# Why are prohibtionary tendencies more common in Protestant areas? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 30, 2014, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945 "2014-09-30T05:42:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lazy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@Lazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lazy)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/41 "2014-10-02T00:07:40Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > But it’s simply not true to say that temperance was largely a women’s movement. I am not sure if our disagreement is about the facts or about my use of the word “largely”, which I admit may be an overstatement. At the time, temperance was at least widely believed to have significantly more support among women than men, and there was a lot of overlap between membership in women’s suffrage and temperance organizations, at least in Canada, with which I am a little bit more familiar than with the US. Men certainly also played an important role. A couple of other points related to the topic: in Canada, the organization which came to be the main political force for prohibition – the Dominion Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Traffic–is said by the Canadian Encyclopedia to have “discouraged Francophone and Catholic participation”. Francophones ended up forming a separate organization --La Ligue Anti-alcoölique – which favored restriction rather than prohibition. In the US, I know the Catholic church favored greater restrictions on the sale of alcohol, but I am not sure if it supported prohibition at the time. Did it have an official position? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/42 "2014-10-02T00:29:52Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > I’m wondering if rank-and-file Catholics have been less likely to participate in reform or protest movements out of a tendency to defer to the priesthood for leadership on social issues, while Protestants are encouraged to take moral crusading into their own hands. I doubt that this is generally true. The French Revolution, after all, happened in Catholic France. And a common British prejudicial stereotype of those hot-headed Latin Catholic types is, or used to be, that they are forever having riots and coups d’etat and suchlike, as opposed to the staid solid sober respectable bourgeois Protestant nations of northern Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/43 "2014-10-02T02:11:07Z")
> [@Lazy](#): > > At the time of the Reformation, in the Western church, it was usually only the priest who drank wine at communion. Protestants generally insisted that the whole congregation receive wine. Why pick out the ‘time of the reformation?’ > [@](#): > > In reaction, even those Catholic churches which were previously giving wine to the congregation gradually stopped. It was mainly in the twentieth century that Catholic churches began to return to giving wine to the congregation. Yes, before the reformation some parts of the church retained the practice of including the congregation: after the counter-reformation, some parts of the church returned to the practice of including the congretation. The decision to not have a full meal at communion was an early decision of the church. The decision to not include the full congregation in recieving the wind was a late decision of the church, was controverisial at the time it was made, and was conterversial at the time of the reformation, but the ‘protestant sects’ didn’t invent the idea, it was a return to an existing thread of church thought. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/44 "2014-10-02T03:12:26Z")
[Quote=H.L.Mencken] Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. [/QUOTE] Jokes aside though, Ireland is noted for sexual puritanism (although they still manage to have children) and the Roman Catholic church still maintains it’s own state: how much more close can the law and the church get than that? ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/45 "2014-10-02T03:52:16Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Alcohol prohibition was pretty much a Protestant thing. And drinking was pretty much a Protestant thing too. The German Lutherans were strongly against prohibition, and seem to have been the backbone of opposition. The USA at the time was pretty much a Protestant thing. Protestants were on both sides of the debate. > [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > It was strongest in the US, UK and Canada. In Canada, all provinces voted for it except Catholic-majority Quebec. Pretty strong in AUS too. Formed the core of the successful movement to give votes to women. Up until recently there were still ‘Dry’ areas in my city, left over from the local-option, after federal prohibition didn’t get up. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/46 "2014-10-02T04:13:57Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > I’m pretty sure that this is wrong. Catholics drink wine along with the crackers (whatever they’re called). The Protestant church I was raised in drank grape juice with little hunks of bread. My Catholic experience: Communion at every Mass, so normally every week. All who have had First Communion\* (generally everybody age 7 or older) can participate, and most do unless they choose not to. This “denying of Communion” thing that comes up when some Bishop gets blustery seems hard to enforce, in my experience. Red wine and discrete, circular pieces unleavened bread. Made you feel real cool at 7. My Methodist experience: Communion is sometimes. Like quarterly, at max, and the occurrence seemed arbitrary to me (but probably wasn’t, but not always on holy days etc.). Grape juice and chunks of bread torn off a loaf (slightly sweet in my memory). \*Generally Catholic only but I believe Anglicans and Orthodox practices are considered more “kosher” than Protestant. > [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I was going to quibble with you about Estonia, but then looked it up. They were historically Protestant (and used to be an officially Protestant country) but nowadays Lutherans are outnumbered by Orthodox Christians. More than half of Estonians, of course, profess ‘no religion’ which has to be one of the highest rates in the world. The increase in Orthodoxy is because Estonia and Latvia (not so much Lithuania) have had a **huge** influx of Russian immigrants, who are ethnically and mostly culturally separate. > [@Chronos](#): > > I thought of that, too, but I’m not sure about the cause and effect. The ritual itself in some form or another is universal among Christians (though admittedly more prominent in Catholics). Many Protestants substitute nonalcoholic grape juice for the wine, but this could well be a result of their attitudes towards alcohol, which would then require a different explanation. I agree, attitudes caused them to abandon wine. Welch’s grape juice was founded by a Wesleyan minister. Despite the history, the United Methodist Church doesn’t seem to take a strong moral stance against alcohol these days like some Evangelicals do. Some Protestants have claimed that Jesus and the Apostles drank grape juice, or at least the near beer equivalent of wine. That of course flies in the face of all common sense. > [@Melbourne](#): > > Jokes aside though, Ireland is noted for sexual puritanism (although they still manage to have children) and the Roman Catholic church still maintains it’s own state: how much more close can the law and the church get than that? More than the Holy See? Well, the Papal States, when they had a good chunk of Italy _real_ power! And also their own Holy Roman Empire, except that was a really dysfunctional relationship. