To elaborate on the Magisterium of the Catholic Church is our mission on Plinthos (Gk. "brick"); and to do so anonymously, so that, like any brick in the wall, we might do our little part in the strength of the structure of humanity almost unnoticed.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Legal Perplexity
If States legalize pot, e.g. you can grow pot in your own back yard, doesn't it seem ridiculous that we should simultaneously cling to long since antiquated and ineffective drinking age laws? If pot is legal and drinking is not then we are promoting the use of marijuana, at least among the young.
Another example of legal confusion is sex in the military. With the president's mandate on homo's in the military doesn't that mean that if General Petraeus were in an homo adultery he would be able to trump the anti-adultery law of the military? Makes one wonder and marvel at the illogic of perversion promoted in America today. The message is that homo sex is better than and less harmful than adultery, at least for the military.
It seems that in America today you can (in some States, at least) take bong hits before you can drink wine with dinner, and you can screw around in the military as long as you do it homo style.
I have long considered the drinking age (21) an unjust imposition by the federal government--forced on all of the States a few decades ago. Now there are even threat campaigns against parents who allow their underage children to drink in their own homes. In my (Mediterranean) culture we give children to taste what the adults drink at any age and do not need any government to tell us how to do it. Our culture also has a taboo on drunkenness, so that there is always drink in the house and on the table and never is anyone allowed to abuse it. We taboo debauchery not drink. As is often the case in Catholic morality, it is the extreme conduct (abuse) that is condemned, not the natural element!
Even Saint Benedict (the great Father of Western monasticism) made an exception in his Rule on abstinence from drink when dealing with the southern countries of Europe.
The separation of Church and State in America should prohibit every form of State regulation and prohibition of alcoholic beverages, except to the degree that any other food is controlled (against unsanitary products), but not as if it were a drug to be forbidden! That is a Protestant and Puritan religious carry-over and perhaps a subtle if slight form of anti-Catholicism.