Amazon Synod and valid matter for Eucharist

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Neithan

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One of the questions (among other controversial topics) for the upcoming synod on the Amazon next month is whether a different grain could be valid matter for the Eucharist, in particular the yuca based bread native to that region. Apparently because of intense humidity wheat turns into a “pasty mush” during the Amazonian rainy season.

I’ve always understood that valid matter for the sacraments is a firmly established doctrine (though I don’t know if it’s actually dogma). Catholic Answers has answered this question before, for example in this article by David P. Lang from 2009. He makes a good argument, and writes that “it is impossible that the Church could define any grain other than wheat as valid matter for the consecration at Mass: Transubstantiation of bread into the body of Christ can occur using only unadulterated wheat flour (see CCC 1412 and CIC 924).”

According to CCC 1412:
1412 The essential signs of the Eucharistic sacrament are wheat bread and grape wine, on which the blessing of the Holy Spirit is invoked and the priest pronounces the words of consecration spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper: “This is my body which will be given up for you… This is the cup of my blood…”
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And CIC 924:
924 §1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed.

§2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling.

§3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and not spoiled.
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Is valid matter for sacraments dogmatic or something that the clergy can rearrange?
 
That’ll be an interesting theological discussion. I hope it doesn’t get bogged down by the ‘traditional’ argument and make our Church look even further ridiculous.
 
Sounds like a job for food scientists to develop a wheat that does not turn into pasty mush. If we can throw a lot of money at beer to get just the right froth, I am sure we can do so to get just the right wheat for the Amazon
 
No this would not be possible. The bread must be made entirely of wheat. Anything else is invalid matter, and would not be the Eucharist not even if the Pope said it was. This was just some crackpot proposal that was suggested by some Jesuit in an interview or article about the synod. It is not on the agenda to be discussed. See the following article:

www.ncregister.com

Get Ready — Signs Point to a New Attack on the Eucharist Coming Soon

Yuca is not bread. And if it’s not bread, it can never be the Holy Eucharist.
www.ncregister.com www.ncregister.com
The bread used in the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice must be unleavened, purely of wheat, and recently made so that there is no danger of decomposition. It follows therefore that bread made from another substance, even if it is grain, or if it is mixed with another substance different from wheat to such an extent that it would not commonly be considered wheat bread, does not constitute valid matter for confecting the Sacrifice and the Eucharistic Sacrament. It is a grave abuse to introduce other substances, such as fruit or sugar or honey, into the bread for confecting the Eucharist. Hosts should obviously be made by those who are not only distinguished by their integrity, but also skilled in making them and furnished with suitable tools. (No. 48)
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Using Yuca for hosts would be 100% heresy. There is no room for argument here.
 
If the wheat turns into a “pasty mush” during the rainy season, I feel like the simple answer is “During the rainy season we offer the Precious Blood.” The priest would still have to have the host, obviously, but it would save them buying and losing unconsecrated hosts to the weather. The priest’s host could be worked out for storage that controls humidity. I, personally, wouldn’t mind helping out with the cost of that if the Amazonian dioceses can’t afford it.
 
Weserthy said:
Anything else is invalid matter, and would not be the Eucharist not even if the Pope said it was.
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Aside from whether the issue itself is open for discussion, if the Church approved the use of this, it would only be by the same divine inspiration that defined the nature of eucharistic bread in the first place. It is misleading to say “not even if the Pope said it was”.
 
Emeraldlady said:
Aside from whether the issue itself is open for discussion, if the Church approved the use of this, it would only be by the same divine inspiration that defined the nature of eucharistic bread in the first place. It is misleading to say “not even if the Pope said it was”.
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Hmmm… I think the promise of divine inspiration does not extend to something like this. There are things the Pope can’t change even if he says he’s being inspired.
 
Jen7 said:
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Emeraldlady:
Aside from whether the issue itself is open for discussion, if the Church approved the use of this, it would only be by the same divine inspiration that defined the nature of eucharistic bread in the first place. It is misleading to say “not even if the Pope said it was”.
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Hmmm… I think the promise of divine inspiration does not extend to something like this. There are things the Pope can’t change even if he says he’s being inspired.
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But the nature of eucharistic bread has been defined by the work of the Church. The bible goes only so far as to say ‘unleavened’ bread. It is the Church which has over the years examined and modified the definition according to new understandings and advances such as when low gluten bread was approved in the 90’s. So if abuse of the Church’s definition constitutes ‘grave matter’ surely we are to accept that this issue is one that has divine authority?
 
