Is drinking biodynamic wine a sin?

“Bless me father for I have sinned… I drank some biodynamic wine”. It’s a question that’s not as surreal as it sounds.

Not all schools have an in-house exorcist, but mine did. Fr Thomas. Known to us as “Piggy”. He apparently doubled up as the diocesan exorcist for anyone possessed in the East Lancashire area. His brother - also a priest - had been martyred in Africa. As a result Fr Thomas was one of the staff members called upon to break the news to boys whose parents had died during term time. It was said that he would be chosen if the boy was of a sensitive disposition. More robust boys would hear the tragic news from Major Cobb, the commanding officer of the cadet corps, as he’d had experience of breaking similar news to the wives and parents of fallen soldiers. Who says things weren’t better in the old days?

Fr Thomas taught me History and Religious Studies. In the RE classes we’d endlessly (and easily) get him onto lengthy red herrings about Catholic teaching, knowing that as a Jesuit he couldn’t resist debating the minutiae of Canon Law. “Can you baptise a baby with spit if you’re in a desert with no water?” That kind of thing. The answer is yes, you can.

I wish he were still here. Because I’d love to get him onto whether or not it’s a sin to drink biodynamic wine.

Rudolf Steiner

Biodynamic wine is based on the beliefs of Rudolf Steiner - he of Steiner Schools, Steiner architecture etc - and it draws on his esoteric belief system, Anthroposophy. The wine bit of his “teachings” is largely derived from a set of lectures he gave - I believe on Polish potato farming - that were later transcribed by Maria Thun, one of his followers. To the unfamiliar, it’s sort of like organic wine, but as performed by a lunatic. And given the biodynamic obsession with phases of the moon I use that word specifically. It also involves burying cow shit in horns that you point in a specific direction and the dig them up later to spray the matured and somehow “energised” shit on vines. It’s as mad as a box of frogs.

Burying cow shit in horns. As you do.

The Roman Catholic Church does not officially ban Rudolf Steiner’s work entirely. But it’s fair to say it’s not a fan. Anthroposophy was explicitly criticised by the Church around the time it emerged and at several points since. and was placed on the “Index of Forbidden Books” by the Vatican. In fairness the Index was abolished in 1966. But until then you couldn’t read Steiner’s books as a Catholic without special permission from The Holy See. I have had a surreptitious browse of a couple of books on Anthroposphy, and it still offers the same sort of Catholic frisson that comes from “inadvertently” looking at porn.