EDITED: Nutritional Info on the Eucharist - After Consecration?

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I copied this from a thread in another subforum which was closed because it was in the wrong subforum. However, there was some interesting dialogue going on and there seemed to be some disagreement in terms of “accidents” versus actual substance.

Original Question
Zooman77
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Hello all, I have just gotten out of the hospital after being diagnosed with diabetes and I must count my carbs to know if I need insulin and how much. Now I know that the wafer is rather small but it is a grain which of course have lots of carbs. So how do I know how many carbs are in the wafer?
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One of the Responses**
MarkThompson
It should not be necessary to point out that, after consecration, the wafer does not actually contain things like gluten and carbohydrate, as it has become the Body (+ Blood, Soul, and Divinity) of Christ. Nevertheless, it is still capable of acting on the body in the same way as bread. Without knowing the manufacturer and the size of the Eucharistic wafers that are used in your parish, it is impossible to say. I’m sure that the information is available on the package, and that they will be happy to tell you in the sacristy if you ask. Estimates I have seen are that a typical Communion wafer would contain around 1/3 gram of carbohydrates and come in at about 1/2 to 1 calorie.
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I hope you both don’t mind my quoting you and it would be great if the others who had begun responding would take a look at this thread.

Thanks.
 
Yes, it does contain gluten and the wine does contain alcohol.

The bread and wine are referred to as accidents. They still possess all the same characteristics of bread and wine, but the are really the body and blood of Christ. No physical change takes to the accidents of communion, but is now the Eucharist.

Here is a somewhat involved article of the accidents.
 
The substance - in the Greek philosophical way of speaking - is now the actual Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.

The accidents - the appearance (even under a microscope or nutritional analysis) remain the same - yeast free unleavened bread.

That is why alcoholic priests are allowed to use mustum (un-fermented grape juice) and people with gluten allergies are allowed a gluten free host. Because if the wine and the gluten no longer remained as “accidents” there would be no problem for the person with celiac disease, or the alcoholic priest.

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFMUSTM.HTM
 
That’s a great article Fermat thanks.

Triumph, thanks for stopping by as you were one of the original posters.

Also, I meant for my question to ask, “Does the** body…**…not wafer.”
 
Within the conditions mentioned, the transubstaniated host will act as wheat, and the blood as wine. For a diabetic, both should be negligible nutritionally unless you are very brittle. If you can get the nutritional numbers for one host, take that information to your doctor or diabetic advisor and check. Unless you are and extraordinary minister and need to consume the leftover precious blood after communion, I would say again that the very small sip of wine is negligible unless you have another condition which requires to to take no alcohol. As someone noted, there are gluten free hosts obtainable, but the carbs are what are significant for diabetes, not the protein in gluten. It is miniscule except for people sensitive to it.
 
From my experience yes. The priest will have two chalices, and two cruets. It’s not licit to offer the mustum for communion to people who do not have a dispensation to use it, since the True Presence is in the Host as well as the wine. In other words, if you are a layperson and have no dispensation to use mustum and are an alcoholic then it is totally acceptable just to receive the host and it is not less efficacious than receiving in both kinds.
 
Regardless of whether the host and chalice contain gluten and alcohol after the consecration, you will end up with gluten and alcohol in your bloodstream just as if the consecration had never taken place. Same with any other chemical you may be interested in. The Real Presence ends once the accidents of bread and wine are gone, and what you are left with is whatever you would have been left with had what appeared to the senses to be bread and wine actually been bread and wine.
 
The Eucharist definitely does not contain gluten or alcohol. That mistake arises from a misunderstanding of the terms “species,” “accident,” and “substance.”

Gluten and alcohol are substances (component substances of bread and wine). “Making celiacs sick” and “making you drunk if you have too much,” by contrast, are accidents – physical properties of those substances that describe the way they act upon the world. When we talk about the “Eucharistic species,” we should remember that the Latin word species means “appearance, semblance, shape, form, pretense.” That is to say, the Eucharist appears to the five senses as bread and wine, but it no longer is. In the same way, its component substances no longer exist, even though the Eucharist continues to act as though they did. If it were otherwise, then one could, for instance, separate the alcohol from the Blood of Christ after consecration and have a non-alcoholic Eucharist.

