....I, as a Catholic social activist, have radical grievances against my Church's supreme hierarchal authorities' world-wide support for the legality and use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol. And I am especially troubled by their support for the legality and use of alcohol in the Americas, where the homelands of a great multitude of indigenous people are located.

In addition, I am radically opposed to my Church's use of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I have talked to the pastors of Catholic churches in Minnesota's Mille Lacs Lake area about petitioning our Bishop, Bishop John Kinney of Saint Cloud Diocese, to give them permission to stop using wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I am trying to evangelize the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to the Catholic churches located on the south end of Mille Lacs Lake. And at least some Mille Lacs Band members are trying to "pull together and away from alcohol", but my Church's supreme hierarchal authorities want me to lead them to alcohol (wine) on these churches' altars.

An open letter to my pastor about this issue:

During last Sunday's Mass a song with the words "I will drink wine on my knees" was sung. Those words filled me with holy indignation. Why sing those words when everywhere in the world where alcohol is legal and available there are catastrophic consequences?

...I believe that our supreme hierarchical authorities should stop supporting the legality and use of alcohol throughout the world, and especially in the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

....when Catholic missionary priests entered the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas they brought the addictive and dangerous drug alcohol with them. And the Catholic missionary priests, in the process of their Holy See directed mission to evangelize the natives, gave the addictive and dangerous drug alcohol to the natives. And they committed this grave sin because they wanted the natives to believe that alcohol was a good and safe drug. And did so, because it was being used during the summit of the Church's worship services. And this grave sin of theirs was the primary cause for the Indian alcoholic-abuse genocidal epidemic, a genocidal epidemic that is still being perpetrated against Indians throughout the Americas.

...But, thanks be to God, at least some of the Protestant churches have switched from wine to grape juice when it comes to the Last Supper segment of their worship services.

By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer, www.towanhkon.org

NOTE: "Houses of prostitution, dens of vice, criminal courts, prisons, almshouses, insane asylums, hospitals, all are, to a great degree, filled as a result of the liquor seller's work. Like the mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse, he is dealing in 'slaves, and souls of men.' Behind the liquor seller stands the mighty destroyer of souls, and every art which earth or hell can devise is employed to draw human beings under his power. In the city and the country, on the railway trains, on the great steamers, in places of business, in the halls of pleasure, in the medical dispensary, even in the church, on the sacred Communion table, his traps are set. Nothing is left undone to create and to foster the desire for intoxicants. On almost every corner stands the public house, with its brilliant lights, its welcome and good cheer, inviting the working man, the wealthy idler, and the unsuspecting youth" (The Ministry of Healing, p.338).

For more on Wine and the Church, please visit the following link:  

Wine in the Bible.