you can. Just a bit peckish, no, you can’t steal so you can quench that urge to nibble. Those kind of “munchies”, you could offer up as penance. But so hungry that it is causing you pain, dizziness, disorientation, and there’s no other way to get food, everyone has turned you down, and you’re getting worse and worse off… then, yes, I think the hungry person has a right to the food that no one will give him.

Perhaps it is helpful to frame it this way — how hungry does your child have to be, before you can determine that their right to have their hunger alleviated, overrides the right of your greedy, selfish, cold-hearted neighbor to keep the food that they won’t give you?

It’s really a purely academic question. If we are supposed to be the One True Church of Jesus Christ, humanity’s guardian of the Christian virtues of charity and mercy in the first place, then I’d say the first place to go, would be the local Catholic parish. If they turn me down, then I can tell them, “Okay, fine, don’t feed us, don’t lift a finger to help us, I’ll just go down the street here to the Baptists or the Pentecostals, and I’ll be sure to tell them that the Catholics wouldn’t give us food — does that sound like a plan, are you good with that? Is there anything in that Bible of yours about the least of your brethren, or the merciful being blessed?”

Before anyone accuses me of being overly cynical, this has a real-life parallel. A few years ago, an elderly lady approached me at the gas station, told me she was poor and in need, we got to talking, I discovered she was Catholic (not that this would have made a difference), and I gave her a meager sum of money, prayed with her, and told her to go to my parish for further assistance. Well, I got a hot little call the next day from the parish secretary! Turns out that wasn’t quite the thing to do, and we are not talking a poor parish, not hardly. Let’s just say we discussed religion. Yet one more reason, one of many, that is my former parish.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

Along with their concept of makruh (“not quite a sin, but not the best thing either, something you should avoid, something to be disliked”)…

I wasn’t aware of that concept. But it seems like an excellent idea. Something can be forbidden (stealing your neighbours lawn mower) and it would be ‘haram’ to do it. But something that is not recommended and to be avoided (stealing fruit from his garden because you are hungry) might be makruh.

I might start a thread on the five rulings (haram and makruh) to see if there are equivalents in Catholicism.

That would be great! I know we don’t share the Faith, but you are a sharp guy, and you have some good ideas. I always enjoy our discussions.

When I think of makruh as applied to Catholicism, I don’t think in terms of something like “stealing in extreme circumstances”, I think more in terms of things that come highly recommended to do (or avoid as the case may be), such that their omission indicates some kind of deficiency, yet it does not necessarily rise to the point of sin. Examples would be:

• Never going to daily Mass, not even once or twice a year
• Never reading the Bible, or only reading it very seldom
• Never visiting the Blessed Sacrament
• Never having prayed the Rosary in one’s life, if you are of Latin/Roman/Western spirituality (I qualify this because the Rosary is not part of the spirituality of many Eastern Rite Catholics)
• Only going to communion once a year
• Only going to confession once a year

Again, not necessarily sinful in themselves, but far short of the ideal, and possibly indicative of deeper problems. These would be examples of “Catholic makruh”.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

HomeschoolDad:

When the hunger reaches a certain point, and the food is not otherwise available, I think an excellent case is made for the hungry person having the “primary right”.

Something of a debatable point I’d say. Can you determine the morality of the action by how hunvry someone is?

I think you can. Just a bit peckish, no, you can’t steal so you can quench that urge to nibble. Those kind of “munchies”, you could offer up as penance. But so hungry that it is causing you pain, dizziness, disorientation, and there’s no other way to get food, everyone has turned you down, and you’re getting worse and worse off… then, yes, I think the hungry person has a right to the food that no one will give him.

Perhaps it is helpful to frame it this way — how hungry does your child have to be, before you can determine that their right to have their hunger alleviated, overrides the right of your greedy, selfish, cold-hearted neighbor to keep the food that they won’t give you?

My point is that it’s not cut and dry. Commit adultry and it is. You’ve sinned. But in our stealing example it’s a matter of personal opinion as to how hungry you need to be before it’s acceptable to steal food (or even whether it is acceptable) and then a matter of degree. Which is definitely a matter of personal opinion.

Is it conceivable that your wife could beg you to steal food for your hungry child and you would stand there thinking ‘Well, she’s not hungry enough yet. I’ll just give it another hour’. Or even think of yourself and let her become hungrier still so that it lessens your culpability?

The answer to the question posed by the op is ‘Yes - depending on the circumstances’. And then it will be personal opinion as to whether those cicrumstances are valid. I can’t see any other way of answering it.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Is it conceivable that your wife could beg you to steal food for your hungry child and you would stand there thinking ‘Well, she’s not hungry enough yet. I’ll just give it another hour’. Or even think of yourself and let her become hungrier still so that it lessens your culpability?

