Is smoking a mortal sin?

[Dan_Grelinger]

It would seem the mortal discernment with smoking would depend on whether a single cigarette in itself is sufficient to be called grave matter. I would tend to think (I may be wrong) that a lone cigarette in an of itself, smoked now and then, would not be of significance to ones health in sufficient degree to be called grave matter. The accumulative affect could certainly amount to grave matter.
I think the moral dilemna rests in the development of enslaving oneself to a vice and could possibly fall under the capital sin of gluttony.

In Christ - J.M.J.
Mapleoak

Astute analysis. A single cigarette does not seem to meet the criteria of grave matter.

The act of doing what will naturally result in an addiction, (starting to smoke) would seem to be.

Sincerely,

Dan

 

[johannahw]

Once I was addicted to nicotine I was always a “to excess” smoker. I’ve been trying to quit smoking for 3 years and on this present round have gone 3 months without smoking so far. Last year I went for 5 months. One night I got hit really hard with the urge to smoke and went and got two packs of ciggs. By evening the next day, they were all gone.
I got it bad. And I really hope I can quit this time but even then its iffy. I went for 10 years once without smoking and still started up again.

 

[Norseman82]

If you have a family history of heart disease or stroke or cancer, or have any other factors that contribute to these diseases, then IMHO, ANY tobacco use is an abuse.

 

[Dwyer]

I’m almost 100% sure I once heard a priest on EWTN, I don’t remember his last name, Father Jaques (Dahley?, he filled in for Mother Angelica for a short period about six years ago before Fr. Mitch Pacwa took over, and has had one or two series) say it was a Venial Sin; Fr. Jaques said he smokes.

Some priests smoke. The Catholic priest who edits First Things magazine and has been a guest on Raymond Arroyo’s WOL on EWTN many times also smokes; they talked about it once and how it the priest smokes while he writes.

Given that, I would say it is at most a venial sin. I can’t imagine it being a mortal sin if these two priests smoke, and Raymond mentioned it on his show.

 

[Clovis]

“The Lord is my Sheppard, I shall not want.”

I don’t believe smoking is a mortal sin, at least I hope not because I smoke. I’m trying to cut down to where I can smoke to my choosing as opposed being addicted, but this is probably a pipe dream. I’m surely going to need to quite somehow one day, maybe in ‘The Birth Pains’.

 

[Smber2c]

I think smoking has it’s major fault in addiction. Many people here have tried to say that it’s a risk to kill yourself…but millions of things we do are risks to kill ourselves.

---

In science class I learned that 10 minutes in the sun gives people get enough vitamen D for the whole day. So, any more time than 10 minutes is an undue risk of skin cancer.
Anyone have a beach house? Sinner, sinner, sinner.

Anyone eat their meat med-rare? That seems like an un-due risk. Shouldn’t we just go on grilling all meat until it’s tough as leather? All you red meat fan…sinners.

Anyone hear of NASA. What’s the % of people that died going to space? …what more than zero? Sinner…you’re playing with death.​

I’ve never smoked. I never plan on it. But people smoking cigaretts, cigars, pipes, hookas…yeah they all have some health problem associated with them, but I’m still feel that it’s the addiction that makes most of the moral problem.

And before someone says that’s smoking’s sin b/c of such a high % of people who do die…is Alaskan crab fishing a sin? Isn’t it’s % pretty high? Where is that line of acceptible life/death risk?

 

[Dan_Grelinger]

I agree that once someone becomes a smoker, that each smoke is not a mortal sin, and that no number of venial sins can equal a mortal sin.

However, is not the act of starting this terrible addiction, with all its serious consequences, a mortal sin?

