Pints With Aquinas - Why I QUIT Drinking! | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

Fr. Pine explains why he has stopped drinking. Then he goes on to talk about sobriety and temperance and if we are losing this virtue in our society. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 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'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and what else do I do? I work as an assistant director for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pines of the Quinas. In this episode, I want to talk about what it means to be sober. I realize that when many of you hear that, you think of people who struggle with alcoholism, who have been through a period of recovery and now typically don't drink alcohol at all So we associate being sober with tea totaling or abstaining entirely from alcohol

But in the classical conception means something different in order to appreciate how and why that matters We're gonna have to get into it though. Here we go get into it though. Here we go. Okay, so you have probably observed, many authors before all of us have observed, that the notion of virtue is kind of slipping. It used to be something that signified a kind of strength or a power to perform action in accord with our human end, which kind of facilitates our human flourishing. But it's come to sound somewhat stodgy or to sound somewhat fussy.

And we can see this with particular Christian virtues. So for instance, I like to talk about this with respect to the virtue of charity. Charity in the Christian understanding is big and bold and beautiful. But in our contemporary understanding, we and bold and beautiful, but in our contemporary understanding we associate charity with giving things to people who have less means, or just to poor people simply so-called. But I don't think many of us like to be on the receiving end of charity because it represents a kind of ugly need, like we don't want to be made a charity case.

Here we see the notion of the virtue slipping, such that whereas formerly it signifies a kind of strength, a kind of power, now it signifies something fussy, something stodgy. You see something similar with prudence. Again, prudence is just right reason in things to be done. It's what facilitates practical wisdom, or it just is practical wisdom.

But for whatever reason, a lot of people associate prudence with being cautious or with being circumspect, not taking financial risk or not putting your neck out in a way that might expose you to embarrassment or, I don't know, to overextension. Or we can think also about the virtue of temperance. And here we're getting closer to the mark. Because when we talk about temperance, we're talking about a kind of virtuous moderation of our desire for food and for drink and for sexual intercourse. It doesn't mean that we root those things out.

That's actually a vice. It's called insensibility. But it means that we need to guard against a certain overindulgence, which we refer to by the name of intemperance. So in effect, it means a kind of self-possession whereby we can engage with these various goods of food and drink and sexual intercourse proper to one's time and place and circumstances proper to one's state in life in such a way that it contributes to human flourishing rather than detracting. So I was recently having a conversation with Professor Tim Paul, who teaches up at St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

And he was kind of picking this out specifically with respect to sobriety, chastity, and meekness. We can take him in a reverse order. So like meekness, for instance, is a virtue which moderates anger. Okay order. So like meekness, for instance, is a virtue which moderates anger. So we have meekness, which moderates the interior movement of anger, and clemency, which moderates the exterior movement of anger, punishment.

And what it does is it reigns it in lest it tend to excess. Mind you, what anger does is it registers a slight, a kind of injustice, and then it seeks to rectify that by a kind of vindication. Meekness reigns it in or tempers it so that it doesn't run to excess, and so too with clemency. Or, we can think, he says, about chastity. Alright? A lot of people, they associate chastity with being fussy and being stodgy.

Again, because it sounds like one who wholly abstains from sexual intercourse. So that would be true of somebody who is celibate, you know, that's a settled state of abstaining from sexual intercourse. Or we can refer to, like, the gift and virtue of virginity along similar lines. Right? But chastity typically means a good, virtuous use of the sense pleasures, of the pleasures associated with sexual intercourse. So for married persons, it would involve, you know, having sex and enjoying sex, right? But instead we associate it with a kind

of frigidity, right? Or a kind of holier than thou-itude. There you go, here's a noun. Okay, but I want to focus in specifically on sobriety because in our conversation he was noting the fact that sobriety, classically it meant a kind of moderate use or anordinate use of alcohol. Maybe use isn't the right word, but you know, partaking of and enjoying of alcohol. Whereas now sobriety means cutting it out. Now there's a word for each of these cutting it out type things. Like we said with chastity, you know, you've got abstinence or you've got virginity. And when it comes to consuming food, right, you've got fasting and then

abstinence, which would be different practices, which we, you know, haven't worked here in the, in the season of a lent. Uh, but, but when it comes to alcohol, we don't really have a word to describe drinking responsibly, uh, except drinking responsibly, but in the kind of secular mindset, as he was pointing out, that might mean drinking like a lord or like the world is going to end tomorrow and then just getting an Uber back to your house, right? People associate drinking responsibly with drinking however much you want provided that you don't drive or say something insulting or vomit on your friend's couch.