Unless I’m just being thick as a brick where it comes to the Gospel, I don’t see this as having a culpability aspect. Not at all.

I wouldn’t be doing a lot of thinking and chopping moral theology up into little pieces, I’d just be getting food for my son.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Is it conceivable that your wife could beg you to steal food for your hungry child and you would stand there thinking ‘Well, she’s not hungry enough yet. I’ll just give it another hour’. Or even think of yourself and let her become hungrier still so that it lessens your culpability?

Unless I’m just being thick as a brick where it comes to the Gospel, I don’t see this as having a culpability aspect. Not at all.

I wouldn’t be doing a lot of thinking and chopping moral theology up into little pieces, I’d just be getting food for my son.

I’m with you. The boy’s hungry, I get food any way I can. But there are some who insist that it will be a sin whatever the conditions. And that the conditions just affect one’s culpability.

So if your boy is starving you are more culpable in stealing the food than if he’s at death’s door.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Freddy:

Is it conceivable that your wife could beg you to steal food for your hungry child and you would stand there thinking ‘Well, she’s not hungry enough yet. I’ll just give it another hour’. Or even think of yourself and let her become hungrier still so that it lessens your culpability?

Unless I’m just being thick as a brick where it comes to the Gospel, I don’t see this as having a culpability aspect. Not at all.

I wouldn’t be doing a lot of thinking and chopping moral theology up into little pieces, I’d just be getting food for my son.

I’m with you. The boy’s hungry, I get food any way I can. But there are some who insist that it will be a sin whatever the conditions. And that the conditions just affect one’s culpability.

So if your boy is starving you are more culpable in stealing the food than if he’s at death’s door.

And those “some” would be wrong. We have a pithy little expression in America about opinions — everybody has one. (That is the bowdlerized version.)

I hate to have to be the one to say it — and I’ve discussed this on the forums before — but I see an almost neo-Jansenism emerging among some faithful, orthodox Catholics. We recently had a poster who asserted that all sins against the Ten Commandments were “grave sins”, therefore mortal sins if they are committed with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. I had to call that out, as if a scrupulous person would read that, and take it to heart, that might be all it would take, to push them over the edge.

What we need, and have too little of nowadays, is clear, unambiguous, plain teaching from those whose job it is to teach the Faith, from the highest levels on down — no nuance, no subtle shades of meaning, no having to dissect the words to figure out what is really being said. If I were the one running show, one of the first things I’d do, is to get rid of the term “grave sin” and replace it with “mortally sinful in itself” (given the two other conditions, viz. sufficient reflection and full consent of the will). There is not a third tier, “grave but not mortal”, in between venial and mortal sin, and that’s an error that I fear is getting perpetuated. Back in the 1980s, there was a tendency, in examinations of conscience and so forth, to replace “mortal” sin with “serious” sin, a tendency that seems to have evaporated these days. I asked my confessor what the difference was, and I’ll prize his answer to my dying day — "well, all sin is ‘serious’ ". Priceless!
[/QUOTE]

 

[Freddy]

And those “some” would be wrong. We have a pithy little expression in America about opinions — everybody has one. (That is the bowdlerized version.)

I hate to have to be the one to say it — and I’ve discussed this on the forums before — but I see an almost neo-Jansenism emerging among some faithful, orthodox Catholics. We recently had a poster who asserted that all sins against the Ten Commandments were “grave sins”, therefore mortal sins if they are committed with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. I had to call that out, as if a scrupulous person would read that, and take it to heart, that might be all it would take, to push them over the edge.

But isn’t that what the church teaches? Such as the commentary here: St. Mary's Catholic Center

…which references catechism 1858:

Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments.

Going back to what I said earlier, it seems that it’s a matter of personal opinion as to whether a matter is a sin in the first instance and then whether it moves from venial to mortal. The example in the link above talks about a child taking a small amount from a rich person. A sin? Debatable in itself. Venial? Possibly. But what if the child keeps stealing from the man over the years. At what point does it become mortal?

Surely a matter of personal opinion. Which would be different for the child, the person losing the money and a disinterested person.

And yeah, we use the same body part down here in regard to opinions…

 

[EugeneCharles]

Although it could seem to be unjust to steal something. For example, you might happen to steal food from a person who also doesn’t have food too. You’re like removing life from that person because you took everything that he has. The best way is through hardworking because God gave us hands, feet, eyes, and everything. But for those who can’t really like the disabled, it’s not unlikely that God will always provide for them, that’s why we’re here to be charitable to them. Sometimes, poverty had been a reason for them to steal but we should always remember that we’re gifted with food or something to share with them. Stealing mostly happens if we’re not on the action.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

We recently had a poster who asserted that all sins against the Ten Commandments were “grave sins”, therefore mortal sins if they are committed with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. I had to call that out, as if a scrupulous person would read that, and take it to heart, that might be all it would take, to push them over the edge.

