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Bar-room chaplains

Following the distribution of free holy shot-glasses and free coffee in Ballentyne,  in Pennsylvania a church is putting chaplains into pubs.  They won't evangelize, apparently, just listen in a 'non judgmental way" to drinkers' problems. Which should take a lot of pressure off the barmaids to whom (I remember too well) this duty more normally falls.

Holy Hangovers

On this German site (for some reason)  the alarming news that Communion wine, in the tiny quantities the priest must drink at Mass,  may now put them over the new and more severe  Irish drink-drive limit. Some have three or four different villages to say Mass in, and have to travel. ""Perhaps it could be enough for you to fail a drink-driving test," the Rev. Brian D'Arcy, a priest from Enniskillen, told the Irish Times. "I don't like to use the word wine, as it is Christ's blood in the Eucharist -- but it still has all the characteristics of wine when in the blood stream."
     Less respectably,  from the Irish Independent this tale of two retired Irish priests accused of misappropriating millions from a Florida church  and had formed a mortgage company with another priest called Shag Inc.  The two men are now accused of using offertory dollars to keep girlfriends, take gambling excursions and foreign holidays, and buy property.  Honestly, a reverent sip of Communion wine fades into insignificance...

Booze and the Good Book

With the current concern about drunkenness, crime and general misery, it seems the moment to whirl round some signposts on religious attitudes to drink.  Some religious teachers treat it sacramentally, some as  the devil's brew. Here's some Bible reference - suggesting that St Paul felt wine to be a good gift of God but that drunkenness is always wrong . In Evangelical Christianity including Methodism  there is evidence that attitudes are actually softening; but hardliners argue that whenever "wine" was used by Jesus or praised as a gift of God, it was really grape juice; only when it caused drunkenness was it wine. Thus, they interpret the Bible as asserting that grape juice is good and that  alcohol is bad .