Pints With Aquinas - Is Pub Crawling Intrinsically Evil? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

💌 Support The Show: https://mattfradd.locals.com Fr. Pine addresses the morality of pub crawls with the serious Thomistic Moral reasoning he is known for. 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I am a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pines with Aquinas. So folks will sometimes send me their questions about the Christian life and I try to answer those questions. The move recently has been voice memos because like what's not to love about a voice memo? I suppose when it's really long that is something that is not to love about a voice memo? I suppose when it's really long, that is something that is not to love about a voice memo. So I try to keep them short.

Nevertheless, uh, I received a question recently and I was like, that's worth more than a voice memo. I think it might be worth a whole video. And the question is this, is it intrinsically evil to participate or to attend a pub crawl? So a little bit of a silly question and maybe you are not the pub crawling type. Nevertheless, in inquiring into it, we come to discover cool principles and arguments which help to clarify our moral experience. So let's get after it.

Okay, before we launch, let's define our terms because maybe you're wondering, what does it mean to say that something is intrinsically evil? Or maybe you're wondering, what is a pub call? So when we say that something is intrinsically evil, we're talking about the type of action, or a type of action, that can't be done for any reason. Okay, so it's never permissible, or it can never be justified or rationalized. Examples would be like lying, or murder, or adultery, or apostasy. There is no moral story you can tell in which these things feature as a good part. Now we compare those types of actions to other types of actions which, while they might be

bad in most circumstances, can be justified or rationalized in other circumstances. So like take for example cutting off your hand. Now in most circumstances it is bad to cut off your hand, but there are circumstances in which it's good to cut off your hand. Like if you get some infection or disease or like it's like some terrible gangrenous wound that's threatening to infect your whole body and potentially kill you, then it'd be good to amputate so that way you can save the person or like if you're hiking and you get caught in a rock slide and your hand is pinned in between heavy boulders for like a day or two or three and it does seem like anybody's going to find you or deliver you from your plight you know

maybe it's maybe it's time to cut off your hand so that'd be the type of thing that ordinary circumstances bad to cut off your hand. So that'd be the type of thing that ordinary circumstances bad to cut off your hand, certain circumstances good to cut off your hand. Okay, so that was that's an action that's not intrinsically evil. An action that is intrinsically evil is the type of thing that there are no circumstances for which you are then permitted to do the thing. Okay, I hope that's clear enough. Then what's a pub crawl? Hopefully this is clear. Pub crawl, I love that I'm defining a pub crawl.

Lord, this is great. So a pub crawl is when you go from one bar to another bar in the course of a night. And the idea is that, yeah, you're just kind of bopping around and soaking in the vibes here, there, and everywhere. You might have transportation lined up between venue one, venue two, venue three, et cetera. Or it might be the type of thing where the bars are close together

and you can walk as a squad. Okay, that's a basic description of a pub crawl. Now you might be thinking to yourself, why would you do this? Like what is the draw of a pub crawl? Well, I have done extensive research. I've never been on a pub crawl, so I'm just a babe in the woods here. But you know, talking to people, reading things on the internet like the rest of humanity. Benign descriptions

of pub crawls include such alluring details as the following. Yeah, maybe it's cool to like try out the local vibe here and there. Maybe folks have particular peculiar offerings, like they've got this beer here and that beer here. You'll see this with like brewery walks where places that are growing their microbe culture will encourage you to kind of like bop from one to the other so that you can try and taste and that gives you a feel for the neighborhood of the city or whatever. Or maybe like they have live music here, there and everywhere and so you can sample the local sounds which is fun. Or if like the bars themselves are sponsoring the event there might be some attempt to one

up each other which can be fun. You know like they try to outdo each other in the decor, they try to outdo each other in the atmosphere or or they try to outdo each other in the atmosphere, or whatever it is. And maybe like you're new to a place, you're trying to sample different venues and come to find your hole in the wall bar or the place where you're going to squad up

with your new found friends, and so it might be an efficient way in which to do that. Or like maybe you're the type of person who's a little bit fidgety, or you're the type of person that's a little bit anxiousgety, or you're the type of person that's a little bit anxious and you want to break up the potential stagnancy of one venue. Uh, yeah. So like, those might be reasons for which folks would do a pub crawl. Benign reasons for which folks might do a pub crawl.

