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Is it okay for Christians to be drinking alcohol? What does the Church say about drinking and virtue? We talk about it on Catholic Answers Focus with Cy Kellett.

Catholic Answers Focus is an exciting podcast produced by Catholic Answers. Focus highlights in-depth conversations with Catholic leaders, newsmakers, and unsung heroes of the faith. With a wide array of topics and guests, and compelling commentary on current events, Catholic Answers Focus has something for everyone.

They drink, they smoke, they make a popular show for Catholic men (The Catholic Man Show), so we ask Adam and David to justify Catholic teaching on the acceptability of drinking. Wouldn’t God prefer that we all just stay away from the sauce and stick with tea? That depends, it turns out.

Cy Kellett: Hello and welcome again to Catholic Answers Focus. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and we are delighted this week to welcome David and Adam Minihan, the men from The Catholic Man Show. Also, the founders of St. Michael Radio in Tulsa, Oklahoma. David and Adam are, in addition to being radio founders and hosts of a very, very popular radio program, are fathers, husbands, Catholic men, and connoisseurs of whiskey. Adam and David, welcome.

Adam Minihan: Thanks, Cy. Thanks for having us on.

David Niles: Yeah, happy to be here.

Cy: Well, I thought we’d talk a bit about the theology of drinking. I wonder if you have ever heard this, because on the Catholic Man Show, you will sample beverages, adult beverages. Have you ever gotten any feedback saying, “Hey, why are you doing that? We’re trying to share Christ. We’re trying to share the Gospel. Why do you have drinking on your show?”

Adam: Yes. All the time. In fact…

Cy: Really?

Adam: Yeah. In fact, about once a month we get an email from somebody saying that they either disapprove of us drinking on the show or how alcohol is of the devil or something like that.

David: Yeah. We got one recently saying how someone was shocked we were promoting the consumption of poison on our show.

Cy: Oh.

Adam: Yeah.

David: Yeah. Typically these people, you can tell, they have a background, something in their past, is making them have this reaction. So, we don’t…

Adam: We try to be as pastoral as possible.

David: Yes, thank you.

Cy: Okay. So, why do it then? Why, even if it’s a small number of people who take offense at the alcohol, why do you do it?

Adam: Yeah, so, our show is all about virtue and virtue… it’s one thing talk about virtue, it’s another thing to exemplify virtue. Drinking in moderation is a virtuous act, and moderation looks different for everybody. There are some people who moderation means zero. I means you shouldn’t have any. So, on The Catholic Man Show we try to talk about knowing yourself, being a virtuous man, and so you should know what your strengths and weaknesses are. If there are some weaknesses that you should avoid the near occasion of sin. But you should enjoy the things of this earth for it’s goodness. I think G. K. Chesterton said we should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of it. So, we try to show that you can have a beer, you can have a glass of whiskey, and have a good conversation. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one extreme or the other.

Cy: Those of us who live in other parts of the country sometimes refer to your part of the country as the Bible Belt. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that term.

David: Oh, yeah.

Cy: The Bible Belt is kind of famous for its opposition to drinking. So, is this also a thing that you might be trying to promote, a more Catholic view of drinking?

David: Well, I think part of it for us was, when we started The Catholic Man Show, we wanted to do things that were overtly manly. So, we decided, well, lets drink beer and whiskey. That was part of it. It’s not necessarily that we were trying to be an alcoholic candle on the hill for our Protestant brothers and sisters. But, you know, Cy, you should always take two Baptists fishing with you. This is one thing I’ve learned here in the Bible Belt. If you go fishing you always take two Baptists, because if you just bring one he’ll drink all your beer.

Cy: Oh, I see! If you bring… if you bring two they keep an eye on each other.

David: Oh, yeah.

Cy: Is that what you’re saying?

David: “Do you guys want a beer?” “Uh….no.”

Adam: “No, we’re good.”

David: “No.”

Cy: Now, I can’t believe that you are suggesting moral duplicity on a part of brother Christians. All right. Okay. So, you… Would it be fair to say you might have had opportunities to have a wider reach for your radio program if it did not include drinking and references to drinking?

David: Oh, definitely.

Adam: Yeah, absolutely. Because, I mean, the target audience that we’re going for are the dads who are between the 25-age to 50-year-old range who are going through the motions of taking their kids to mass every Sunday, but they may not necessarily be taking their faith super seriously. So, if we start off by saying, “Hey, here’s a little beverage. Here’s a little story behind the beverage. Here’s why we drink,” it kind of breaks down the walls of it’s not like this… strong… “Here’s Catholic theology or philosophy right off the bat.” It kind of gives them a little bit of sense of welcome and maybe a little bit of hospitality. Yeah, so, we started off there.

Adam: Plus, alcohol and Catholicism have gone together hand-in-hand for so long. There’s so many awesome stories about Catholics bringing on alcohol. From the monks, from perfecting, basically, beer. They’re the ones… Egyptians started beer but the monks, some of the best beers ever brewed in this world are by monks.

