Holy Hangovers

On this German site (for some reason)  the alarming news that Communion wine, in the tiny quantities the priest must drink at Mass,  may now put them over the new and more severe  Irish drink-drive limit. Some have three or four different villages to say Mass in, and have to travel. ""Perhaps it could be enough for you to fail a drink-driving test," the Rev. Brian D'Arcy, a priest from Enniskillen, told the Irish Times. "I don't like to use the word wine, as it is Christ's blood in the Eucharist -- but it still has all the characteristics of wine when in the blood stream."
     Less respectably,  from the Irish Independent this tale of two retired Irish priests accused of misappropriating millions from a Florida church  and had formed a mortgage company with another priest called Shag Inc.  The two men are now accused of using offertory dollars to keep girlfriends, take gambling excursions and foreign holidays, and buy property.  Honestly, a reverent sip of Communion wine fades into insignificance...

Comments

[guy chiron]

a very strange story. Frankly you will always have "black sheep" in any trade even in prieshood. The devil if not subdued will have its way... So pray God that your soul be preserved !

[Geoffrey Smith]

Perhaps we should be grateful that the scam was not engineered by a quartet of Frs Flanagan, Ussher, Carroll and Kennedy.

[David Boon]

Surely the blood of Christ would not contain sufficient alcohol to put the priest over the limit unless either Christ had been on a bender or transubstantiation is not true?

[alan]

I've had no contact with the ritual practices of the Roman Catholic Church. So could someone (Geoffrey?) please tell me if he really, truly and honestly believes that the Eucharist wine turns into actual blood and the bread into actual flesh? Yes or no. I would like an honest answer - and a truthful one.

[Geoffrey Smith]

"So could someone (Geoffrey?) please tell me if he really, truly and honestly believes that the Eucharist wine turns into actual blood and the bread into actual flesh? Yes or no, I would like an honest answer - and a truthful one".
- Alan, 8 NOV 2007, 13:44:49

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
Is that honest enough for you, Alan?
Now, if you are genuinely interested in why I believe this teaching, I can do no better than recommend that you log on to www. catholic.com and read their essay on The Real Presence, under the heading of Sacraments. It's far too long for me to offer you any quotations on this blog. If you feel that this doctrine is very difficult to understand, be aware that you are not alone. There are Christians on this blog who think as you do: Tom Jackson, Alan Marsh, David Smith, Ruth Gledhill. These folks are in the same category as the disciples of Christ who abandoned Him when He first taught them this 'hard teaching'. If you have access to a Bible, you can read all about it in the Gospel of John, chapter 6. Incidentally, Catholics are not the only Christians who believe in this doctrine of the Real Presence: the Orthodox Churches of eastern Europe also include it in their creed. The Protestants are, in fact, heavily outnumbered by those Christians who accept Our Lord's teaching on the subject. So, Alan, do the research into this fascinating doctrine and, who knows, maybe this one will be a winner for me. Heh.

[William Garrett]

If the wine does not taste like blood, does not test like blood in what way can it be said to be blood? What is the point of Jesus/God arranging for the wine to actually be blood and at the same time arranging for it to be totally indistinguishable from wine? What exactly is the point? At what stage in the digestive process does the blood of Jesus turn back into wine, or doesn't it? If Jesus/God had said that a piece of lead had been transmuted into gold but every conceivable test showed that it was still lead would the faithful treat it as gold? Would they be happy to accept this 'gold' when selling something?

[Christopher Hobe Morrison]

How about the one about the sober Irish priest? No, nobody would believe it.

[Tim]

Alan, Catholics do in fact believe that the bread and wine taken at the Eucharist becomes the actual, physical body and blood of Jesus Christ in a process called Transubstantiation. It is a matter of our faith, that we do believe we are consuming His actual body and blood for the forgiveness of sins as He commanded. As a subnote, most Lutherans believe that the body and blood is physically present "in, with, and under" the bread and wine but does not turn from one to the other. Most other Protestants believe that it is purely symbolical. I hope this helps.