Whereas truth be told, there is a kind of just mean, a virtuous mean in the consumption of alcohol. So I think it's helpful to highlight these features because when we lose language whereby to describe a reality, we often lose hold of that reality. And if we're going to reclaim the fullness of Christian virtue, I think we have to have these conversations. But I'm in like a kind of strange situation as it concerns alcohol because I don't drink or I haven't drunk in like maybe like a year. I think I gave it up for Lent last year and then I just never drank again. And my reasons for which are somewhat functional or somewhat practical in that I'm just like sensitive to certain things and when I drink I get I get headaches very easily regardless of how much I drank. So like Belgian Blondes just devastating. The in that I'm just like sensitive to certain things. And when I drink, I get headaches very easily

regardless of how much I drink. So like Belgian Blondes, just devastating. The absolute death blow to any efficacy in the day following. It could be like one beer or two beers and just, ah. It's just like somebody is driving a wedge between the two hemispheres of my brain. And then I tend to sleep less profoundly

or I sleep more superficially, fitfully. And then I just to sleep less, you know profoundly or I sleep more superficially Fitfully and then I just feel tired and sad and as a result of which I just made a decision To take a break from drinking alcohol at present. It's not a for always type thing Like on the basis of a speculative judgment. I say alcohol is bad and I will not partake of it. No one should But it's a kind of you know for now type thing on the basis of a practical judgment just given whatever, time and place and circumstances. Three things that I like to mention in succession at any opportunity. And that being said, there are exceptions. Like I'll have a beer or I'll have a glass of wine here and there. Like when I defended my dissertation successfully, they have a toast immediately after, you know, you're

with your jury for two hours and then you leave and then they confer and then they come out and tell you that it went well and then you offer a toast. I felt like not to partake at that stage of the game would be foolish or would be weird. So you know, like I've had a couple of drinks over the course of the past whatever, year plus. But yeah, like they're don't I just don't partake and I haven't found that my life is worse for it But but in the contemporary setting other people are having this type of conversation, but they're having it in a very different kind of way Because I think it's becoming more and more common or at least among Millennials and Gen Z or resumes Whatever folks are drinking less and less alcohol, at least so it has been recounted to me.

I don't know what kind of data we have on that, but my suspicion is that were we to get that data, we would find a decrease in consumption. And you'll have people who are in the public space, right? You have people who talk about this with some regularity, like there are no health benefits to alcohol, even though we've heard these studies about two glasses of wine and heart health, but you have people like David Goggins or people like Dr. Andrew Huberman or Dak Shepard or Russell Brandt. This is just the ones that I've heard of.

I'm sure there are a bunch of other people out there kind of talking along these lines in the public square. Um, so they're just making a kind of physical, emotional, psychological judgment on the basis of what they have observed, whether it be medical findings or whether it just be sociological findings, and then they're proposing that to others as a potential way by which to improve their lives. And I think that there are good things that can come from this disposition, especially for people who are predisposed to abuse alcohol alcohol or for people who use alcohol so as to supply for

You know like some deficiency in their approach to life which crops up otherwise, but but there's a tendency I think With this line of thought or with this line of argumentation That makes me just ever so slightly nervous because I fear that we're losing hold on certain realities Okay, and like I don't I don't you know like I haven't gotten into the details and I haven't done the physiological studies or the medical studies or the sociological studies on the potential benefits of alcohol but I just have kind of intuitions about it. Take those intuitions at face value or with two grains of salt or whatever the appropriate phrase is.