Aquinas speaks to this question in the Summa (III.77.VI), writing:
[T]he statement advanced by others cannot stand, who hold that the sacramental species nourish owing to the remaining substantial form of the bread and wine: both because the form does not remain, as stated above (Question 75, Article 6): and because to nourish is the act not of a form but rather of matter, which takes the form of the one nourished, while the form of the nourishment passes away: hence it is said in De Anima ii that nourishment is at first unlike, but at the end is like. . . . Although the sacramental species are not a substance, still they have the virtue of a substance, as stated above.
By “nourishment” he means, as he had said just prior, such things as sating hunger and making you drunk (see 1 Cor. 11:21). Those effects, Aquinas is explaining, are not caused by “the remaining substantial form” of the Eucharistic elements, but rather by the “virtue” (Latin virtus = strength, force) which the sacred species possess of acting like the substances they appear to be.

Finally, I would point out that a person who would answer that there is still alcohol in the consecrated Wine would have to answer that, by a like reasoning, there is still water, still tannins, still sugars, still sulfites, and so on for each and every component substance of wine. Well then, if all of those substances are present in the chalice, and if wine is, by definition, the sum total of them, then wine must be present too.
 
Good post Mark.

I just wanted to mention something about the other thread. Would you revise your answer regarding the intoxilyzer when you consider that these devices work by analyzing the amount of alcohol off-gased from the lungs because of there is alcohol in the bloodstream feeding the lungs?

In other words, I think it is measuring alcohol that has already been digested and passed into the bloodstream. . .

VC
 
Verbum_Caro said:
Good post Mark.

I just wanted to mention something about the other thread. Would you revise your answer regarding the intoxilyzer when you consider that these devices work by analyzing the amount of alcohol off-gased from the lungs because of there is alcohol in the bloodstream feeding the lungs?

In other words, I think it is measuring alcohol that has already been digested and passed into the bloodstream. . .

VC
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Aquinas would say, “food nourishes by being converted into the substance of the individual nourished.” The fact that alcohol is offgassed by the lungs after a person has drunk the consecrated Wine is no more surprising than that cells will be constructed out of the atoms that were in the consecrated Bread. “Although the sacramental species are not those things out of which the human body is made, yet they are changed into those things.” Therefore, when the Eucharist ceases to exist as the sacred Species are processed by the body, the Species are changed into the things which the body uses and exhibits.
 
MarkThompson said:
Aquinas would say, “food nourishes by being converted into the substance of the individual nourished.” The fact that alcohol is offgassed by the lungs after a person has drunk the consecrated Wine is no more surprising than that cells will be constructed out of the atoms that were in the consecrated Bread. “Although the sacramental species are not those things out of which the human body is made, yet they are changed into those things.” Therefore, when the Eucharist ceases to exist as the sacred Species are processed by the body, the Species are changed into the things which the body uses and exhibits.
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Right – you originally said, I think, that the instrument registered “as” alcohol was present, but that there was no alcohol present – but you would revise this (if I am correct in my thinking) if the instrument indeed detects digested alcohol, yes?

(My impression was that you might have thought the instrument is picking up “alcohol effects” from the mouth or, indeed, from the precious blood still present in the mouth, am I right?)

VC
 
Verbum_Caro said:
Right – you originally said, I think, that the instrument registered “as” alcohol was present, but that there was no alcohol present – but you would revise this (if I am correct in my thinking) if the instrument indeed detects digested alcohol, yes?

(My impression was that you might have thought the instrument is picking up “alcohol effects” from the mouth or, indeed, from the precious blood still present in the mouth, am I right?)

VC
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Yes, I suppose I wasn’t thinking hard enough in the previous thread. By the time it reaches the lungs, the Blessed Sacrament is no more, and thus what would have to be present is alcohol.
 
MarkThompson said:
Yes, I suppose I wasn’t thinking hard enough in the previous thread. By the time it reaches the lungs, the Blessed Sacrament is no more, and thus what would have to be present is alcohol.
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Nah, I assumed that you weren’t familiar with the mechanism of detection. I actually thought, like you, that it detected alcohol in the mouth. . . then I wondered. . . then I looked it up.

I thought I would ask you about it, because it highlights the distinction between effects of the Eucharist species on one hand and effects of whatever substance that exists after the Eucharistic species ceases on the other.

VC
 
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