There’s been a lot of discussion here (on this blog) lately about Prohibition. It was certainly an interesting time in our nation’s history. When I was growing up, I’m pretty sure Prohibition would have been viewed as a good thing in the church I was raised in… Proponents of Prohibition stressed that the removal of alcoholic beverages from our society would, among other good things, reduce crime. Statistics say that just the opposite occurred. When the 18th Amendment banned the production, sale and transportation of alcohol, the Volstead Act gave the government the authority to enforce that ban. The Internal Revenue Department was charged with regulating the alcohol ban and they took their job very seriously. The commissioner of internal revenue from 1921 to 1929, David Blair, stated that every bootlegger should be stood up before a wall and shot to death. He encouraged people to anonymously report their law-breaking neighbors.
Many religions were probably ok with Prohibition, but some were not. Catholic Churches need wine. It’s written in the Code of Canon Law that uncorrupted grape wine be served during communion. Even though he was obviously very much opposed to the use of alcohol, in 1922 Blair removed the ban from sacramental wine, allowing priests to use wine in religious services. At the same time, doctors could also prescribe it with a special prescription pad. There were, of course, legitimate, medicinal purposes for whiskey. But doctors reportedly earned an estimated $40 million in 1928 by writing prescriptions for whiskey during Prohibition.
While the lifting of the ban on sacramental wine wasn’t intended to be a loophole, it turned out to be one (especially for California wineries.) It pretty much kept wineries making church wine in business during Prohibition. Getting a permit wasn’t easy — Commissioner Blair’s rules included a host of measures meant to keep sacramental wines in the hands of the church. Wineries had to obtain permits from the Prohibition director. A religious leader had to act as the proprietor of the winery when it came to production and distribution, and the same leader had to ensure that the wines were used for religious purposes — not general consumption. No wine was allowed to be consumed at the wineries.
But, as with any loophole, people manage to cram a lot through it. With houses of worship one of the only legal outlets for alcohol, production of holy wine skyrocketed. One estimate is that grape production in heavily Roman Catholic California increased by 700 percent during Prohibition. The increase came despite the fact that at the time, the laity was forbidden to partake of the wine. A lot of people wondered where all that sacramental wine was going if not into the rituals. Someone noted that having a friend in the clergy might lead to better parties, at the very least.
During Prohibition, churches became targets for thieves, or at least for people that just needed a glass of wine. There’s also pretty strong evidence that Prohibition turned a number of priests into bootleggers. There is a book regarding Prohibition written by Edward Behr that contains a story about Georges de Latour, a Catholic and good friend of the archbishop of San Francisco. The archbishop insisted that all the priests in his diocese buy their wine from Latour. Behr concluded that the amount of wine purchased from Latour was so great that is was clear that most of the priests must have been bootleggers as well.
There’s no question that Prohibition was a colorful time in our history and maybe contributed to at least a few violations of the “law of the land” by some clergy. Today, the sacramental wine market is less than a half of one percent of all wines sold in the United States. That number will probably continue to fall as the country becomes less religious.
A legitimate argument can be made that Catholic (and other) churches pretty much saved the wine industry during Prohibition. Thinking about all that wine purchased/consumed by the Catholic Church….. it’s amazing what can make a person get religion, isn’t it?
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