Guinness: A Story of Sobriety & Justice

Days 23 & 24 in 'The Art of Dying Well' by St. Robert Bellarmine

Most people would not associate beer with Sunday School, but maybe we should after hearing the story of Author Guinness! He was the son of an Archbishop in the Church of Ireland (Anglican Communion) and was the first person to organize Sunday Schools in Dublin, Ireland. Being deeply influenced by the preaching of John Wesley, he desired to bring revival and renewal to his land in the name of Christ.

However, he was surrounded by great poverty, prejudice, and drunkenness. In response, he created a low-alcohol and filling beer in order to combat the rampant intoxication around him. The Guinness stout was created in order to replace the cheap whiskey and gin circulating throughout Ireland. Ironically, this beer played a key role in the ‘temperance movement’ without completely eliminating alcohol in part because the drinking water could be unsafe.

Arthur Guinness also became known for hiring poor Catholics and advocating for their rights as a persecuted people. This was a very, counter-cultural move at the time, but Guinness knew that everyone deserved to be treated in the Image of God and have the opportunity to provide for their family. Guinness was also known for paying his workers very well and giving them many benefits. This tradition continued even after his death. One author notes,

“Guinness’s investment in their employees were impressive. If you had worked for Guinness in 1928, a year before the Great Depression, you would have had 24-hour medical care, 24-hour dental care and an on-site massage therapy. In addition to this, your funeral expenses was paid by the company as well as your pension all paid with no contributions needed to be made. Your education as well as your children and wife were all paid for. The company had libraries, reading rooms, athletic facilities and so on. Now, think again. This was 1928…not 2012.”

Why do I bring up Guinness today? Because he is a great model of both justice and sobriety, which Bellarmine discusses in chapter 6 in ‘The Art of Dying Well.’ Guinness modeled justice by paying just wages to his employees and by deeply caring for them. He also modeled sobriety by seeking to give his excess to the poor and by reducing drunkenness in his land through a low-alcohol beverage that was nutritious and filling. (Think of it as ‘liquid bread.’)

Bellarmine writes,

DAY 23: JUSTICE ‘Be Just to All’

“Let us now proceed to the 2nd virtue, which… is justice, of which the apostle speaks, that, "denying worldly desires, we live justly."….To the seller is due his just price, to the workman his just wages, and so of all other employments. And with much greater reason ought those to whom belongs the distribution of the public property, confer it on the most deserving, not being influenced by any exception of persons, however related or dear to him they may be. If, then, we wish to learn well the Art of dying well, let us hear the wise man crying out unto us: "Love justice, you that are the judges of the earth;" hear St. James also lamenting in his Epistle: " Behold the hire of the laborers, who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth: and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbath" (chap. v. 4.)

DAY 24: SOBRIETY ‘Everything in Moderation’

“There now remains a 3rd virtue, which is called sobriety, to which "worldly desires" are no less contrary than to justice. And here we not only understand by sobriety the virtue contrary to drunkenness, but the virtue of temperance or moderation in general, which makes a man regulate what regards his body according to reason, not according to passion… Solomon was certainly the wisest of men, and yet he besought God, saying-: "Two things I have asked of thee, deny them not before I die. Give me neither beggary nor riches, give me only the necessaries of life." (chap. xxx. 7, 8.) The apostle Paul was wise, and he said: "For we brought nothing into this world, and certainly we can carry nothing out; but having food and where with to be covered, with these we are content." (Epist. to Tim. vi. 7.)

…And if to this we add, that our unnecessary riches are not our own, but belong to the poor, (as is the common opinion of the holy fathers and scholastic writers,) are not those foolish men, who carefully hoard up that by which they will be condemned to hell? If then we wish to learn the Art of dying and living well, let us not follow the crowd who only believe and value what is seen; but Christ and his apostles must we follow, who by word and deed have taught us that present things are to be despised, and "the hope and coming of the glory of the great God and the Savior Jesus Christ," alone desired and expected. And truly, so great is that which we hope for at the glorious coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all the past glory, and riches, and joys of this world, will be esteemed as if they had not been; and those considered most unwise and unhappy, who in affairs of such importance, trusted rather to the foolish than to the wise.”

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