Sincerely,

Dan

 

[johannahw]

I’m a recovering smoker (3 months now) and I think I’ll always be a recovering smoker. I wish I’d had more knowledge when I was 16 I’d never have started.
I even quit once for 10 years and then started smoking again. That was something like 8 years ago. I’ve been struggling to quit and stay quit for the last 3 years (since I had cancer). I’m working on yet another attempt to stay off tobacco – like I said its been 3 months now.
The only way nicotine addiction could be a mortal sin in my book is if one made a decision to start smoking with full cooperation of the will after being fully informed of all the facts of the dangers and effects of tobacco use.
If I’d known when I was 16, what I know today regarding addiction alone, I’d never have started in the first place.
Anyway, to you smokers out there trying to quit keep on working at it. That’s pretty much all you can do.
Johannah

 

[PauloFreire2]

Smoking* is *sinful. It’s addiction, which equals idolatry, and it destroys the Temple. Priests should not be allowed to either smoke or drink. Both are unChristian. When I was in the U.S. Army, hundreds of us fell in to drink and party in a gigantic fest-tent in Germany after a long, miserable training exercise. The Brigade Chaplain was an Irish priest. He got smashed and roamed around drunk, making a fool of himself. Most of the troops (Protestant) were shocked. I felt embarassed as a Catholic American.

 

[johannahw]

Yes, you have a point. But once a person is addicted free will becomes impaired. When I started smoking at 16 I was uninformed about it. This was in the mid to late 60s. Cigarettes were still being advertised on TV. Everyone at my high school smoked. I did not know what kind of damage tobacco could do to the body. The cigarette package warnings of cancer hadn’t been being printed for very long, only a few years at best.
I wasn’t a Catholic at the time but most of my Catholic friends smoked and a lot of my other Christian friends smoked. These and my parents who smoked, set the example for me. Did I commit mortal sin? I really don’t think so. Now I’m just receiving the fruits of my actions. I was not fully informed. No one told me smoking was a mortal sin or showed me in the Bible where smoking was a sin of any kind. But TODAY, if I’d never smoked and had the knowledge available today and I chose to light up that first cigarette? Yeah, I’d think I was in mortal sin. In fact I was able to quit smoking for 10 years once and still went back to it but this time with full knowledge. I believe THAT was a mortal sin.
I really don’t think you should judge smokers so harshly. Quitting is tough and I think ex smokers are just like alcoholics. You’ll always have that addiction demon hanging over your head. I have to keep telling myself from day to day: Not even 1 puff is okay.
Johanah

 

[outfctrl]

I know a few of my friends that their grandparents lived to be well over 90 and smoked every day of their life. Then died of old age.

Smoking isnt a Mortal Sin.

Sooo
If I chose to live in Los Angeles, the most polluted city in the US, I would be committing a Mortal sin? Would not the air be killing me slowly?

 

[Dan_Grelinger]

I know a few of my friends that their grandparents lived to be well over 90 and smoked every day of their life. Then died of old age.

Flawed logic. If that were true, then this argument would work also.

Many suicide attempts are not successful; the person lives anyway. If some people can attempt suicide and fail, then it must be OK.

Smoking isnt a Mortal Sin.

In many cases, yes, but always? Not sure about that one. It is so damaging (to ourselves and those around us) so costly, and done only for selfish self-gratification, that beginning to smoke, knowing, but ignoring these facts, has got to be “grave matter”, qualifying for motal sin.

Sooo, If I chose to live in Los Angeles, the most polluted city in the US, I would be committing a Mortal sin? Would not the air be killing me slowly?

Are you serious?

Assuming that you would buy into this argument…

What are the reasons for living in Los Angeles? Now, compare that to the reasons for smoking. See the difference?

Sincerely,

Dan

 

[melensdad]

Are eating Twinkies or butter or full fat dairy products even considered a sin? What about transfats? Palm oils? Refined sugars? Beer? Beef? Wine? What about the Caffeine addicts with their coffee and/or energy drinks? Not only are these things tied to heart disease or obesity they are also tied to some types of cancer.

FWIW, I know many former smokers who quit and never turned back to smoking. The nicotine is flushed from your system in about 3 days, after that the whole issue of “addiction” is psychological, but it is no longer chemical and therefore not a physical addiction.

Wouldn’t all this fall under the issue of gluttony?

Things done in **moderation **may have healthful effects, things done to the point of gluttony will obviously cause ill effects.

 

[Chris_Jacobsen]

Smoking is not a sin at all. We are Catholics, not Puritans. The Catholic Church teaches that it is ok to smoke.

