Word: marijuana
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Smoking pot may be against the law, but it is not necessarily a sin. That seems to be the consensus among Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy who have had any dealings with the marijuana-puffing youth of the turned-on generation...
Many churchmen are reluctant to give a definite yes or no to marijuana, on the grounds that the medical evidence as to its harmfulness is incomplete. On the other hand, Dr. Joseph F. Fletcher of Massachusetts' Episcopal Theological School, the nation's leading exponent of situation ethics, argues that "the morality of pot depends on circumstances. Social drinking is not immoral, social smoking is not immoral, social pot is not immoral-unless they are used to excess...
...argue that antimarijuana laws are an unfortunate attempt to legislate morality. Like the laws of Prohibition, they feel, such laws are bound to be dropped from the books as more and more people come to accept pot as simply another of life's pleasures. Questioning the morality of marijuana, says Father Richard Mann, a Catholic priest working in East Harlem, "is like asking: 'What do you think of cheesecake...
...many clergymen seem to have experimented with marijuana-or at least are willing to admit having done so. Yet it is generally agreed that students in many of the nation's seminaries have experimented with pot. Says a professor at one theological school in the San Francisco area: "Are you kidding? There probably isn't a divinity school in the country that doesn't have the problem...
...clerics go so far as to argue that the euphoric high created by marijuana may be, for some, access to instant mysticism. Mark Welsch, a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School who works as a social counselor in downtown Chicago, believes that pot can be "a significant vehicle to self-realization." Others suggest that the morality of pot smoking depends on whether or not it is psychologically helpful to an individual. If marijuana is a crutch or a way of escape, says Methodist Minister Terry Cooper of Los Angeles, then it is damaging for an individual...