<p>Well… from a Catholic perspective…</p>
<p>The Law: You’re serving wine to children.
Catholic Church: It’s not wine when we serve it. It’s the blood of Christ.
The Law: …</p>
<p>But no, it’s all right to drink wine in religious ceremonies. It’s not like you’re getting drunk. Once you reach the drinking age, you’ll gain perspective on how alcoholically insignificant a few sips of wine for religious purposes really is; it’ll be okay.</p>
<p>LOL at most seders they drink 4 (small) cups of wine! (over the course of several hours.) </p>
<p>But it’s definitely not “a few sips”, so there is grape juice available for minors or anyone wishing to avoid alcohol.</p>
<p>I remember that many months ago, I went to my girlfriend’s house for Shabbat and dinner. My girlfriend told me that it will be a sip of wine but at that time, I refused to drink wine, plus they were running low on wine (at the time, there was one bottle left if I remember correctly), so we drank grape juice instead during the ceremony (only my girlfriend’s father drank wine). My girlfriend’s father made grape juice by squeezing grapes into grape juice. He told me that’s how Jews made grape juice in the old days (I think). Anyways, I enjoyed the Shabbat. My girlfriend said some things in Hebrew that I didn’t understand until she told me. I had fun at her house on that night.</p>
<p>I have looked into this since I teach Health.
State laws determine what’s legal in your state. Most states (I haven’t found one that doesn’t comply, but there may be some) give an exemption for religious ceremonies. You can take communion, or celebrate your Bat Mitzva or whatever without worry. Except that if you have any % alcohol after a driving problem you will be subject to the full effect of the law.</p>
<p>The 4 cups for Seder would also fall into the exempt catagory.</p>
<p>Now if you teen then drives, there is no exemption in our state. Kid with more than 0% alcohol gets nailed. Same as a kid who took communion wine.</p>
<p>I grew up attending a Southern Baptist church - definitely grape juice (and cubed white loaf bread.)</p>
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<p>The peanut gallery is throwing tomatoes, mantori. :)</p>
<p>As I have gone to Catholic school for 12 years I would like to remind everyone that we believe that the priest consecrates the “wine” and the “bread” into the Blood and Body of Christ. We are not giving minors alcohol but a consecrated form of it.</p>
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<p>Seriously, nobody really believes that, right? I hope.</p>
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<p>I went to Catholic school for 16 years and would like to remind everyone that it is still wine, it still has alcohol in it, and if you snuck into the back of the church and glugged enough of it (okay, it’s consecrated during Mass, but let’s pretend), you would indeed get drunk. </p>
<p>A few sips of “consecrated wine” is not going to have a different effect on the human body compared to a few sips of “regular wine.” It’s ridiculous to claim minors who take communion aren’t receiving alcohol. They are. But a very small amount of alcohol.</p>
<p>Wait, my math is off. <em>recounts</em> 15 years, not 16.</p>
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<p>[Clerical</a> Whispers: Priest blames consecrated wine for drunk driving](<a href=“http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/06/priest-blames-consecrated-wine-for.html]Clerical”>Clerical Whispers: Priest blames consecrated wine for drunk driving)</p>
<p>Yes, you would think the ethanol would turn into hemoglobin.</p>
<p>And if you are in a church with such nutty ideas, just relax and take an extra big slug at the wine.</p>
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<p>Yes. They do. The Eucharist and the Transubstantiation is pretty much the basis of the Catholic faith. There’s no getting around it, either… no weaseling and saying, 'Well, it takes on the <em>spirit</em> of Christ, and…"-- it is the teaching of the Catholic church that it is literally the body literally the sacred blood of Christ after Transsubstantiation occurs. It’s why Catholics genuflect to the tabernacle before they take their place in the pews-- the body of Christ (Transubstantiated wafers from previous services) is kept in the tabernacle. They are genuflecting to Christ.</p>
<p>You have to be a little zen about it… I’m an engineer, and I literally work with the concrete world all day long, and I’ve gone through RCIA to convert to Catholicism (getting baptized, first communioned, and confirmed this Sunday by Cardinal DiNardo, actually), and it’s a realm where if I were to take it too literally, my science would annihilate my faith. If you were to take a mass spectrometer and analyze the host, then I think every Catholic knows that you’d find physical evidence of wafer and wine, but your faith has to transcend that understanding and believe that it’s the body and blood. I’m certainly not going to be contemplating the ingredients list of what I’m ingesting during Communion this Easter… it’s bigger than that.</p>
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<p>I think that’s a nasty, gratuitous swipe. What do you care if that’s what Catholics believe (and indeed they do)? It doesn’t affect you in any way.</p>
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<p>I was just reading their posting history and thinking that I kind of wasted my efforts at self-examination of my faith, but then I figured that it might help others.</p>
<p>Watch this; it always razzes agnostics (I should know; I used to be one)–
Hey, Sorghum! I’ll be praying for you! 
(Praying for peace and tolerance only, not for any sort of conversion experience; you’re fine just the way you are, and gratuitous though your swipes may be, they don’t bother me. No worries, no offense taken, and peace be with you. 
)</p>
<p>I wonder what happened to the priest’s appeal of the DUI?</p>
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<p>To a non-Catholic, the earnest belief that a piece of bread and glass of wine literally, physically become Jesus Christ must indeed seem ridiculous. I don’t find that comment to be gratuitous at all. It’s a reasonable reaction by someone to whom the belief is alien, and many people have this reaction to many facets of unfamiliar religions.</p>
<p>And familiar ones, too, and with good reason. Irrational religious beliefs are the basis for a great many of the world’s social ills. In this sense, they do affect us all. Why not question them? And if they seem ridiculous, why not say so?</p>
<p>I think there’s a time and a place to question them, though. It felt gratuitous in the context of the thread. It would be like going on the thread where people are swapping Passover recipes and saying, “Well, don’t tell me you believe God really cares that you’re not eating pasta and bread this past week.” Personally, I don’t think God particularly gives a darn, but that’s not the thread to bring it up.</p>
<p>The first may or may not have been gratuitous. I felt it was, but reasonable people can differ. But I don’t think there’s any debate about the second.</p>
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