Wait so drunkenness is consitered a mortal sin? i must have missed this… So does that mean i’m not allowed to go out on weekends and drink with my friends or family? Or does that just mean in moderation or something? Like i know there is a difference in getting drunk once in a while and being an alcoholic.
“CCC 2290: The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Those incur grave guilt who, by drunkenness or a love of speed, endanger their own and others’ safety on the road, at sea, or in the air.”
If you endanger someone by using alcohol in excess of that which allows you to do your duty or refrain from activities that could pose a threat to yourself or others, that is a mortal sin. If you’re a doctor on call or if you’re going to be the driver, for instance, it is a serious matter that you not even approach drinking in excess.
If you are not an alcoholic, but abuse by choice of free will, you are undoubtedly more culpable for drinking and driving (or drinking and
fill in the sin) than an alcoholic would be, because alcoholism mitigates the exercise of free will.
It is the actual case that makes a difference, though, not the label of “alcoholic” or “abuser”. God reads hearts, and knows who could have chosen better and who was so enslaved to a sinful habit that exercising free choice was not fully in reach, and to what degree.
Also, you are bound by conscience to avoid losing your free will to alcoholism or habitual abuse. That is, if you were to continue to choose to abuse alcohol when moderation was an available course, you would be responsible for the choices leading to your alcoholism or to the development of a bad habit, even if you were not so responsible for the things you do because you lost your free will as you were beforehand.
Drunkenness is a serious matter, and one should never take the position that it is “only” a venial sin. It can easily lead to serious evil in one’s self and in others, for people are more likely to drink to excess when they are in the presence of those doing likewise, and less likely to do it if their friends do not. As you are probably aware, alcohol abuse goes hand in hand with verbal abuse and the cooling of friendships, uncivilized behavior to strangers, immodesty and impurity in speech and action, if not fornication and adultery, spending to excess, and, when the hangover comes, inability to perform one’s duties the next day. All this without ever getting behind the wheel of a car. Alcohol abuse, if habitual, also does serious damage to the body, even if you never become an alcoholic. Your liver doesn’t care about the state of your mind when you flooded it with ethanol.
In choosing to use alcohol in moderation, you may not just preserving yourself from sin, but also avoiding a near occasion of sin for your friends and family. So enjoy yourself on weekends, there is nothing wrong with alcohol
per se, but use it in moderation only.