All of this anti-smoking propaganda is nothing more than an effort to impose the beliefs of the Puritan religion upon society. Protecting public health is used as their excuse.

And I do not smoke.

 

[Norseman82]

The Catholic Church teaches that it is ok to smoke.

Sources please?

All of this anti-smoking propaganda is nothing more than an effort to impose the beliefs of the Puritan religion upon society. Protecting public health is used as their excuse.

You would have a different attitude if you lost both your parents before high school due to tobacco-related diseases…

 

[matthias]

Yeah, it’s kind of a shock to hear.

The point is that a virtue is always the middle ground between two extremes. Thus, temperance is between doing too much of something and doing not enough of something. So, there has to exist a sin–even though we don’t have a name for it–which would entail not smoking enough.

In practice, most of us don’t need to smoke at all.

If you read, St. Thomas Aquinas’s writing about drunkenness, he makes the point that it would be a sin if someone were to abstain from alcohol to the point that it harmed nature.

See, for example, Summa Theologiae Question 150, Article 1, Reply to Objection 1

It’s a strange thought.

This is not a correct understanding of virtue. There are certainly acts that too much is a vice and too little a vice and the middle is the virtue. However Aristotle who was the first to describe this virtue ethics pointed out that there are also certain things that are never too little or to much. For instance, when is there too little or too much adultery? The answer is that adultery is always wrong. There is no such thing as too little adultery as a vice.

 

[ComradeAndrei]

I am leaning towards Chris Jacobsen’s view, I think this whole business of trying to tack on “serious matter” to smoking smacks of Puritanism. Same with the drinking bit, its ability to be abused is no reason to be a Puritan.

Secondly, we need not drag emotionalism into the discussion.

 

[Dan_Grelinger]

Smoking is not a sin at all. We are Catholics, not Puritans. The Catholic Church teaches that it is ok to smoke.

All of this anti-smoking propaganda is nothing more than an effort to impose the beliefs of the Puritan religion upon society. Protecting public health is used as their excuse.

And I do not smoke.

Why do you not smoke?

And I, too, am looking for your sources from the official teaching of the Catholic Church that smoking is OK.

If you’ve read much of the Bible, the foundation for Catholic teaching, it would seem clear that there is little suggestion that worldly pleasures are ‘OK’, but lots of admonitions that they should be avoided. Tobacco would seem to be one of the ‘ultimate’ worldly pleasures. Very, very little good comes from smoking, yet very bad things can (and do) happen.

If God’s law is the ‘owner’s manual’ for us humans, it would seem to me that the results of smoking would speak very clearly of what God has written in our ‘owner’s manual’. And, the people who know our bodies better than anyone else besides God, (our medical doctors) would agree. Thou shalt not smoke!

Sincerely,

Dan

 

[Dan_Grelinger]

Are eating Twinkies or butter or full fat dairy products even considered a sin? What about transfats? Palm oils? Refined sugars? Beer? Beef? Wine? What about the Caffeine addicts with their coffee and/or energy drinks? Not only are these things tied to heart disease or obesity they are also tied to some types of cancer.

Some of these are not the least bit addictive. Making analogies with smoking for those items is weak.

For alcohol and caffeine, which can be addictive, there is also abuse possible, which is sin. However, alcohol and caffeine provide greater benefits when used in moderation than cigarettes, with less risk.

I think we have become conditioned by cigarette manufacturers to think that smoking is OK. When we put aside this conditioning and get real, we see that we are really just breathing thick smoke! Why do people cough when they smoke their first cigarettes? Duh, because it is bad for the body. Coughing is a defense mechanism against the poison. Does the same reaction happen with any of the other items on your list?

Sincerely,

Dan

 

[pprimeau1976]

I think that the tobacco companies are largely to blame. It’s strange to me that in the 17th and 18th centuries, people were not gorging themselves on snuff and smoking pipes to the point that their lungs turned black.

Cigarette companies have purposely made smoking more addictive with additives that have made the nicotine more addictive to the point where it has become more of a chemical dependency. I think some corporate executives of big tobacco companies are guilty of a mortal sin.

Now, with education, people should know the dangers of excessive smoking.