Cum Vino Veritas

The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Wine, Whiskey and Song is an entertaining, though sometimes irreverent, look at the intertwining of Catholic culture and viticulture.

THE BAD CATHOLIC’S GUIDE TO WINE, WHISKEY & SONG:

A Spirited Look at Catholic Life & Lore From Apocalypse to Zinfandel

by John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak

Crossroad, 2007

401 pages, $14.95 PB

cpcbooks.com


As the great-great-grandson of a Bavarian weiss beer brewer, I was delighted to see the cover of John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak’s new book, The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Wine, Whiskey & Song. There, next to the subtitle, A Spirited Look at Catholic Life & Lore From Apocalypse to Zinfandel, was a cheery photo of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger hoisting a frothy glass of weiss beer.

Only this effervescent summertime drink, brewed with wheat, can bring the kind of gleeful look of anticipation demonstrated on the good cardinal’s face.

Needless to say, I quickly thumbed through the encyclopedic book to W to see what the authors had to say about weiss beer. I learned about how Catholic it is, for one thing.

And that’s what this book is all about — how beer, wine and spirits have been such an integral part of Catholic life through the millennia.

It’s not just the wines and brandies that have been produced in monasteries. Zmirak and Matychowiak regale us with stories from centuries past of how a culture of good food and drink have intertwined with Catholic history and culture.

And they serve up thoughtful reflections on how the spiritual life sometimes imitates viticulture.

“If monks and priests were able to understand the minute particularities that make the grape and shape the wine, they have also spent centuries studying the hybrid creature who drinks it,” reads a passage on the “microclimates” that produce a stunning variety of wines in one Italian region — and how Benedictine monks played an important role in its history.

Just as the monks brought their contemplative outlook to the grape, spiritual directors have for centuries plied their wisdom to guiding souls toward salvation.

“Where modern ideologies cut neatly through the human heart with a cleaver, the masters of the spiritual life have patiently struggled instead to understand it — and shape it as gently as a patient vintner coaxes his vines.”

As for weiss beer, Bavaria is, for one thing, Germany’s Catholic state. And the ancient Franziskaner brewery in Munich has stood across from the local Franciscan friary since time immemorial.

The braumeisters even took the bold step of slapping the image of a  jolly friar on labels when the Nazi regime attempted to purge society of Christian symbols.

This book imparts a greater knowledge (some of it arcane) of Catholic thought. It’s all here, presented in the same light-hearted style of the authors’ previous book, The Bad Catholics’ Guide to Good Living, about celebrations of the Church’s saint days and feast days.

The book often takes a decidedly irreverent tone, and at times, the authors push the envelope a bit much with their satire and even ribaldry. They wonder aloud, for example, whether St. John the Evangelist used absinthe to help him write the Book of Revelation, with all its psychedelic visions of dragons.

But if nothing else, the book confirms the idea that it’s very “Protestant” (and Islamic) to shun drink. From the time of the wedding feast at Cana, followers of Christ have imbibed. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as one doesn’t cross the line into gluttony and drunkenness.

This book is a great celebration, from a Catholic perspective, of grapes, hops and grains in all the many ways man has found to ferment those.

John Burger is the

Register’s news editor.

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