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Q. Is It Fitting For Someone To Drink Beer?


cappie

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Addendum to secunda secundae

Q. Is it fitting for someone to drink beer?

Obj. 1 It seems that it is not fitting for anyone to drink beer. For, as Paul says, we ought not to live in orgies and drunkenness. (Rom 13:13) Now beer is known to produce drunkenness in the drinking agent. Therefore, no one should drink beer.

Obj. 2 Moreover, though drinking beer does achieve the proximate end of gladdening man’s heart as David says (Ps 104:15); its final end is a hangover. Now things are judged by the desirability of their final ends, and nobody wants a hangover. Therefore, it is not fitting to drink beer.

Obj. 3 Moreover, Dionysius writes God is perfect, man is not. Man made beer, but God made pot. (Celestial Hierarchies of Highness, 4:20) Now every rational creature ought to pursue the more perfect activity, according to its nature. Therefore, under the aspect of intoxicants, people ought to smoke pot rather than drink beer.

on the other hand Pabst is said to have won the blue ribbon at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Now nothing is awarded the blue ribbon unless it is considered good under some aspect. Now as we have read on the Budweiser can, beer is usually considered through its taste, smoothness, and drinkability. Thus there is some sense in which it is fitting and good to drink beer.

[b]responsio:[/b] Both beer itself and the act of drinking beer are understood in multiple ways.

Beer itself is understood in three ways. First, beer can be understood under the aspect of cheapness. Here we have such understandings as Natural Light and the inaptly named Milwaukee’s Best. These substances, however, are not beer properly understood, but are merely the privation of the good beer that ought to be there. They are, therefore, a failure of actuality and hence are evil.

Second, beer is understood under the aspect of snobbery. Here we find many fancy and fruity beers that some of the great drunks of yore called “micro-brews.” These induce a vain discourse about beer in their consumers, leading to a foppish misuse of the faculty of speech.

Third, beer is understood in, as it were, a via media between these two extremes, in regular ordinary beers, like the Pabst Blue Ribbon mentioned above, which an ordinary person can drink without feeling like either some cheap college jarhead or fancy lad.

Furthermore, the drinking of the beer can be understood in two ways. First, beer can be drunk in a reckless fashion such as to lead to bravado, reckless bets, black eyes, waking up in the bushes, falling down stairs and fornication. In this sense, as the venerable Alvarus Pelagius has pointed out (De Planctu Ecclesiae, 173-174), beer drinking is a threat to the conscience and learning of our own students.

Second, beer drinking can be understood under a more responsible aspect, when it is done for the sake of simple conviviality and relaxation, and only leads to minor fights, accidents, and otherwise absurd but unimportant truth claims.

Therefore, when beer itself, understood under the third aspect above, is consumed according to this second manner, it is fitting for anyone to drink beer.

[b]hence[/b] Ad 1. The solution to this difficulty is clear from what has been said. Beer, properly, consumed will not produce excessive drunkenness, or orgies in the proper sense.

Ad 2. From what has been said, it is clear that a hangover is not the true and proper end of drinking beer, though it is the end of those who drink the wrong beer in the wrong way.

Ad 3. Dionysius is speaking here of perfection from God’s perspective. It may be true that pot is a more perfect substance than beer, or indeed a more perfect creation. But this does not necessarily mean that, from the human perspective of party planning, ancillary activities to be enjoyed, and scruples about the civil law, beer may be a more perfect choice than pot in many particular cases.

[url="http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AcCbki4nm8nXZGNqejZ0bmtfN2ZtMjY1bmNo&hl=en"]http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AcCbki4nm8nXZGNqejZ0bmtfN2ZtMjY1bmNo&hl=en[/url]

Edited by cappie
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In all serious, I'd appreciate some insight and guidelines in to drinking seeing as how I'll be 21 soon. If it is a sin to get drunk, what is the point of drinking alcohol if it's a sin to be affected by it? In other words is there a line you cross between pleasure/ enjoyment and sin?

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[quote name='Shana' date='28 January 2010 - 01:49 PM' timestamp='1264708140' post='2046546']
In all serious, I'd appreciate some insight and guidelines in to drinking seeing as how I'll be 21 soon. If it is a sin to get drunk, what is the point of drinking alcohol if it's a sin to be affected by it? In other words is there a line you cross between pleasure/ enjoyment and sin?
[/quote]
To be honest, I've found it to be a very easy line to respect. Have a couple/few drinks in a night, never drink too fast, and you never have to worry about it. Then you're sober, people around you are drunk, and you remember a ton of stuff to hold against them tomorrow when they're hungover. ^_^

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[quote name='cappie' date='28 January 2010 - 03:38 PM' timestamp='1264707491' post='2046538']
[b]on the other hand Pabst is said to have won the blue ribbon at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago[/b]. Now nothing is awarded the blue ribbon unless it is considered good under some aspect. Now as we have read on the Budweiser can, beer is usually considered through its taste, smoothness, and drinkability. Thus there is some sense in which it is fitting and good to drink beer.


[/quote]

The only other drink they had at the Columbian Exposition was horse piss.

Thats why they won the Blue ribbon

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Thy Geekdom Come

[quote name='Shana' date='28 January 2010 - 02:49 PM' timestamp='1264708140' post='2046546']
In all serious, I'd appreciate some insight and guidelines in to drinking seeing as how I'll be 21 soon. If it is a sin to get drunk, what is the point of drinking alcohol if it's a sin to be affected by it? In other words is there a line you cross between pleasure/ enjoyment and sin?
[/quote]
Drunkenness is a sin, but allowing alcohol to make us joyful is scriptural and moral. It's not even a level of being buzzed. It's that warm comfortable feeling.

It's also just a great medium for social interaction, so it also brings joy indirectly in that way.

Drunkenness is a sin because of what it makes us to and because of what it says about us. When we are drunk, we act as if we did not have our proper human dignity.

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I don't care for beer.

My favorite drink is Benedictine Brandy and Liquor, AKA B&B.


It was originally invented by a monk and the monastery produced it until the end of the 18th century. However, during the French revolution, the recipe was almost lost, but somehow a French notable had
gotten hold of the secret recipe and it eventually ended up in the hands of a relative, who
began producing it commercially.

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Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 is probably a metaphor to brewing beer and then drinking it with friends.

Cast your bread upon the waters; after a long time you may find it again.
Make seven or eight portions; you know not what misfortune may come upon the earth.

By the way, a good first beer for a Catholic; Chimay. By buying it you'll be supporting Trappist monks from the Scourmont Abbey in Belgium.

Not to mention, it's very good!

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goldenchild17

[quote name='cappie' date='28 January 2010 - 01:38 PM' timestamp='1264707491' post='2046538']Obj. 3 Moreover, Dionysius writes God is perfect, man is not. Man made beer, but God made pot. (Celestial Hierarchies of Highness, 4:20) Now every rational creature ought to pursue the more perfect activity, according to its nature. Therefore, under the aspect of intoxicants, people ought to smoke pot rather than drink beer.
[/quote]

For the most epic win of all :smokey:

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[quote name='goldenchild17' date='28 January 2010 - 04:35 PM' timestamp='1264714530' post='2046655']
For the most epic win of all :smokey:
[/quote]
Lullz. No!

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My nutrition professor says men should only drink two drinks and women should only drink one a day at most (a drink being 5 oz of wine, 12 oz beer, 10 oz winecooler, or 1.5 oz hard liquor)... more than that is seriously taxing on one's liver.

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