Friday, May 30, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI Loves His Beer

It is not clear from this press clipping whether the Holy Father actually ordered 185 gallons (!) of this German beer for his household or whether it was delivered as a gift from the brewery. Either way, it appears that Pope Benedict XVI loves his beer. God bless him!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want to have a beer with the Holy Father. My friends and I toast to him every time we enjoy a beverage.

Anonymous said...

What a great idea. Prost! To the Holy Father. I'm going to start doing that... or drink to a saint.

I will also show this article to my wife. She sees the number of empties in the recycle bin and starts to furrow her brow over my level of consumption. In reality, I might average one every day. Okay, one-and-a-half. But I haven't been really drunk in literally decades.

Now I can say, "But honey, the Pope orders beer by the hundreds of gallons.".

thepalmhq said...

Tim, you could also tell your wife that a standard ration of beer for monks and nuns during the Middle Ages was one gallon per day. Obviously over-consumption of alcoholic beverages is a real problem for certain folks, but our Protestant-Puritan heritage in this country generates some rather wacky phobias about drinking. As is well known, in many countries (such as our Holy Father's native Germany) it is customary to have beer or wine with lunch and dinner every day. And there is a pretty considerable body of scientific research that shows that moderate consumption of alcohol (moderate being 1-2 drinks per day for women, 2-3 for men) brings a variety of positive health benefits. I'll be posting in the future about what I call the "New Temperance Movement", inaptly named because, like the first so-called Temperance Movement, it's really about pushing for total abstinence, not temperance. But Catholicism is all about moderation in all things. Your rate of consumption sounds pretty moderate.

Anonymous said...

I read somewhere - it may have been filling out an insurance form - that one drink a day constitutes "heavy" drinking.

????????

thepalmhq said...

Yup. And when I was a kid they used to talk about one drink a day as the threshold for being an alcoholic. So then, by that wacky criterion, entire nations of people are all alcoholics. This defies good common sense and is just not helpful.

But you know, I've given the Puritans a bad rap. I had a sneeking hunch when I wrote the comment above that I was wrongly deploying that word. And, sure enough, the actual Puritans were not teetotallers (link). The roots of Prohibition and the strange hangover (pun intended) our society still bears from it had its roots in Protestant Methodism, not Puritanism.

Anonymous said...

"This defies good common sense and is just not helpful."

That, or we're a bunch of drunks.

;-)

Anonymous said...

3) Leviticus 10:9-11 - God commanded priests not to drink so that they could tell the difference between the holy and the unholy.

Anonymous said...

http://www.scionofzion.com/drinking.htm This is 75 bible scriptures pertaining to alcohol. Read for yourself
I worship Yahweh Not the pope!!!

Anonymous said...

Beer or wine does not bring any health benefits that is 100% not true rather A lie, Alcohol does not bring any health benefits
Infact the only healthy thing in alcohol is resveratrol or iron
but by the time the fermentation process comes its yeast afed to grapes which then ferments into wine spoiled wine from fungus.Infact its like a bad cancer. Google alcohol cancer risks
infact it is not healthy at all by the time it ferments to alcohol which all alcohol does is deprive the brain of oxygen thin the blood
whichs leads to artery plaque diseases and cancer numerous other diseases.http://www.scionofzion.com/drinking.htm
God ordered priests not to drink alcoholic drinks so do you really think this guy represents God? Not according to the bible.

thepalmhq said...

Anonymous,

Christians do not follow the Law of Moses, so I am not sure why you are citing Leviticus in support of your views.

Our Great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, drank wine and provided it for others to consume. I certainly hope that you would not thereby claim that He is less holy for it.

A more balanced view on the topic may be found here:

http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/03/alcohol-biblical-and-catholic-teaching.html