Cy: Well, that Egyptian beer is really gross.

Adam: It is so gross.

Cy: Just throw some bread in and you let it ferment and it… it’s not like what we think of as modern beer. Modern beer is invented by Catholic monks.

Adam: That’s correct.

David: Right.

Adam: And not only that, but Dom Perignon was invented by a Benedictine monk. I don’t know if you knew that.

Cy: No, I did not.

Adam: But whiskey… Irish people… the Irish monks shared the recipe of Irish whiskey to the Scots which helped created scotch.

David: Yeah, no, the Scots might disagree with that. There is…

Adam: Yeah, there is a story. Yeah.

David: There is contentious debate on who started whiskey, whether it was the Irish or the Scots. But…

Adam: But even the Franciscans brought grapes, wine grapes over to California to start that. Then, Lasallian Christian brothers brought it back after prohibition.

David: Yeah, and it’s just like, you know what world? You’re welcome.

Adam: Yeah, we’re just riddled with how we’ve helped bring alcohol into society.

Cy: So, lets get into the theology of it then. I mean, what do Catholics teach about alcohol, the consumption of alcohol, the making and selling of alcohol? What is it that we believe about this? And then I’ll ask you to help us defend that maybe. But first, lets just start with: what is the basic Catholic teaching on alcohol?

David: Well, the basic Catholic teaching would be that of exercising virtue and temperance. So, the Catholic Church does not want to overstep its bounds. It understands that there are really two different sides of authority, exercise of authority. So, when it comes to the use of a thing, like alcohol, it would recognize that the state has a legitimate authority to pass regulations and laws about the use and consumption of alcohol. So, in the United States you have to be 21 to drink legally. The Catholic Church would say we must strive to be good citizens and obey the law. Intentionally breaking a law could be a sin.

Adam: Right.

David: In other countries, the laws are different. So, when you’re there you’re free to follow their laws. So that’s one thing I think needs to be said, is that the state exercises a legitimate authority in regulating the consumption of alcohol. And it does so, I think, wisely with its rules against drinking and driving. The laws are set up in order to promote a healthy use of alcohol in the community. The Church would say, also, much what Adam said in the beginning, that God created this earth good and it should be enjoyed for its goodness. Okay? So, you can say that about anything and that’s where temperance really becomes important. Temperance and prudence about how to, especially when it comes to our appetites, how to find that exact middle ground about what is a good amount of something, whether it’s food or in this case alcohol. Because too much alcohol obviously is a sin.

Adam: Yeah, and, I mean, we know it’s not intrinsically evil. That’s one thing that we get on our emails, is somebody saying alcohol is pure evil and that’s not true. We know this because it says it in the Bible that Jesus made a bunch of wine. Like, a bunch of wine. And he was so good at it that it impressed everybody at the wedding.

David: Not just wine. Really good wine.

Adam: Right.

David: Yeah.

Adam: So, there’s no way Jesus would do anything that’s intrinsically evil. That’s contrary to the Bible. And in the Psalms, even, it even talks about drinking wine. So, I mean, we know that in the Bible that it talks about drinking wine, and Jesus performed a miracle, his first miracle, with alcohol involved. So, we know that it can’t be intrinsically evil.

David: Right, and the people at the time, they drank wine all the time. You couldn’t necessarily just drink water if the water wasn’t clean. So, that’s one of the reasons why wine was so popular, because it had alcohol in it, which killed the bacteria. In many times it was safer to drink. And also, at a wedding it’s going to be a festive situation, festive celebration. The people knew what wine was. I’ve heard one argument that it was just grape juice that he made at the wedding at Cana and that the people just thought it was wine. I mean, that’s just kind of ridiculous. Nobody is going to mistake grape juice-

Adam: For wine.

David: For wine, yeah.

Adam: So, they wouldn’t call it wine if it was grape juice.

David: Right, and I don’t know how many people were at that wedding but…

Adam: It was a lot.

David: I mean, it was over 100 gallons, I think, that…

Adam: 180 I think, yeah.

David: That he made of wine. I mean, that’s a lot of wine. So…

Cy: And it suggests, too, that right there at the beginning of the proclamation of the kingdom of God that this is a kind of a joyful thing. I mean, wine and alcohol suggests a kind of revelry in letting loose a bit which is… in many ways that’s what Jesus is doing is proclaiming a joyful new time.

Adam: Yeah, and even Saint Thomas Aquinas talks about that we can drink “to the point of cheerfulness.” Which, I think, is a pretty cool… I mean, if you think about it, “to a point of cheerfulness.” That’s kind of where he draws the line. And alcohol does provide… It’s similar to how, you know, Cy, whenever you share a meal with somebody, you get to know who they are, you get to know their family, you get to sit down and have an intimate conversation on who they are. It’s kind of the same thing with, especially for men, to sit down together and enjoy a glass of whiskey or a fine beer. You get to sit down and the walls get brought down and you have the opportunity to kind of know who they really are.

