The thing about prohibition is that it perfectly illustrates the law of unintended consequences. Ban alcohol because it is A Bad Thing. This puts all the legitimate tax-paying alcohol related firms out of business, and the whole thing gets taken over by crooks and then organised crime.
Over here it is generally accepted that alcohol in excess is bad, but the preferred way of moderating consumption is through taxation. A £10 bottle of wine brings the government around £4 in tax.
As I said earlier, I’m speaking just about the U.S. You included the U.S. in your blanket statement and that’s flatly wrong.
No kidding. That’s probably why I said that in so many words in my post, which you quoted.
Can you provide any numbers for the size of the Baptist and Methodist churches in these countries? It’s my understanding that in the 19th and early 20th century their numbers were minimal in English-speaking countries except in the U.S., where, as I’ve said, your comments don’t apply. For that matter, how about clarifying exactly where and when you’re talking about.
I am not a theologian, nor Catholic; but I have the impression from general reading, that over past centuries, Catholicism in Ireland went its own way in some matters, compared to the more mainstream Catholicism elsewhere in Europe. No doubt heavily over-simplifying: European Catholicism was, very relatively, more accommodating and tolerant re human frailties.
The Irish brand of the faith came to be heavily influenced by the Jansenist trend within the Catholic Church – “Catholicism’s answer to Calvinism / Puritanism” – much taken up with mankind’s perceived original sinfulness and rottenness, and taking a dim view of most earthly joys and pleasures – most especially, all and any of such, of any sexual kind. The Catholic Church in Ireland, at least up until the mid-20th century, was characterised by an almost insanely obsessive loathing of, and hostility to, any sort of sexual pleasure for its flock – to the point of “allowed only for procreation, only between lawfully-wedded husband and wife, and even then, they shouldn’t enjoy the bare minimum of sex necessary for having kids”. Anything whatever sexual, beyond that, was forbidden / anathemised / abominated / branded as a certain ticket to hell.
With the way things went historically; the Catholic Church in Australia was long dominated by Irish clergy, with characteristically Irish-Catholic attitudes, including the described extreme anti-sex “complex”. One takes it that such attitudes linger long, even if the official party line has in recent decades, become less harsh.