Monkish beer defended

Plaintiff's winery may have a chapel for the use of the workers there. Nevertheless, the winery is a winery, not a church. If plaintiff ran the winery only, with an attached and subsidiary chapel, plaintiff would not be a ‘church’ within the meaning of the statutes here involved.

If a giant money-making corporation, such as General Motors, owned a company town, complete with churches, which the company owned and operated, the company would not be a ‘church.’ If, in its defense operations, the United States owns a town (as it does at Herlong, California) complete with churches, that does not make the United States a church.

One can conceive of a winery, in which religiously habited monks would be among the workers. These monks might pray frequently, retire to an attached chapel for prayers and meditation according to a regular schedule, seek to convert or enlighten their fellow-workers at every opportunity, and endeavor to think religious thoughts and live by their religious creed at all times. The winery would nonetheless be a winery, and this would be true regardless of the conduct of certain of its employees. By the same token, a school, which has teachers similar to the monks in our hypothetical winery, remains a school.

The argument might be made that the Church needs money to do its work; that the devoted monk who works in a commercial winery is essential to that work and is therefore engaged in church work. If the doctrine of the Catholic Church were such, work in the winery might be a church function according to the precepts of the Church. This, however, could not transform an incorporated winery into an exempt church, under any reasonable interpretation of the statute.