And those who sponsor them or encourage them often try to take the edge off them or allay the fear that this is just going to be one extended mobile bacchanalian revel by saying like, yeah, you should like take steps to stay nourished and to stay hydrated and then to stay safe. And I suppose like presumably if you wanted to get drunk, you could get drunk in one place. You could get drunk at home or you could get drunk at one bar. So there's no like clear connection between many bars and much drunkitude. If that makes sense, or at least the people who promote them try to decouple them, if that makes sense. Okay.

So with this benign description, why then might people object to the practice of pub crawls? Um, okay. So when we asked the question is it intrinsically evil to participate in or to attend a pub crawl? Is it intrinsically evil to visit a pub? Obviously no. Is it intrinsically evil to drink alcohol? Obviously no. Is it intrinsically evil to drink alcohol at a pub? Obviously no. Is it intrinsically evil to drink alcohol at a pub? Obviously no.

Is it intrinsically evil to drink alcohol at several pubs over the course of a whirlwind night? That I think is what people are asking. And effectively they're asking, what's the connection between a pub crawl and drunkenness? To what extent is a pub crawl for the sake of drunkenness? Now, here's my little answer but it comes with some explanation. I do not think that it's intrinsically evil

to participate in or to attend a pub crawl because I don't think that there is any intrinsic connection between visiting several bars and getting drunk okay that's the basic response. Nevertheless, it seems like there's a non-intrinsic connection. Okay? So here what we're really talking about is our relationship to alcohol and how we shape that or how we live that. Drinking. Could it be sinful? Yeah, it could be sinful. Is it necessarily sinful? No, it's not necessarily sinful. There's a reason why our Lord chooses wine for the institution of the sacrament of his body and blood. Okay, but the idea is that when we use alcohol, it should be for good things, right?

It should be for relaxing and celebrating and uninhibiting or, you know, kind of loosening and enjoying, right? Not to excess right but also not to Yeah, like not with a spirit of fear or anxiety, you know, you've heard it said where st. Thomas is quoted Drink to the point of hilarity. Okay So the idea here is that you shouldn't drink to the point of being drunk And if you do it is sinful now st. Thomas will say listen you get a free pass because you have to learn your own Constitution and what you're capable of handling and at the first go you might overdo it or the second go you might overdo it and There might be mitigating factors

there might be reasons that lessen the culpability of Your drunkenness should you fall into drunkenness like you just went on a medication that makes you super sensitive Or you just ran a marathon and kind of forgot that you were really dehydrated, or you're at elevation and are feeling all kinds of woozy and didn't register it before you. Okay, so the point here isn't to assign blame for every instance of drunkenness, but it's to furnish you with principles and arguments so that way you can think about your own practice of imbibing, of consuming. So the sense is, we don't want to abandon ourselves to drunkenness, we want to use alcohol

as a way by which to facilitate human communion. You might get a free pass in weird circumstances and there might be mitigating factors in others. Nevertheless, to give ourselves to drunkenness is sinful. Why? Okay. Well you can kind of start with the deleterious effects physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. You can see how over-imbibing, right, giving oneself to drunkenness has deleterious effects. So obviously it has bad effects on your body. I mean like alcohol is a kind of poison. I realize that's

somewhat unrefined in its formulation, but you know what I mean. You just look at the effects that it has, heavy drinking has on the liver Or like emotionally and psychologically Yeah people talk about the way in which alcohol affects them with mood swings or the way that it affects them when they're down it makes Them down or when they're up it makes them up or when they're you know kind of fragile it makes them fragile So that's all kind of something to take into account. And then spiritually, I think the big concern is that it affects our freedom.

So this would be the place where I would focus. Insofar as drunkenness will often represent a kind of voluntary and unnecessary abandonment of reason. Obviously, we voluntarily engage in the abandonment of reason at times, like when you take a nap, for instance. You're not especially reasonable when you're conked out. Nevertheless, that's necessary for our bodily upkeep, in a way that drinking alcohol isn't. So the idea is that you are voluntarily and unnecessarily abandoning reason for a kind of, what, release, I suppose. So like alcohol, it's a good servant, but it's a bad

master, and when drinking to excess we kind of give up mastery of our own lives and I think here what we're painting is you know a picture of human excellence like what it means to be mature and what it means to be independent because there's a real connection between over reliance on alcohol or lack of kind of care with alcohol and an immature childish approach to life or a kind of dependent even addicted Approach to life that's not getting into alcoholism properly so called because that's another conversation And then we're also worried about alcohol use as a near occasion of harm to yourself You know, like you think about the way in which it negatively affects your body

