First of all I am just going to tell you my experience and tell you what my pastor said.
I am an absolute beer connoisseur. I am a beer snob the way some people are wine snobs. I am also a home brewer and love to make my own. I generally only buy good to very good beer. Typical American beer such as Budweiser, Miller, Bush, and Coors is pretty much considered trash beer throughout the world because of lack of taste and the fact the vast majority of fermentable sugars don’t even come from traditional beer ingredients. They come from flaked corn and rice syrup. That being said they are a pain to brew because there is so little flavor that any error in the fermentation will show up off flavors because there is no dominate flavor to hide in. It is only through marketing that these beers came to capture the beer market. Anyway I have digressed.
As I said I love beer. Although I am disabled now and haven’t been able to make a batch in a long time I always brewed five gallon batches, which is the standard, and to be honest gave more away to friends and family and entered a lot into contests than I kept. I matched my beer to the seasons and all that. For instance I would brew an Irish Ale In Feb. so it would be ready for Saint Patrick’s day, Abby Ales such as Trappest styles (A group of Catholic Monks in Belgium who make beer) to drink for nourishment during Lent fasts, which I do fast more than mandated, which alcohol makes you want food more so it’s like double penance, Kolsh style Ale and Munich Helles lager for Summer, and Brown Ales, Spiced Christmas Ales, and Barley Wine for Fall and Winter and I always had other things around like hard cider or recipes and styles I wanted to try. On average I drank one a day and maybe two to three times a week I would have two bottles.
Every now and again though, sometimes after I was really tense, hot after mowing the lawn, or it was a chilly winter night I would drink until I would get the warm and fuzzes. That nice warm feeling in your belly and maybe you laughed a little louder and jokes that weren’t all that funny, and maybe talked a bit too loudly and had warm feeling for everybody. I decided to ask my pastor about this.
I went into his office one day because I had some questions about the faith being a new convert and asked him what the bible and church considered being drunk. He asked me what I meant. I said, “Well, I think everyone will agree having a beer isn’t being drunk but certainly hugging the Great White Porcelain Thrown and begging God to put you out of your misery is drunk.” I said, “when exactly is drunk?” His answer was, “I drank too much.” I looked at him puzzled. He said, “Bill if you’re looking for an answer like that where is Christian freedom?” I still didn’t get it. He continued, "You’re a smart adult who has several years’ experience with drinking and you’re only going to get more as you get older. “It is questions like this you have to decide for yourself and if by accident you know you past that point know that isn’t a mortal sin because in order for it to be mortal sin you have to have intended to get drunk just like to commit any mortal sin you have to will it to happen and give your full consent”
So to put it to you this way I don’t think you can set any set number on what is reasonable or even drunk. What you may feel is too much for you may not be too much for a brother or sister. For instance if I really wanted to get jolly but not drunk and enjoy some good beer and a lot of it, I would choose a Kolsch style or Munich Helles which is pretty much identical in alcohol content to Budweiser and I could easly drink five to six from say eight o’clock at night to 12:30AM. At that point me and my buddies would be telling jokes, slapping each other on the back, maybe talking a bit too loud and I certainly wouldn’t drive a car, but I certainly haven’t lost control of my ability to choose right from wrong or give into temptations I wouldn’t normally fall for so I don’t think I would be sinning. In the same token two bottles of Barley Wine, which are about 17% alcohol by volume, as I am curled up on the couch in my PJs and bathrobe on a very chilly winter night would be it. Keep in mind though I am over six foot tall and over 300 lbs.
I hope you have read to this part because I want to tell you how alcohol led to my conversion to Catholicism. I became a Christian in 2001 and how it came about was rather odd. I joined the Freemasons when I was about 23 and although I had been raised Baptist I was never a believer in the Christian God, or at least as I know him now, and I lied about this to get in as Masons do not allow atheists to join. Well I met so many Christian men there, many of whom were Catholic and were keeping their membership secret, I saw what a dose of “morality” did to make these men have happy lives that I decided to start going to church and adopt the teachings on morality and also be entertained perhaps. Since I am mostly German, and was at the time a little too proud of that, I started attending the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Now the gospel got to me and I became a believer, but if you know anything about the LCMS you know they have kept all the teachings of Luther which Luther’s motto was “Sin boldly but let your grace be stronger.” In other words do exactly what Paul said not to do and continue on in sin so grace can abound even more. Anyway, I was very anti-Catholic from my upbringing and reading all the early Lutheran polemics against the church that I though Catholics believe you worked your way to heaven. To me it was the whore of Babylon from Revelation and the Anti-Christ would be a pope. One night I was sitting reading scripture and I had been sipping a couple of peppermint schnapps on the rocks and this great feeling for love of God came over me. I immediately hit my knees and started telling him how much I loved him and wanted to serve him and do all he wanted me to do. Then God touched my heart. Here I had been actively indulging in pornography and thought everything was alright because I believed “The Gospel”. Lutherans have this weird view that “The Law” and “The Gospel” are two different things and there only relationship is that The Law is to make you feel guilty but The Gospel, which to them is just that Jesus died for your sins to take away your punishment, then rushes in to rescue you from despair. To them believing The Gospel is that you have been forgiven by Grace to do good works is a mingling of Law and Gospel and the two must always be separate as The Law has no effect on the Christian. Anyway, after pouring my heart out to God and then him telling me I had to change my life things changed. Within two months the Lutheran Church I was going to had been shut down and since I had been watching Mother Angelica on EWTN I had come to realize Catholics didn’t believe what I thought they did at all. For instance I thought Mary was the center of Catholic life and doctrine, not Jesus. Of course our Lady is our friend and Mother and I have devotion to her, but it wasn’t what I expected at all. In short if it wasn’t for Freemasons and alcohol I would still be addicted to pornography and on my way to hell. For the life of me I can understand what fundamentalist have against alcohol and truthfully, although I obey the Church’s teaching and resigned, I don’t understand why she still forbids Masonic membership. Now I know in the past Masons did some shady things and there may have even been some occultism to it, but I attest that there certainly isn’t now and if the vast majority of the men I went to lodge with even knew about Freemasonry’s past they would leave and for another club, but that was long, long ago. I don’t understand why we can’t be members now and I hope they change it. I really miss my lodge brothers and most are old and are dying off and I will likely never see them again this side of heaven.
PS: Sorry for the long post. I just found out I more than likely have cancer and to be honest I haven’t slept for a while and am a little bit foggy in the head and truthfully wanted to talk and get my mind of it and I just sort of rambled on, and no I haven’t drank a drop either.
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