[Pete Day]

Alan. I believe(well I have always thought this) it is purely symbolic.

[Angie]

What rot! Any good Catholic knows that the wine is turned into the blood of christ, and where is the alcohol content in that?

I am certain that they would be able to prove that in a court of law....

[Tony Francis]

I believe the bread and wine are the Flesh and Blood of Christ. As Aquinas wrote: "A difficult concept for many to accept." But, yes, I believe it. The appearance of the wine and bread are accidents.

[Andrew Holden]

As far as Catholic theology goes the 'blood of christ' in the sacramental chalice is 'substantially' exactly that and yet at the same time it retains the 'accidents' of wine, ie it looks, tastes, feels and intoxicates just as it always did.

It's an easy target for dogmatic non-believers who are unprepared to wrestle with the philosophical niceties of Thomist thought and find out what it all actually means. Don't mock what you don't understand - or you are at risk of being as prejudiced as the fundamentalist who denies the theory of Relativity just because he can't get his head round it.

[Sean the Unruly]

Once upon a time, when thinking about the Eucharist, I often used to find myself rolling around on the floor hyperventilating with uncontrolled mirth at the pious stupidity of the devout communicants. Yet now, as a more mature survivor of Catholicism, I merely roll my eyes to the ceiling and shake my head whilst smiling whimsically. But now let’s have a look at this Eucharist thingy.

So what is it? Well, even though it’s concealed behind a façade of pious ritual replete with hymns and incense, and even though it might be disingenuously under-pinned with a lot of metaphysical or theological mumbo-jumbo, it is essentially cannibalism. Every Sunday morning Catholic priests prepare some small white circular wafers and some rather cheap sickly sweet wine, then at a certain point in the proceedings they mumble some magic words, make a few weird hand signals and then BOOF! The wafers and the wine suddenly become transubstantiated into the real and actual flesh and blood of their lord Jesus Christ - a man who is purported to have lived 2000 years ago. And then the priests eat and drink this newly reconstituted human flesh and blood, and after they’ve done this they offer the remainder of it to the people who, knowingly and willingly, also consume human flesh and blood.

If transubstantiation actually happens then this is truly terrible because cannibalism is generally regarded to be one of the most hideous, the most repugnant, of practices that humans can engage in. However, it gets worse, because not only are millions of Christians around the world guilty of eating and drinking human flesh and blood every Sunday, they may also be guilty of performing, or being accessory to, the terrifying black magic art of necromancy or, in plain words, raising the dead, or to be more precise – raising and reconstituting human carrion (Please, lets not have any jokes about food hygiene regulations).

Of course all this may or may not be true, it just depends on what our individual beliefs are, but for the devout Catholic no amount of molecular analysis of the wafers and wine will persuade them that they are seriously deluded. At this point we can also briefly consider what goes on in the so–called High Church of England tradition, here the Eucharist ritual seems to be very similar to that of the Catholics yet with one important exception: in the CofE the cannibalism is merely symbolic. I suppose it’s better to be a symbolic cannibal than an actual cannibal but the trouble is you never know when they’re going to start fighting about it.

[Hugh Conkey]

Can a mere Prot have a go? I understood Transubstantiation to turn on the Platonic distinction between the accidents and the essence of the wine, i.e. its outward characteristics and what it is in its being. The accidents (taste, smell, effect on Breathalyser) remain those of wine, while the essence is changed into that of the Blood of Christ. So it's not just silly but it does kind of depend on buying into Plato's view of reality. Or is there another explanation?

[M. Hoeber]

Catholics really do believe that the Communion wine is the Blood of Christ. The priest through some supernatural agency transforms it into the new substance, and the entire process is called "transubstantiation." The liquid looks like wine, tastes like wine, chemically IS wine-- but it isn't wine anymore. Catholics have to believe in the Real Presence. Not to believe is heresy.

Protestants usually take the words of Scripture at face value: "As often as you do this, do it in commemoration of Me." This replay of the Passover meal in which Christ predicted His death, using bread and wine as symbols for his Body and Blood that would on the following day be poured out for the salvation of the world, is reenacted every Sunday by Christians. The Eucharist for Protestants is symbolic, but nonetheless meaningful.