RoseScented said:
If the wheat turns into a “pasty mush” during the rainy season, I feel like the simple answer is “During the rainy season we offer the Precious Blood.” The priest would still have to have the host, obviously, but it would save them buying and losing unconsecrated hosts to the weather. The priest’s host could be worked out for storage that controls humidity. I, personally, wouldn’t mind helping out with the cost of that if the Amazonian dioceses can’t afford it.
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I think mushy wheat would still be wheat, unless there needs to be extra ingredients to make yuka
 
Elf01 said:
I think mushy wheat would still be wheat, unless there needs to be extra ingredients to make yuka
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I agree, mushy wheat is still wheat. However, I don’t know what the complete complaint with mushy wheat is. If it becoming mushy is causing the store of extra hosts to go bad before they can be used for mass, then it’s just a waste of finances and resources for the community if they make their own. Then there’s no reason that during the rainy season the communities can’t just offer the Precious Blood to everyone (excepting the priest) if it’s a financial burden on the Amazonian communities.

If the Precious Body is becoming mush in their tabernacles (thus I guess losing the “form of bread” as the article hinted at), say they have it set aside for communion services because they don’t always have access to a priest every Sunday, then I feel like something can be worked out to either provide some way to store the Precious Body in a humidity controlled setting/box/container or set the Precious Blood aside instead. I’ve never heard of the Precious Blood being set aside in the tabernacles for communion services or for the sick, but I don’t know a lot of things. So maybe that’s an option.

No need to consider yuca when we have a legit option of still consuming our Lord Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Precious Blood.
 
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As others have noted, the nature of what is considered wheat bread can be discerned (for example, one can have low-gluten hosts but not ‘no-gluten’ hosts because gluten would be considered a critical component of the wheat flour, but just how much gluten needs to be in a food to be considered bread can be quite little, but cannot be completely eliminated) and more deeply understood, but one cannot get to a point where the nature can be ‘reversed’. One can still have ‘wheat’ bread even if the proportion is very small, but that small necessary component must be there. One cannot go so far as to say, "Wheat itself or the critical gluten component which defines wheat as wheat is not necessary, and therefore a grain such as oat, rice, yuca is acceptable since all of these, like wheat, can be made into a breadstuff’ and we are thus moving in our understanding from the need of the Eucharist being ‘wheat’ bread to being ‘bread’ , and bread in the modern definition meaning a stuff that is ‘baked’ into a substance accepted and defined ‘as’ bread’. I’m not sure, of course, that this is the proposition being raised in the synod, of course, but I will be watching with interest.

The Eucharist has been a global presence for centuries now, in places like the Far East where the staple grain is rice, like South America where the staple grain is maize, in the tropics where they have cassava and breadfruit, etc. etc.

If the matter of the Eucharist is ‘grain bread’ and not ‘wheat bread alone’, surely God would have guided humanity to discern what was most appropriate in a given climate long ago. Christianity incorporated many elements to help pagans to understand the Christian life by using things already familiar to them as pagans, so since most pagan religions already used ritual foodstuffs or meals, it would have been logical to have "The Lord’s Supper’ reflected in ‘the local bounty.’ But. . .God chose otherwise, and as far as I know, just as with the putative ordination of women, "The Church has no authority’ to declare the Eucharist to be confected with other than wheat bread and grape wine.
 
That makes sense to me that we can’t just interchange things as if the matter, well, doesn’t matter. Since Our Lord lived in a particular place at a particular time, it isn’t culturally insensitive to use the food and drink common to that culture at that time. This doesn’t make the church “ridiculous” and inflexible, but serious about the historicity and physical reality of the incarnation. Although to the indigenous in the Amazon, that might make it feel “foreign.” Wheat was foreign to just about every culture except in the fertile crescent, originally.
 
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RoseScented said:
I agree, mushy wheat is still wheat. However, I don’t know what the complete complaint with mushy wheat is.
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Mould and storage would be the issue. If it is a big problem then a new wheat should be developed or existing wheat grains including the wild ones, investigated for their storage properties in Amazon conditions.
 
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