Beer, Saints, and Song: Drinking and Temperance in Ireland

This is the last of my posts reflecting on the Beauty of Faith Pilgrimage to Ireland. As author of The Beer Option, which presents the Catholic way to drink as rooted in feasting, fasting, and friendship, I kept my eyes open for evidence of Catholic drinking as well as the promotion of temperance in Ireland. As Catholics, we drink to honor God, in moderation, and to draw us into community with others, not way from it. Sometimes that means having to say “no.”

Grace in Dublin?

I’ve already mentioned some of the proponents of moderation and temperance in my post, Drinking and Not Drinking in Dublin, such as Fr. Theobald Matthew, the temperance crusader, and Ven. Matt Talbot, a recovered alcoholic. We visited one more Dublin site with a peculiar, though indirect, connection to drinking–the Jesuit church, St. Francis Xavier, established in the year of Catholic emancipation, 1829: the site of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ funeral and the burial site of Bl. John Sullivan, SJ. (1861-1933), a priest known for his gift of healing.

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I created a reading packet to accompany our pilgrimage and included James Joyce’s short story from Dubliners, “Grace,” which culminates at St. Francis Xavier. The story opens with drunkenness:

TWO GENTLEMEN who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him up: but he was quite helpless. He lay curled up at the foot of the stairs down which he had fallen. They succeeded in turning him over. His hat had rolled a few yards away and his clothes were smeared with the filth and ooze of the floor on which he had lain, face downwards. His eyes were closed and he breathed with a grunting noise. A thin stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Tom Kernan, the main character, had converted to the Catholic faith on account of his wife, begun a promising career, and then descended in alcoholism. After the incident recounted at the beginning of the story, and during the time of Tom’s recovery, a group of friends come to visit him in an attempt to “convert” him. The friends eventually convince him to attend a Jesuit retreat with them, as, in my reading at least, he acquiesces in his desire to fit in. The final scene at St. Francis Xavier’s ends somewhat comically, or should I say mockingly on the part of Joyce, as the Jesuit priest preaches to his bourgeoisie crowd:

He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them in a businesslike way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they tallied accurately with conscience.

The story ends in the middle of this business like sermon, understanding of faults, but asking all to make a resolution to look into and “set right my accounts.” The question of the story surrounds whether or not God’s grace has actually entered into this drunkard’s heart in the midst of his friends’ pressure and this bourgeois-oriented preacher.

Before departing Dublin, I stopped at a famous tourist destination, although if I had known more about the tour, which did not visit any of the historic distilling sites or equipment (distilling now happens in Cork), I would have opted for an up and coming distiller.

Drinking at the Foot of Croagh Patrick

I was happy to find a burgeoning microbrew movement in Ireland, which, like elsewhere in Europe, has taken off later than in the United States. Everywhere we visited, I found a few good local microbrews. In Westport offered a particularly good one, The Seven Virtues by the Mescan Brewery, with Croagh Patrick pictured on the tap and glass. The brewery is named after St. Patrick’s own brewing monk, Mescan and will be offering seven special beers for the seven virtues, this one a lager. My brother and I enjoyed one before hiking St. Patrick’s holy mountain the next day.

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We also had a wonderful visit with a distance education student in a class I’m teaching through the Augustine Institute, Fr. Shane Sullivan. Fr. Shane, who grew up in Minnesota, was a few years behind us at the University of St. Thomas (and the Catholic Studies program founded by Don Briel). During minor seminary there he discerned a call to serve as a priest in Ireland and he finished seminary at Maynooth. It was wonderful to see his passion for evangelization in a country that has quickly embraced secularism and hostility toward the Church. During our conversation, I tried the local Mayo Red, while Father enjoyed some juice, as he has taken the pledge. You can see the pin he is wearing, representing the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, founded by Fr. Theobald Matthew, and which, Fr. Shane told us, is an important witness in Ireland even today with the country’s long standing struggles with alcohol.

The Wild Rover over the Water

From Galway, we took at delightful dinner cruise across Lough Corrib. The cruise included live entertainment with music and dancing (and, yes, I was forced into dancing in front of the group).

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We taught the group one of most famous Irish drinking songs, The Wild Rover, which, ironically, has a connection to temperance. As people sing it in the pubs, the lyrics speak of giving up a life of wandering and wasting money on the drink:

I’ve been a wild rover for many’s the year
And I’ve spent all me money on whiskey and beer
But now I’m returning with gold in great store
And I never will play the wild rover no more

And since I’m writing this on Columbus Day, we also stopped by the Church of St. Nicholas in Galway which Columbus visited in 1477, looking for information about Irish voyages to the West, which would have included St. Brendan’s epic journey.

Monks, Craft Beer, and Temperance

In Dingle we had our best food at Fenton’s and also our best microbrew from the West Kerry Brewing Company, with its delightful golden ale, Béal Bán. We also sampled some other local beers, a few varieties from the Killarney Brewing Company, including this stout, as well as from Dick Mack’s.

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Not far from the pub and local parish, I also discovered an old temperance house:

I found a description of its history, with Fr. Theobald Matthew appearing once again:

Fr. Mathew, the Apostle of Temperance, held an open-air meeting at The Grove, Dingle in 1840. This resulted in a Temperance Society being formed. . . . The Society became know as The Market House Temperance Society. In 1842, Lord Cork granted a site for the erection of a Temperance Hall on part of the site of the old castle of the Knight of Kerry. The Temperance Hall still serves a useful purpose in the town today. The society formed a Brass and Reed band, which practiced in the Hall, and was a spectacular feature of Dingle life for the following fifty years. 

We were in Dingle, however, to visit monastic ruins, and, as we received some real Irish weather there, it made us reflect on the penitential life of the monks. Some of their huts still keep out the water, but, nevertheless, present a grim prospect. They’re a great reminder not to enjoy beer too much and to stay focused on our ultimate pilgrimage to heaven.

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Glenstal: Should Monks Earn a Living from Alcohol?

On the way back to Dublin, we stopped at Glenstal Abbey. The monks, like good Benedictines, work to support themselves, and these monks make delicious truffles, with their own lemon liqueur inside, as well as liqueur from other monasteries throughout Europe (including Lérins and the Grand Chartreuse). The monks told me they had “researched” me ahead of time, which surely led them to The Beer Option. Another of them informed me that monks should not produce alcohol for their upkeep. I guess the 2.8% alcohol in his truffles was low enough! I should have reminded him that monks who founded the Abbey from Maredsous in Belgium have a long history of brewing. Glenstal was founded by French monks in 1927 in honor of their recently deceased abbot, Bl. Columba Marmion, a native of Dublin. Maredsous currently partners with the Duvel Moortgat Brewery to brew their beer. You can see them along the many other monastic breweries on my comprehensive list of brewing monks.

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Back Home

The Glenstal monk’s comments direct us to the genuine tension that exists between a proper Catholic approach to drinking and one that uses alcohol as a destructive escape. I hope to imitate the monks in their temperance and I take periodic alcohol fasts to make sure I never become too attached. I’m glad that a monastic saint I befriended on the trip at Glendalough, St. Kevin, will be close by to watch over me!