You know, like you think about the way in which it negatively affects your body, or you know, like you think about the way in which it negatively affects your spirit. A lot of people say that sins that they don't ordinarily fall into, they will fall into when they are over-consuming, when they're over-imbibing, sexual sins being some of them. Or it's an occasion of harm to others. You know, obviously when you operate machinery under the influence of alcohol, it's a clear example, you know, bodily harm, but then also spiritual harm can be done to others as well. It's not an excuse to say, I didn't mean what I said, I was drunk, right? That's a story, but it's not an excuse because you were responsible for the drunkenness,

and so you're responsible for what comes in turn in some way, shape, or form. So, like what we're talking about here is we're expressing concern about drunkenness and about a culture that kind of promotes drunkenness and what that entails for our own human lives or what that entails for our human flourishing. So I think that like when it comes to pub crawling, no, it's not intrinsically evil to go on a pub crawl to attend or to participate. Right? But it could be wrong in our actual practice of it because it requires of us, a real discretion and it requires of us a real maturity and independence, right? Because regardless of how well the organizers try to spin it,

pub crawls are meant to promote a kind of heightened or exalted vibe, which conduces to drunkenness. So you're bopping from here to there to the next place, which means that you're less aware of your ordinary pacing mechanisms and hydration and nourishment and safety assurance and all those things, because it just kind of carries you along in a little bit of a furor or a little bit of a tumult of activity. And so it's going to end up requiring a lot more of you, prudence wise, as you potentially consume at a higher rate. And so like, can you end up requiring a lot more of you prudence wise as you potentially consume at a higher rate

And so like can you be a good chaperone? Can you be a good DD? Can you be a good friend in this setting? Absolutely, you know, like don't don't worry about it, you know, and don't kind of Agonize over it But I'd say is this ultimately the place where you kind of like want to live your collegiate life or your young adult life? Or whatever it is because I think like in these settings there's a kind of opportunity to drink sure but there's more like an expectation to drink and there can even be a pressure to drink insofar as the hosting venues they facilitate these things so that they can make money and in that you know

it does kind of set you up for near occasion or for potential fall and yeah yeah, I mean, there's something cool, I suppose, to a lot of those benign propositions with which I led the conversation, but if we're being honest, like a lot of bars are alike and in these things, we're just kind of getting chewed up and spit out because a lot of these things just subject us to the algorithm, you know, insofar as we're always being hawked wares and we're always being subjected to the promotions which you know, insofar as we're always being hawked wares and we're always being subjected to the promotions which are designed by Madison Avenue to enslave us in patterns of human mediocrity so we should be able to identify when we're not being called to an

You know like a genuinely humane culture to something that can genuinely build up our human lives And so yeah What I'm more concerned of is or concerned about is a certain lack of creativity or lack of humanity, which is evinced by things like this, because it's like, yeah, if we're going to live our lives together, we should live our lives together in beautiful pursuits. And that doesn't mean like a kind of dopey, doofy, like, homeschooly sentiment, I am all for homeschooling, do not get me wrong. But like, people worry that if you opt out of stuff like this, then you're gonna end up dressing in homely fashion and mispronouncing words

Okay, it's like no That's just not the case virtuous people should be more creative. They should be more humane They should have wilder ideas as to what constitutes human fun And I think that you need to actually create space for that in order to engender that in your relationship And I think that you need to actually create space for that in order to engender that in your relationship. So like, why aren't we exploring? Why aren't we adventuring? Why aren't we planning for things which are more glorious or like, more delightful and wonderful? I think that's my concern. So, at the end of the day, is it intrinsically evil to participate in such a thing? No. Is it sinful to give yourself over to drunkenness?

Yes. Do we want to kind of establish patterns whereby we do that on the reg? No. Because we want to live for God and none to God in ourselves and for our communities. So yeah, if any of that sounds judgy or finger-waggy, my sincere apologies, but I've never been on a pub crawl and I'm also sitting in my office at a seminary, so things are just crazy over here. But this is Ponce with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel,

push the bell and get sweet email updates when other things come out. Maybe there'll be future episodes about puff crawls. Who knows? And if you haven't yet, bop into God's Planning, a podcast which I contribute with some Dominican friars where we talk about wild and wonderful and delightful things like building up a genuinely creative and humane culture. So that's all I got.

Know of my prayers for you, please pray for me and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas.