I’m taking a Religious Studies course at college and the topic of Catholics believing in the actual presence of Christ in Eucharist was brought up. One student commented on it being cannibalism. I looked up some of the previous posts, and have an understanding of why consuming the Eucharist is not cannibalism - but most of the answers explain that we are not eating the physical body of Christ; rather, the body, soul and divinity of Christ all together. They also explain cannibalism as eating a physical part of the human body.
How then, is it not cannibalism in the event of a Eucharistic miracle when the host turns into actual flesh and the person consumes it? Thanks!
Jesus is God
and man. For it to be cannibalism, it would have to have been someone else’s flesh and blood or Jesus would have to have been only a man.
Maybe you should suggest to the student who commented on it being cannibalism to raise his/her sights higher . Technically we don’t have a word for it but if we did it would be something close to
theopophagism ; as opposed to
anthropophagism.
I’ve always found Julia Kim to be an interesting read. We could also recall that when Jesus explained we would need to eat his body and drink his blood to have life, many of his disciples left him :
[NAB] **John 6:51-69 **
I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, "Does this shock you?
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe." Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.
And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”
As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."
…did I just do a pun on cannibalism!!! 