But isn’t that what the church teaches? Such as the commentary here: https://www.aggiecatholicblog.org/2012/04/what-constitutes-grave-matter-what-makes-mortal-sin-mortal/

…which references catechism 1858:

Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments.

Going back to what I said earlier, it seems that it’s a matter of personal opinion as to whether a matter is a sin in the first instance and then whether it moves from venial to mortal. The example in the link above talks about a child taking a small amount from a rich person. A sin? Debatable in itself. Venial? Possibly. But what if the child keeps stealing from the man over the years. At what point does it become mortal?

The key is right there in the article:

Not every single subjective violation of each of the Commandments constitutes a mortal sin. For instance, a 10 year-old child stealing a nickel from a rich man might violate the commandment to “not steal”, but it is not mortal, because it is not grave matter.

As far as “when does it become mortal?”, the traditional teaching — the way I was taught — is that no amount of individual, discrete, unconnected venial sins can ever “add up” to a mortal sin. The question then is "is there a plan to steal small amounts over time, that would add up to one very large amount, ergo mortal, or is it comprised of many small decisions to steal, made independently, with no ‘grand plan’?". I once heard an apocryphal story about a company’s accounting department, and how if you had worked in Department A, you could never work in Department B, because from having worked in both departments, you would then have knowledge of how to embezzle funds, one penny at a time, such that it would never be picked up by auditors, and you could eventually manage to steal quite a bit, with nobody ever being the wiser. But, as alluded to above, you would have to have a “grand plan” to pull the caper off in the end. Put another way, if you pilfer an inkpen here, a bottle of white-out there, a stapler in an old file cabinet that nobody ever uses, it can’t ever “add up” to a mortal sin — they are each just an instance of petty theft. Office pilferage is not as common as it used to be.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I don’t know where you draw those lines, and the best advice is never to commit deliberate venial sins in the first place. We all commit venial sins in spite of ourselves, but I want to think it is more in the course of daily life, the impatient murmur and roll of the eyes when someone is about to work our one last good nerve, the speculation about the character of the mother of the person who just cut us off in traffic, the small lie told to get your tail out of a crack. None of those are good things, but neither are they “bad enough to go to hell for”, and neither are they the kind of things that you get up in the morning telling yourself that you’re going to do — “now, today, I’m going to lie to get my kid in the theater at a discount rate, I’m going to give Joe a good piece of my mind when I see him today to get him back for that thing he did that offended me, and I’m going to cut off everyone else in traffic because getting quickly to my destination is more important than their being able to drive safely and serenely”.

 

[Freddy]

As far as “when does it become mortal?”, the traditional teaching — the way I was taught — is that no amount of individual, discrete, unconnected venial sins can ever “add up” to a mortal sin. The question then is “*is there a plan to steal small amounts over time, that would add up to one very large amount, ergo mortal, or is it comprised of many small decisions to steal, made independently, with no ‘grand plan’?”

Therein lies the problem. I would say that, although there could be a moment when a decision is made to move from ‘borrowing’ a pen or a notepad from the office to actually stealing equipment, quite often these acts don’t change from one to the other at a specific point. It becomes a matter of opinion.

And then who has the correct one?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

As far as “when does it become mortal?”, the traditional teaching — the way I was taught — is that no amount of individual, discrete, unconnected venial sins can ever “add up” to a mortal sin. The question then is “*is there a plan to steal small amounts over time, that would add up to one very large amount, ergo mortal, or is it comprised of many small decisions to steal, made independently, with no ‘grand plan’?”

Therein lies the problem. I would say that, although there could be a moment when a decision is made to move from ‘borrowing’ a pen or a notepad from the office to actually stealing equipment, quite often these acts don’t change from one to the other at a specific point. It becomes a matter of opinion.

And then who has the correct one?

Indeed, therein lies the problem. It is entirely possible for habitual, deliberate venial sin to deteriorate further into mortal sin at some point. Just where is usually a gray area. Resist beginnings, and avoid even deliberate venial sin. That, too, is from the evil one.

 

[o_mlly]

Therein lies the problem. I would say that, although there could be a moment when a decision is made to move from ‘borrowing’ a pen or a notepad from the office to actually stealing equipment, quite often these acts don’t change from one to the other at a specific point. It becomes a matter of opinion.

? Unless the actor is schizophrenic, he knows whether in the act he’s borrowing or stealing.

Perhaps your error is to think that others observing the act cannot distinguish between borrowing and stealing and you’d be correct. However, the morality of the act is not made relative to what others may or may not think but only to the actor’s state of mind. And any other actor in that same state of mind: the owner of the property that I would take and keep without permission has a reasonable right to its possession and I do not.