Cy: So, do you think that’s part of a… I mean, one thing that you have not mentioned, which is also obvious, is that Christ uses wine sacramentally to represent his own blood. That he intends us to be intoxicated on him in a certain way. I mean, I don’t mean intoxicated like we’ve lost our faculty of reason, but to be… to imbibe him… I mean, his blood is actually a spirit in a sense.

David: Yeah, no, and I think you’re right. That’s… there’s no way that’s accidental.

Cy: Yeah.

David: Dr. Brant Pitre, he wrote a really, really good book. It was the sequel to-

Adam: Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist.

David: Yeah. He wrote Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist and then he wrote… I can’t remember.

Adam: Jesus and the Bridegroom.

David: Yes. Jesus the Bridegroom. Thank you. Okay, and in there he goes through all these prophesies about the coming of the messiah will bring this flowing of wine, you know, this out pouring and overflowing wine for all, for generations. So, I mean, it’s totally intentional because yes, we are in many ways to become intoxicated in Christ. That he would fill up our senses, that we would be overcome, overwhelmed, that we become a different person in him. So, there’s so many correlations there. So, it’s a good point.

Cy: Okay, so, let’s defend it then. If that’s the Catholic teaching, that this is good, it’s one of the goods of the earth, it’s something that the Church has always kind of, even in our monasteries, even at the heart of the Church there were these… the development of alcohol, so to speak, goes hand-in-hand with the life of the Catholic Church. But defend, it if you will. So, what is somebody says “Yes, but look at all the damage that alcohol does. Alcohol does incredible damage to families, to communities. So, wouldn’t it just be better to just lets say no and move away from that?”

David: Yeah, and I think that is a really strong… It’s a strong argument, and something that definitely has to be responded to because, yeah, I mean, you just look at broken families over time. Just the misuse… even accidental misuse, which definitely can happen, can cause and lead you to do terrible things. But the bottom line is: we have a responsibility to exercise… We have to know ourselves and to exercise virtue in this way. If we just go… I mean, it doesn’t a rocket scientist to figure out if you have five shots of whiskey you’re going to be a bad place. So, we have to, I think, one, raise our children in such a way that they understand what temperance looks like so that they come to know, “Oh, shotgunning three beers in a row. That’s a bad idea.”

Adam: Right.

David: And that way we can help change the… I mean, it takes a long time to do that but…

Adam: Yeah, I think also you can take… you can use that same example of alcohol with a lot of other things, right? So, sugar, isn’t sugar a bad thing? Doesn’t it cause a lot of diabetes? Doesn’t it cause a lot health issues?

David: Yeah.

Adam: Is it wrong to have a piece of cake? No. Is it wrong to eat a whole cake in one sitting? That could be possibly true. I mean, so, you can use that-

Cy: Okay, that’s an important note. I got to take note of that one.

Adam: I didn’t say cookies. I didn’t say cookies, Cy. Cookies are fine.

Cy: I hadn’t… I hadn’t thought that all the way through. Okay. All right.

Adam: Cookies are good. But, I mean, you can use that example for a lot of things. That’s why, I think like Dave was saying, it’s so important to talk about the virtue, and not necessarily what it is that we’re moderating, but the virtue of moderation in it of itself. So, I mean, alcohol is… can be used to… broken down families and debauchery and all other sorts of things, but so can other things. So, I think that it’s important to… to make sure that like… like Aquinas’s word, drinking “to a point of cheerfulness,” and not doing anything in excess.

David: Yeah, just because a thing can be abused doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be used at all.

Adam: Right. That’s kind of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

David: Right. Because really we were created for exactly this type of behavior. When you’re sitting down having a good drink with a friend, it’s really, this is almost the… almost the height of leisure. That’s kind of a different topic, but that’s what we’re made for. We’re actually made to rest. We’re not made for work. God created us to rest in him. Okay? So, it’s for exactly these types of moments in our lives that God created us. So that we could have these enjoyable conversations and just build relationships in this way.

Cy: What do you… what would you say to the person who says “I personally, as a religious observation, I’ve given up alcohol”? Would you say that’s a bad thing for that person to undertake?

David: No.

Adam: No, not at all.

David: No. In fact, the fact that someone would do that kind of proves the point that alcohol is itself a good.

Adam: I mean, priests are celibate.

David: Right.

Adam: They give up sex. That doesn’t mean sex is a bad thing.

David: Right. They give up the good of a family, the good of a wife. If those things weren’t valuable then there would be no value in celibacy. So, when you’re giving up something like alcohol it’s only because alcohol is itself a good, that giving it up becomes a good as well.

Adam: And you get to appreciate. I mean, that’s what our whole… the liturgical calendar shows that. What do we do during Lent? We fast, and we deny ourselves, and this is true aestheticism throughout forty days, so that way we can prepare for the feast. We can prepare for who we are. We are the Easter people. So, you can’t enjoy a fast without the feast… Or … You can’t enjoy the feast without the fast.

David: There you go.

Adam: Yeah. I almost flip flopped those.