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/47 "2014-10-02T04:29:08Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Jokes aside though, Ireland is noted for sexual puritanism (although they still manage to have children) and the Roman Catholic church still maintains it’s own state: how much more close can the law and the church get than that? Sexual puritanism in Ireland (or anywhere else) doesn’t necessarily mean that puritan attitudes toward sex are being enforced through civil law, though, and it’s the latter which is the subject of this thread. As it happens, though, despite being a Catholic country Ireland does display a a somewhat “Protestant” attitude to enforcing sexual morality through law - e.g. prostitution is subject to heavy legal restrictions, and Ireland was very late in deregulating the sale of contraceptives. But Ireland is part of the Anglosphere plus, of course, its legal and political culture in particular is largely inherited from Britain. So my thesis would be that Ireland does these things despite being a Catholic country, not because of it. As for the Vatican City State, that’s a bit of a red herring in this context. The purpose of the Vatican State is to secure the political independence of the papacy. It doesn’t distinguish itself by enforcing morality through its laws - it adopts the Italian Criminal Code by reference. Even when the Vatican controlled a fair chunk of central Italy, it didn’t distinguish itself by attempts to enforce morality through law - there was no prohibition of alcohol, for example, prostitution was not a crime and brothels were licensed and operated openly. The Papal States may have been a theocracy, but they were not a puritan one. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/48 "2014-10-02T05:32:34Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Jokes aside though, Ireland is noted for sexual puritanism (although they still manage to have children) and the Roman Catholic church still maintains it’s own state: how much more close can the law and the church get than that? Sexual puritanism my ass, at least from the PoV of my 15yo self. Those people went behind the pub at a wink, and had serious problems understanding that most of us Frenchs and Spaniards did not (we had a group from Asturias who was as bad as the Irish). ---
**Author:** ![Lazy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@Lazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lazy)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/49 "2014-10-02T11:17:48Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Why pick out the ‘time of the reformation?’ Because the question was about Protestant vs. Catholic attitudes. I believe, although I am not sure, that the restriction of sacramental wine to priests was motivated largely by practical, economic considerations prior to the Reformation, but took on something of a doctrinal edge after that. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/50 "2014-10-02T14:21:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Aren’t they all “descended from the earliest Protestants”? Well, aside from the modern sects like the Christian Scientists, Jehova’s Witnesses, and Latter-Day Saints, but they’re not exactly “Protestant”. I wasn’t clear. I meant the direct descendants: the various Lutheran synods and the Anglican/Episcopalian churches continue to drink wine at communion, not grape juice. > [@Melbourne](#): > > Why pick out the ‘time of the reformation?’ > > Yes, before the reformation some parts of the church retained the practice of including the congregation: after the counter-reformation, some parts of the church returned to the practice of including the congretation. > > The decision to not have a full meal at communion was an early decision of the church. The decision to not include the full congregation in recieving the wind was a late decision of the church, was controverisial at the time it was made, and was conterversial at the time of the reformation, but the ‘protestant sects’ didn’t invent the idea, it was a return to an existing thread of church thought. The original suggestion in this thread was that attitudes toward Prohibition in various countries might have been influenced by the Roman Catholic Church making a broader ritualistic use of wine than Protestant churches. Subsequent responses were suggesting that that may not be the case, pointing out that for most of the last few hundred years (from at least the Council of Trent to Vatican II), Catholic services typically restricted the drinking of the wine to just the priest, while many Protestant sects served wine to the whole congregation. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/51 "2014-10-02T14:26:07Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > The results of alcoholism are very much a societal issue! I wouldn’t disagree. However, use of alcohol is a personal decision/choice. Slavery and limiting the vote are not. I am not arguing any relative merits of the issues, just that drinking/prohibition does not equate to slavery/abolition or limited/universal suffrage. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/52 "2014-10-02T14:27:52Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Sexual puritanism in Ireland (or anywhere else) doesn’t necessarily mean that puritan attitudes toward sex are being enforced through civil law, though, and it’s the latter which is the subject of this thread. > > As it happens, though, despite being a Catholic country Ireland does display a a somewhat “Protestant” attitude to enforcing sexual morality through law - e.g. prostitution is subject to heavy legal restrictions, and Ireland was very late in deregulating the sale of contraceptives. But Ireland is part of the Anglosphere plus, of course, its legal and political culture in particular is largely inherited from Britain. So my thesis would be that Ireland does these things despite being a Catholic country, not because of it. > > As for the Vatican City State, that’s a bit of a red herring in this context. The purpose of the Vatican State is to secure the political independence of the papacy. It doesn’t distinguish itself by enforcing morality through its laws - it adopts the Italian Criminal Code by reference. Even when the Vatican controlled a fair chunk of central Italy, it didn’t distinguish itself by attempts to enforce morality through law - there was no prohibition of alcohol, for example, prostitution was not a crime and brothels were licensed and operated openly. The Papal States may have been a theocracy, but they were not a puritan one. Ireland of course also banned divorce, entirely, until 1995. It wasn’t the only Catholic country to do so, which suggests that maybe talking about ‘puritanism’ vs. ‘non-puritan’ wholesale, is sort of an oversimplification. Protestant countries have traditionally been more lax about some things (divorce, contraception) while being more strict about things like prostitution, out-of-wedlock childbearing\*, alcohol, etc. \*Ireland is again an exception here, as Irish culture famously took an extremely harsh view towards sex and childbearing outside of marriage: I’m thinking more about Latin American countries here. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/53 "2014-10-02T16:21:51Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I wouldn’t disagree. However, use of alcohol is a personal decision/choice. Slavery and limiting the vote are not. I am not arguing any relative merits of the issues, just that drinking/prohibition does not equate to slavery/abolition or limited/universal suffrage. Nor does abortion. Or gay rights. Or a million other issues, which nevertheless have had a very large religious component of what was considered morally right and wrong and which had (and have) large societal effects. Outside a libertarian fantasy world, there is no possibility of separating out moral issues this way. One can have a personal belief that certain issues fall on one side or the other, but shouldn’t have any expectation that the larger society will pay any attention. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2014, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/54 "2014-10-02T21:50:36Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Sexual puritanism my ass, at least from the PoV of my 15yo self. Those people went behind the pub at a wink, and had serious problems understanding that most of us Frenchs and Spaniards did not (we had a group from Asturias who was as bad as the Irish). Asturias, eh? If only I’d known.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2014, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/55 "2014-10-03T00:45:33Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Ireland of course also banned divorce, entirely, until 1995. It wasn’t the only Catholic country to do so, which suggests that maybe talking about ‘puritanism’ vs. ‘non-puritan’ wholesale, is sort of an oversimplification. Protestant countries have traditionally been more lax about some things (divorce, contraception) while being more strict about things like prostitution, out-of-wedlock childbearing\*, alcohol, etc. I take your point. The issue, though, is not about whether people have a very strict moral code or a more relaxed one, but rather to what extent they seek to enforce whatever moral code they have through civil law. The Catholic tradition regards divorce as always wrong, and furthermore sees it as a societal issue. (And I think a good case can be made for the latter view.) And it’s the second element which, from the Catholic perspective, makes civil legislation restricting or limiting divorce justifiable and/or desirable. It wouldn’t be justifiable _merely_ because divorce is wrong. Whereas the Protestant moral tradition doesn’t regard divorce as intrinsically wrong. Hence even a Protestant who considers that the law should enforce morality will not expect the law to forbid divorce, since divorce isn’t presumptively immoral. I think to examine the different Protestant and Catholic attitudes to the use of civil law to enforce morality, you need to look at issues on whose morality Catholics and Protestants are in broad agreement - e.g. prostitution, adultery, drunkenness. And on those issues, legal prohibition is more likely to be resorted to in historically Protestant or Protestant-influenced societies than in Catholic or Catholic-influenced societies. And - I think not by coincidence - this reflects the dominant perspectives in Catholicism and Protestantism respectively about civil power and what it should be used for. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/56 "2014-10-05T03:20:51Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Well, the priest drinks wine. It was Protestant sects that extended the drinking of wine to the whole congregation, wasn’t it? You see a lot of alcoholism among priests though, (in fact, it’s been a real problem in the church), but alcohol isn’t considered a sin in Catholicism. (Getting drunk and then being a dick is, obviously, but that’s true even among the non-religious) ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2014, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/57 "2014-10-05T05:22:51Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > You see a lot of alcoholism among priests though, (in fact, it’s been a real problem in the church), but alcohol isn’t considered a sin in Catholicism. (Getting drunk and then being a dick is, obviously, but that’s true even among the non-religious) And sacramental wine can’t be poured down the drain. The priest, or his deacons or other functionaries must consume it. Or the altar boys sneak it. Being a teetotaling alcoholic is not a detriment to being a priest, but normally it involves drinking some amount of wine at a time when the only acceptable drinks are mimosas and bloody marys. Also: [whisk(e)y priest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_priest) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2014, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945/58 "2014-10-06T03:18:21Z")
I believe they have a cistern or a well, that goes straight into the ground. (As opposed to the sewers)\* And there are instances where a priest is permitted to drink non-alcoholic wine if he must for various medical reasons. \*A friend of mine said the reason he became an altar boy when he was a kid was because the priest at their church let the altar boys finish the leftover communion wine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-prohibtionary-tendencies-more-common-in-protestant-areas/699945.md?page=2)