[Noel Falconer]

'Drunken Irish priest' is a tautology.

[Geoffrey Smith]

"What rot! Any good Catholic knows that the wine is turned into the blood of Christ, and where is the alcohol content in that?
I am certain that they would be able to prove that in a court of law...".
- Angie, 9 NOV 2007, 07:54:42

You are posting too early in the morning, Angie. You are still asleep. What is your point?

[Mark Allen]

I can just see the next ridiculous court case over someone claiming their religion gives them exemption from a law that the rest of society has to follow....

"Ah but my lord, any alcohol showing up in the defendent's bloostream was only there as an absolute requirement of his deeply held superstitions."

[T.D.]

So Catholics are cannibals, then? Or theovores? Or both? How extraordinary they suggest priests might be arrested for drunk-driving, but would not take an interest in their cannibalism. Fair enough, the victim was killed by someone else, so maybe just eating a bit isn't a crime, but tampering with evidence should be.

[Lily]

Believing that the Bread& wine once consecrated are the Body & Blood of Christ is a matter of Faith, Alan, William & others.
And biblical too as Christ compels at the Last Supper, "take & eat this is My Body"
Your scepticism reminds me of Russian atheistic communists who would take a drop of "holy" water & a drop of plain water & show it to children under a microscope & exclaim "look they are both the same"!! These days we have Homer Simpson to thank for the response
"Well DUH"

[alan]

I am - almost - speechless, for once. If you'll excuse my play on words and perhaps have a little chuckle with me, hear the following:
-- I find this almost impossible to swallow and very hard to digest.
-- Seriously though, how is it possible to believe such magical changes can actually do take place?
-- I think this must be proof of the proposition that believers - at some stage - have to abandon logic. They have within themselves a sphere in which reason is absent.
-- This makes a discussion with them difficult. When things get hot, they retreat into this sphere, and logical argument with them becomes impossible.
-- That's why some say it is useless discussing religion with believers.
-- Am I right?

[A human being]

If the wine and bread are turned into the actual blood and body of Christ then all who partake of the sacrament are vampires and cannibals. Since there is no scientific evidence that the wine and bread are the blood and body of Christ then maybe, just maybe it is symbolic? It’s 2007; let’s get beyond this pseudo rationality that attempts to prove something by coming up with overly complicated theology, which in the end still proves nothing. This theology only acts as smoke screen for the fact that they, who came up with all these overly complicated explanations, don’t know the truth themselves. It’s amazing how people can suspend their logic just because they want something to be true. In the realm of beliefs there are no validating criteria except for what the individual wants to believe, which makes potentially anything anyone wants to claim true (true to themselves). The real idiocy is when they claim that everyone else’s beliefs are false when they can’t even offer any scientific evidence that what they believe is true. Even if one wants to believe something they should have the humble realization that they can’t prove anything and keep it to themselves or amongst those who believe in the same thing. Pride (I have the correct religion and you don’t) in thinking one has the truth without any proof is dangerous, egotistical and self delusional.

[Kate]

The doctrine of transubstantiation was made an article of faith by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in the 16th Century. The Catholic Church was reacting to Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution.

If one is "anathema" if one does not believe that the bread and wine changes into the body and blood of Christ after the Council of Trent, what about before?

Facts and logic don't change a person's beliefs. But if you are going to have a religious argument, it might be helpful to know the history.

[Meagan]

Ah, but what Libby's NOT saying is that there's some sort of Church law saying that ANY wine left over MUST be drunk by the priest. THAT'S why they're worried that they might get pulled over by police.

Print the WHOLE story, Libby... NOT just what serves your point.

[Jonathan Wilton, Singapore]

Not one person posting here can explain their own existence, yet they are happy to lay down the law as to what is and is not possible.
1. They are not possible, but they are posting here
2. A Faith is a Faith. Trying to prove or disprove a Faith is the height of stupidity.