Why do clergymen so often
fail with alcoholics, when A.A. so often
succeeds? Is it possible that the grace of A.A.
is superior to that of the Church?
Answer
No clergyman, because he
does not happen to be a channel of grace to
alcoholics, should ever feel that his Church is
lacking in grace. No real question of grace is
involved at all - it is just a question of who
can best transmit God's abundance. It so happens
that we who have suffered alcoholism, we, who
can identify so deeply with other sufferers, are
the ones usually best suited for this particular
work. Certainly no clergyman ought to feel any
inferiority just because he himself is not an
alcoholic. (N.C.C.A., 'Blue Book,'
Vol.12,(1960).
Another Answer
I thought the answer to be
very simple. The Church has the spirituality,
but in the case of drunks, it didn't have the
communication to pave the way, one alcoholic to
the next, for the Grace to descend. So you have
the spirituality, of which we have borrowed, and
we have the communication. Therefore we are in
no competition at all; we can do together that
which we cannot do in separation. (Transcribed
from tape. G.S.C. 1960)
Question &
Answer # 36b
-Another
question, same topic.
What can ministers do to
co-operate with A.A.?
Answer The
approach to the alcoholic is everything. I think
the preacher could do well if he does as we do.
First find out all you can about the case, how
the man reacts, whether he wants to get over his
drinking or not. You see, it is very difficult
to make an impression on a man who still wants
to drink. At some point in their drinking career
most alcoholics get punished enough so that they
want to stop, but then it's far too late to do
it alone.
Sometimes, if the alcoholic can
be impressed with the fact that he is a sick
man, or a potentially sick man, then, in effect,
you raise the bottom up to him instead of
allowing him to drop down those extra hard years
to reach it. I don't know of any substitute for
sympathy and understanding, as much as the
outsider can have. No preaching, no moralizing,
but the emphasis on the idea that the alcoholic
is a sick man.
In other words, the minister
might first say to the alcoholic, "Well, all my
life I've misunderstood you people, I've taken
you people to be immoral by choice and perverse
and weak, but now I realize that even if there
had been such factors, they really no longer
count, now you're a sick man." You might win
over the patient by not placing yourself up on a
hilltop and looking down on him, but by getting
down to some level of understanding that he
gets, or partially gets. Then if you can present
this thing as a fatal and progressive malady and
you can present our group as a group of people
who are not seeking to do anything against his
will - we merely want to help if he wants to be
helped - then sometimes you've laid the
groundwork.
I think that
clergymen can often do a great deal with the
family. You see, we alcoholics are prone to talk
too much about ourselves without sufficiently
considering the collateral effects. For example,
any family, wife and children, who have had to
live with an alcoholic 10 or 15 years, are bound
to be rather neurotic and distorted themselves.
They just can't help it. After all when you
expect the old gent to come home on a shutter
every night, it's wearing. Children get a
distorted point of view; so does the wife. Well,
if they constantly hear it emphasized that this
fellow is a terrible sinner, that he's a rotter,
that he's in disgrace, and all that sort of
thing, you're not improving the condition of the
family at all because, as they become persuaded
of it, they get highly intolerant of the
alcoholic and that merely generates more
intolerance in him. Therefore, the gulf which
must be bridged is widened, and that is why
moralizing pushes people, who might have
something to offer, further away from the
alcoholic. You may say that it shouldn't be so,
but it's one of those things that is so. (Yale
Summer School of Alcohol Studies, June 1945).
