Catholics, do you know what documents they mean?

[Cat]

Please don’t ridicule teetotallers like me. Thank you.

I converted to Catholicism from evangelical Protestantism in 2004. Believe it or not, alcohol was and remains my most difficult hurdle to overcome in Catholicism.

I agree that there is nothing sinful about moderate drinking and that the Bible doesn’t forbid it.

I personally find it disgusting and nauseating. The stuff smells like pee or sweat, and I hate being around it. In case you are wondering, I don’t do the Communion wine. Yes, I know it is the Blood of Christ, but only sacramentally. The stuff retains the appearance, smell, and taste of alcohol.

No one in my family drinks and no one has drank alcohol for many generations, at least six generations back. Actually a few people in the family have drunk alcohol, and guess what?!–they became skid-row alcoholics and died of alcohol-related causes at an early age. Everyone else in the family is cancer-free, heart-disease free, and lives until their 90s.

Our family does have mental illness (psychosis–the kind where people think they are peanuts, like one of my uncles) running in the family, which perhaps is linked to the alcohol problems.

Alcohol is poison to our family, and I choose, like almost everyone else in my family, to avoid it. I don’t want to become an alcoholic, although IMO, I probably am an alcoholic, one who lives abstinently.

My dad always said that the reason he avoids alcohol is that people say and do foolish things when they drink. He used to go to the bars with his friends and get free food and drink from the bartender. His friends would confess things to my dad while they were buzzed–things like “I’m having an affair,” or “I’m dipping into the office petty cash,” and after they sobered up, they would ask my dad if they had said anything stupid, and he would say, “Oh, yes.” Then he had POWER over them. And he used it to his advantage.

No wonder drinking people don’t care for non-drinkers, right?

Because of alcohol, I hated college, and so does my daughter. Before she went to college, a CATHOLIC college, BTW, we tried to tell her that 99% of the students are just there to drink and party and she tried to tell us that things have changed since we went to school. She’s been there three years and hates it. She says that she has never met a decent MAN there, because all they are interested in is drinking as much as possible and that they don’t know how to have a conversation or do anything besides drink. The women aren’t much better. She was one of the most popular girls in high school, but now she has only one good friend. And no, she doesn’t walk around with her nose in the air around the drunks. But in college, when someone doesn’t drink, they are ostracized. No one wants to be friends with someone who doesn’t party.

Men,you should be ASHAMED of yourselves!! Way to go, Catholic men! My daughter is not Catholic, and by acting like jerks and placing alcohol consumption above all else, you are giving her a good reason to avoid Catholicism.

My other daughter attended an alcohol-free college. Yes, students do drink off-campus, but the majority of students who attend the college are non-drinkers and the no-drinking rules are strictly enforced by the college. She had a great time in college and made lots of friends.

One of my best uncles, a dear man who spent 10 years working his way through seminary, and his wonderful wife, were killed at a young age by a stinkin’ drunk driver. Most of the people who drink and drive are not alcoholics and I’ll bet that many of them don’t abuse alcohol. It is the ALCOHOL that kills on the road, not the driver. If people don’t drink alcohol, it’s not an issue behind the wheel of a car.

Personally, I think that consumption of alcohol is somewhat inconsistent with a pro-life stance, considering that half of all accidents have alcohol as a factor.

I think it’s sad that people need alcohol to have a good time. My family always has a good time. We don’t need alcohol. We enjoy talking and laughing and life. A good meal, music, laughter–these are enough for us.

I have tried to give you several of the many reasons why I avoid alcohol and its users. You’ll notice that I didn’t mention the Bible. My reasons have nothing to do with Christianity. So please don’t make fun of those who choose to abstain. It’s not always blind fundamentalism.

 

[IsMiseSteise]

Cat–

#1. Alcohol has NO power unless there is a human attached to it. This is NOT the devil in liquid form.

#2. MOST of the time, alcohol in a drunk person works like a truth serum. You find out what the person is REALLY like while drunk.

#3. Most of the drunk drivers are INDEED alcoholics.

Don’t anyone think that because of someone’s age, they can’t be an alcoholic. I’ve known people to start drinking at the age of 15 and some as early as 13. They were RAGING alcoholics by the time they were graduating high school.

This means that we need to teach our children about the concept of moderation and abstinence.

And, for the record, no, I don’t drink. I did however come from a family of alcoholics and drug abusers (and many other things). I am the black sheep of the family because I didn’t follow the same path as the rest of my family.

 

[woodyww]

They are indeed talking about the early church documents of the Assembly of God. Of course their early church documents only date from the early 1900’s. The Assembly of God church began on Asuza Street in Los Angeles about that time.

 

[Contarini]

I was reading some “positions” statements for the Assembly of God today and ran across this quote:

They do not say what early documents of the Church they are referring to. I know the Catholics here are more well versed in the early Church Fathers writings than I am, do any of you know what documents they are referring to? (I is possible I suppose that they mean early Assembly of God Documents but I doubt it.)

Well, Pentecostals frequently claim the Montanists as precursors so they might be thinking of something like that. . . .

My wife wrote her dissertation on 19th-century theological arguments for total abstinence (particularly with regard to the use of grape juice in Communion), and she says that Frederick Lees (one of the main authors who advocated this position, and in fact wrote a Temperance Bible Commentary) interpreted the Didache and certain other early Jewish and Christian documents as advocating the use of unfermented wine. He made much of passages that talk about pressing the grapes directly into the Eucharistic cup (a custom which I understand was particularly prevalent among the Copts). But she doesn’t know what specific documents they might be thinking of.

Edwin

 

[Erich]

I wonder if things might have changed if St. Brigid had prayed for a lake of near beer rather than the stout.

“near bear” is a misnomer… that stuff ain’t anywhere near beer!

Remember, too, that when Jesus changed water into wine, he didn’t just make enough to fill everyone’s glass once or twice … he made 120-180 gallons of the stuff!

 

[rpp]

A couple of points about the consumption of alchohol that is often lost in these types of debates.

Alcohol content, as one poster pointed out, was lower because of fermentation techniques used during Biblical times. There was no such thing as “80 proof” anything. Typical alcohol content was anywhere from around 3 or 4% to around 10%.

Alcohol is am important preservative. It kept grape juice from spoiling. Remember, they had no refrigeration in AD 30! Grape juice, kept in a jar in the warm sun, would spoil quickly. Why go to all the trouble press the grapes if you have to consume it all in less than 36 hours. Ferment it and it lasts for months or years.

The arguments that claim the wine in the Bible is non-alcoholic grape juice are derived less from historical fact and more from historical revisionism.

Now this is not to say that drinking wine or any alcoholic beverage is an occasion of sin for many would not be right. Many great Catholic saints, like St. John Neuman (today is his feast day) and St. Thomas Aquinas completely avoided the stuff. Cloistered nuns generally do not imbibe.

If you do not want to drink that is fine. If you want to drink in moderation, that is fine too. If you want to drink and occasionally “over-indulge”, that is most certainly not fine and is in fact sinful, possibly seriously (mortally) sinful.

There are many activities and sacrifices we can make for the glory of God. Refusing to imbibe can easily be one. Claiming that all alcohol consumption is a sin is not, though I must concede, it does tend to promoite holiness.

One unrelated question about the Assembly of God. Did they not also come out and say homosexual marriage is okay, or am I confusing them with another Protestant denomination?