Last edited Sun Feb 17, 2019, 07:27 AM - Edit history (3)
Dom Perignon; "I'm drinking stars," he enthused. More monasteries made their own beer or booze; Benedictine, etc..
Russian Orthodox priests probably consumed vodka.
People speculate that monks' lives were so bad, hypocritical, that they were driven to drinking. It may also have made raping nuns and boys easier.
Some churches tried locking up communion wine.
As for the rather ghastly communion dogma that wine is the 'blood" of Jesus, and bread his "body," and that we are commanded to consume them? It is not found in Judaism it seems; it may be related to ancient cannibalism.
So drunkenness and cannibalism seem to be the origin of some of the most sacred, central rituals of Christianity.
Somehow, booze in fact, is in the very heart and core of Christianity. Even though the Old Testament had condemned wine and drunkenness in priests and prophets, and had predicted a future disaster from such things.
Possibly drunkenness had reentered Judah with the Roman takeover of Jerusalem, c. 63 BC. The Romans at least informally continuing the Greek worship of Dionysus, wine, with their own "Bacchus."
However, 2 Macc. documents the heavy influence of Dionysiac revels in Judaism, as early as c.300-100 BC.
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