End the War on Freedom

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 9, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Of abstinence and the Roman Catholic church

Count on the mailbag to offer a few surprises.

On page 70 of my book Send in the Waco Killers, in the chapter on The Fearless Drug Warriors, I attempt to explain the danger of the current restriction the U.S. government places on use of the plant sacrament peyote in religious rituals -- authorizing such religious use only to those who can prove via a federally issued identity card that they are of "at least 25 percent Indian blood."

Obviously, this places a previously unheard-of racial "test" on our First Amendment rights of religious freedom -- even sometimes blocking a parent from sharing her religion with her children -- a point I hoped to emphasize when I wrote:

"A similar exemption from alcohol Prohibition during the years 1919-1933 for the religious use of communion wine required no proof of the communicants' percentage of Irish of Italian heritage'."

Writes in now reader K.B.:

"Sir: I've been reading your book with a highlighter and pen. Thank you for this work. ...

"I've married into a 'Maryland family' who are the products of years of feeding at the government tit. They tend to be very disbelieving that the government could be a bad thing, and so on.

"When I mentioned to my Catholic wife your statement on page 70, 'A similar exemption from alcohol Prohibition during the years 1919-1933 for the religious use of communion wine required no proof ...' she jumped in to say, 'Well that's not accurate because Catholics didn't use wine to celebrate communion in the U.S.A. until the '60's. They only used the bread.'

"Can you help me out here and explain this (perceived by the love of my life) 'error'?"

Though a bit reluctant to instruct members of another flock on the history of their own faith, I consulted the Encyclopedia Britannica, which confirms: "The breaking of the bread and pouring out of the wine are recognized by every Christian denomination as the central symbols of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. ... According to the eucharistic doctrine of Roman Catholicism, the elements of bread and wine are 'transubstantiated' into the body and blood of Christ. ..."

Mind you, I have some doubts about this story, even though it's one of the few incidents recounted in all four gospels. Eating human flesh -- even the transubstantiated variety -- would have been a rather odd concept for a rabbi like Jesus to have introduced in First Century Palestine. Such a ritual would have seemed much more familiar to the worshippers of the sun god Mithra in Asia Minor -- and there's considerable evidence that aspects of the cult of Mithra were indeed merged with early Christianity as it migrated through Asia Minor and the Greek coast on its way to Rome.

But that's hardly our question, today.

Rather, if the lady will refer to web site www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/inglis10.htm, under the heading "The Forbidden Game," Section 10, by Brian Inglis, she will find:

"Prohibition -- The Volstead Act: The required quota of States having announced their ratification, Prohibition was introduced in 1920. Three years later Roy Haynes, the Commissioner in charge of the enforcement of Prohibition (as it came to be called, with a capital 'P') gave an account in 'Prohibition Inside Out.' ...

"This variety of sources would have made Haynes' task difficult enough; what made it impossible was the variety of uses for which alcohol could still legally be manufactured.

"In the event of any attempt to stop the use of communion wine, the Rev. E. A. Wasson had announced in 1914, 'we would do as our Lord told us to do -- "all of you, drink of this" -- if we had to go to jail for it'. The threat had sufficed: Communion wine was exempted from the law, and many a consignment so labelled found its way to the dinner, rather than the altar table. An even more abundant source was medical prescription. ..."

If we need a further reference, at www.prolibertate.org/english/narcotics.htm, we find, under the headline: "Should drugs be prohibited? (by Christian Michel -- première publication de cet article sur le site Liberalia)":

"To begin this conference, I would like to recount a true story. From January 1919, American Catholic priests were required to obtain authorisation from the Federal administration to buy Communion wine. Prohibition had begun. During 12 long years, the production, trade and consumption of alcoholic drinks was totally prohibited in the United States. Very soon, there mushroomed numerous, ostensibly Christian, sects for the purpose of celebrating, with administrative dispensation, the Holy Communion in both kinds. Observers noted the remarkable zeal which the faithful showed in taking consecrated wine. ..."

Far from being some obscure historical footnote, the exemption from the alcohol ban for churches offering the Eucharist -- primarily, Catholic churches -- held those communicants up to a certain amount of public suspicion and abuse, demonstrating why the established religious use of wine should have simply scuttled the whole Prohibition plan in the first place.

The linkage in the American, rural, Protestant mind of Catholic immigrant groups with the consumption of alcohol -- including communion wine -- became a political issue when Al Smith, the Catholic governor of New York, campaigned in 1928 on a platform to repeal alcohol Prohibition. Smith lost the presidential race in a landslide, amidst some of the most vicious anti-Catholic propaganda ever seen in a U.S. election. (The aftertaste was so bitter that the Democratic party was actually considered to be taking a considerable chance when it next nominated a Catholic for the presidency, in 1960.)

"I know nothing of your wife's individual denomination," I answered K.B. "I dare say through the years numerous denominations have experimented with substituting 'de-natured' wine or other liquids for the more traditional alcoholic beverage to which all the authorities refer.

"But if your wife believes there was any federal test for a communicant to prove his 'purity of racial blood' in order to gain some kind of 'federal ID card' which allowed him or her to accept communion wine at church during the years 1920-1933, let her send me her citations, by all means."

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Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224.

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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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