“And do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18)
Drunkenness is a sin that is too often dismissed or excused, even among many otherwise practicing Catholics. Especially on a college campus, there is a tendency to downplay the severity of this problem or limit its scope to such an extent that it does not occur except in the most extreme cases. Both of these approaches are problematic because they do not recognize the practical and spiritual dangers of drunkenness.
The first place to start is to define what drunkenness actually is. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, drunkenness “consists in the immoderate use and concupiscence of [alcohol],” and that this sin, when done knowingly and willingly, “is a mortal sin.” He argues that this is the case because when a man becomes drunk he, “willingly and knowingly deprives himself of the use of reason” (ST II-II, Q 151, co; ad 2).
Drunkenness is wrong because it inhibits our basic human faculties. Since drunkenness causes us to lose our ability to think clearly and act like the moral and spiritual beings that God made us, we are rejecting one of the most fundamental aspects of our nature. In a sense, we are voluntarily lowering ourselves to the realm of the animals by depriving ourselves of reason.
This deprivation of reason bears consequences not only in the spiritual but in the physical world as well. Even those who try to say that it is no concern what people do on their own when they are not hurting anyone will recoil in either sadness or disgust when they see someone being carted away from a party on a stretcher or stumbling down the street after a night at the bar. Men generally feel ashamed, not proud, once they recover from a drunken stupor.
It is also good to remember that no one, however pious otherwise, is immune from drunkenness. One of the first recorded actions of Noah after coming off the ark was that he became drunk (Gen. 9:21). Holofernes was decapitated by Judith after he became drunk in an attempt to seduce her (Judith 13:2). Here and elsewhere the Bible gives reference to men whose disgrace or downfall came from an excess of alcohol.
Christians also ought to be especially cognizant of the witness they give to the world around them. Although it is not good for anyone to get drunk, it is especially harmful when a Christian does it because it causes scandal. How many people have been turned away from the Church because of the poor witness to morality they see from Christians, especially in an area that many secular people would similarly find distasteful? When Christians sin in these and similar ways they not only injure their own souls but the souls of those around them as well.
Alcohol is not evil in and of itself, but a good that God has given to man for his benefit. The Church holds that all of God’s creation is good when used for its proper end. The Psalmist says that God gave “wine to gladden [men’s] hearts” (Ps. 104:15). Christ even chose wine as one of the two elements of the Eucharist which become his very Body and Blood.
Just as with other pleasures, alcohol is best used with temperance. Temperance is the virtue that manages the proper use of physical goods such as food and drink. Just as we need temperance with the amount of food that we consume so that we do not become gluttons, so too we need temperance to control how much alcohol we have so that we do not become drunk. God is not asking you to become a teetotaler, He is just asking you to know when enough is enough.
James Pritchett is a Sophomore studying History and Classics with a deep affinity for his native land, the Golden State. Despite being the most recent lover of Catholicism on the Torch staff, he is the C101 editor and his main interests consist of reading Dostoyevsky, playing devil’s advocate, and correcting people on niche theological heresies.
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