But I think that there are some goods of alcohol. You see how it works in social settings, until the end of relaxation and the kind of releasing of inhibitions and the promoting of delight, even a certain hilarity and festivity. And I think it's like when you get to those higher social, political, cultural ends that I worry about a certain misunderstanding of alcohol and its place in our society. I suspect something like this is bound to happen because when culturally speaking you abuse something for so long or a certain subsection of the population abuses something for so long, like the way in which young people will sometimes abuse alcohol, you're going to lose hold on or lose your hold on the goods of that as those goods are meant to be enjoyed

Or as they're meant to be enshrined in your culture And assume their proper place with respect to other goods but like at the end of the day what I keep coming back to is the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ chose wine as the matter beneath the appearance of which he comes, you know to the altar beneath the appearance of which he comes to the altar, sacramentally and substantially. That's just a long way of saying it. Like, when he chose to institute the sacrament of his body and blood, he chose bread and wine. And, you know, bread makes sense to a lot of people. It's a kind of staple in most cultures of fortification, of sustenance, of refreshment. But wine, I think, is making less sense to people, just on on a cultural level and I don't think people are asking this question because most

People aren't asking questions about religion along these lines But like we're losing hold on what our Lord chose to communicate Delights and hilarity and festivity Because yeah, I just think that we're losing hold of the sign and as a result of which we're losing hold of the reality. So I just want to bring our attention back to the kind of complicated landscape or the complicated nature of the virtuous landscape because I think that we want to reclaim what is good in the various human realities that are at stake. Like we want to use our language in a way that covers the phenomenon.

Here I've been describing the virtue of sobriety, you know, in part because of this conversation that I had with Professor Tim Paul. Like this idea that there used to be a virtue which named the moderate use or the appropriate use or the reasonable use of alcohol or consumption of alcohol, and now we've lost that. And any language that kind of pretends to be a virtuous use of alcohol is a language of total abstinence, or temperance, or having cut it out in this. So yeah, I think that we want to reclaim something of that, and I'm, you know, maybe I'm just admitting to the fact that I'm not the best one to do it, because some might say, you know, it's somewhat hypocritical for you,

whilst abstaining from alcohol, to encourage those partaking in alcohol to do so in a virtuous way while crafting a language to cover the phenomenon better than we do at present. So I just want to highlight the fact that it's going to admit of exceptions and it's a kind of messy situation and we're still figuring out as a culture what this means or figuring out as a culture what this means in the present moment. But yeah, there has to be a way in which to accommodate both those who abstain, those who partake, and albeit with language that covers both realities. I think there's going to be always a place for a certain violence in the Christian tradition where you

root stuff out. Like, Christians, lots of Christians eat meat, but a lot of religious just don't eat meat because that's part of the way in which they follow the Lord Jesus, because it's a traditional way in which to follow the Lord Jesus in the context of religious life. And so you're going to have people who fast and people who abstain with greater frequency, and yet we're all called to some kind of temperance when it comes to the consumption of food and drink. But I think that when it concerns this specific phenomenon of alcohol, you're going to have

some people who root it out entirely, you know, who abstain who fast, but then you're going to have those who are called to be sober, that is to say, to make moderate use thereof. So for those who are rooting it out, you know, there's a kind of, again, violence that sometimes works its way into our evangelical thinking and acting. You know, if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It's better that you enter into heaven, you know, less one eye than to be cast bodily into Gehenna. But this kind of violent sense shouldn't take its cue from our present evil age or from

a secular inspiration because then it can tend to go off the rails and blind us. Wow, interesting. It can blind us to the realities at stake. So careful not to adopt an all or nothing type mentality which obscures the fine shades of human things and the differences among people, among human people. Because the images which are used to describe the kingdom of heaven as it comes, or as it kind of takes root on the whole of our human reality are often enough signs of table fellowship, of banquets, of partaking of those goods of the earth which cause, you know, greatest delight.

So that's my encouragement. I hope it's somewhat thought-provoking and I hope that you profit from it. This is Pius with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel and push the bell and get sweet animal updates when other things come out. Also, I contribute to a podcast called God's Planning and we did a series on the virtues a while back and highlighted you know the place of temperance along with fortitude, justice, prudence, charity, hope, and faith. There you go, reverse order. What's up?

I assume my profit from that as well. And then I wrote a book. It's called prudence choose confidently live boldly Which is all about getting into the nitty-gritty degree and nitty-gritty nitty-gritty details of our human life and decision-making Which is in the background of any types of decisions like this specifically How much one drinks when and where in what circumstances unto what end and related how to the glory of God? So that's it. Know of my prayers for you. Please pray for me, and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on Points with Aquinas.