Is buying someone who is under 21 alcohol a sin?

[Brendan9319]

If a friend peer-pressures you into buying him alcohol, when you are 21 or older and he is 19. Do you think that that is a sin. For the one buying him alcohol, never mind the 19 year old.
Should that be confessed to a Priest?

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

Yes, it is a sin.

Catechism:

**2199 **The fourth commandment is addressed expressly to children in their relationship to their father and mother, because this relationship is the most universal. It likewise concerns the ties of kinship between members of the extended family. It requires honor, affection, and gratitude toward elders and ancestors. Finally, it extends to the duties of pupils to teachers, employees to employers, subordinates to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it.

The larger meaning of the 4th commandment is that we give proper respect to legitimate government authority. In Romans 13 St. Paul exhorts us to obey civil laws. And 1st Peter instructs Christians to obey civil authorities (1 Pt 2:12-13, 17).

The obvious exception to this would be an unjust or immoral law, such a law cannot bind a person. In the case of alcohol age laws, while someone may disagree with the argument behind the law it is not an inherently immoral or unjust law.