Fancy Crystal Chalice?

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The fact that it is advertised as having no chips, cracks, or discoloration tells me why crystal is not a permissible material for the Communion vessels!
 
Just curious – are you Catholic, and your pastor uses a “forbidden” material for the Communion vessels?
 
Jen95 said:
Just curious – are you Catholic, and your pastor uses a “forbidden” material for the Communion vessels?
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To repeat what I said in post 2 of the thread:
The Vatican allows bishops to permit use of some “special” materials that are not considered “ordinary”.
The USCCB has allowed bishops in the US to permit the use of crystal chalices within their dioceses.
I would imagine that perhaps bishops in some other countries have been similarly allowed to permit use of crystal chalices.

Not sure why, when this is clearly stated in post 2, you’d assume that a poster whose priest uses a crystal chalice is not Catholic.

There are also other “special” materials I’ve heard of being permitted, such as agate.
 
For some strange reason, this was also a topic for Father Z recently:

wdtprs.com

ASK FATHER: Glass chalices.... again?

From a reader... QUAERITUR: I read about a parish using invalid hosts made from several varieties of grain. I have been to a mass recently where a glass chalice was used (as a matter of fact, with a simple blessing, the new chalice was "inaugurated"). I always thought and what I found in intern
wdtprs.com wdtprs.com
 
The bottom line is that if a Bishop allows a priest to use something out of the ordinary, that is the Bishops prerogative.

We also have a priest in my diocese who has and occasionally uses a Waterford chalice & ciborium. It was a gift from his Irish Bishop uncle for his Ordination 50 years ago.
 
Fr. Z’s column is also addressing “glass” chalices.
As anyone who has taken the Waterford factory tour can tell you, crystal isn’t the same thing as glass.
 
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I have, and you’re right, it’s not. So lovely. I have this, and I really love it:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
That Waterford set was popular at a certain period about 15-ish years ago, I believe. There are a few of them out there, and from what I understand, while technically glass, because there’s some added difficulty to break, they aren’t used outside the principal celebrant and maybe a few concelebrants, some bishops have permitted them. Others have not. One set that I know of is simply in a memorial display of the parish honoring the deceased donor who purchased the set.
 
Having lead as a glass coloring or strengthening ingredient does not make the glass itself metal. Otherwise, lead crystal glass would be dangerous to drink from!

My archdiocese has a lot of crystal chalices kicking around, because our old archbishop was a glassmaker’s son. Blah blah, precious, blah blah, durable, blah blah blah. But what it amounted to was that a lot of parishes either got “gifts” from the archbishop and felt obliged to use them, or got talked into buying them. Our archbishop was influential in the USCCB and ran a big seminary, and headed up the seminary before becoming a bishop; so he got the idea into lots of priests’ heads.

So basically, the chalices gradually have disappeared from use as the years have gone by, and you can gauge loyalty to the dead guy, in many places, by whether or not they still use the crystal.

But the parishes still using plain cheap glass chalices are either really poor or really radical.

The original idea is basically that we use the same precious materials that were used for Temple and Sabbath vessels. So at least the innards have to be plated with gold, silver, maybe platinum and electrum, with a durable fine metal on the outside; or it can be made of a precious or semi-precious stone. (Cost would not have been such a consideration, if we still were only using one chalice per Mass. And size was pretty small in the centuries when only the priest usually partook of the chalice.)
 
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Mintaka said:
So basically, the chalices gradually have disappeared from use as the years have gone by, and you can gauge loyalty to the dead guy, in many places, by whether or not they still use the crystal.

But the parishes still using plain cheap glass chalices are either really poor or really radical.
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I’m confused. Was the old archbishop giving gifts of “plain cheap glass chalices” or “crystal chalices”?
They’re not the same thing.

I would be taken aback if a “plain cheap glass chalice” was used unless we were having an underground Mass or a Mass during wartime and just needed to use what was available, in which case the glass would be broken after the Mass (unless maybe we were in the gulag and that was all we had).

A crystal chalice is something significantly different from “plain cheap glass chalice”. A crystal chalice is also usually not used by very poor or very radical parishes, in my experience.
 
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Crystal also known as flint glass or lead glass is a form of glass. In its manufacture lead(II) oxide is used in place of the calcium content of standard glass.

The Holy See has said glass must not be used as a material for the manufacture of chalices. This was done in an instruction from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on the feast of the Annunciation (25 March) 2004. It followed St. John Paul II’s encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, which called for such an instruction to be issued.

I admit it is quite possible that I am out of date. If I am I would be most grateful to be brought up to date. When and how did the Holy see change this, if it has? Which ecclesiastical authority has decided that crystal is not a form of glass? If the USCCB have authorised the use of crystal as a material suitable for the manufacture of chalices by what authority have they done this?
 
Crystal is indeed one of many different types of glass. The chalice pictured above looks like a fancy wine glass, but I am not familiar with the Waterford catalog. I’m sure the parishioners who are more knowledgeable will appreciate the difference.
 
I just don’t understand. Sure a particular crystal might be strong, and a bishop may have given permission for it’s use, but why ? Why purchase one in the first place, why go to the trouble of bothering one’s bishop for permission, and why open yourself up for criticism? Is it not easier just to follow the norms? I have to wonder if some people, when it comes to liturgical issues, just want to push the limits for the sake of doing so.
 
TomH1 said:
Crystal also known as flint glass or lead glass is a form of glass.
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Absolutely. From a materials science point of view, this is not up for debate, it is a fact.
tafan2 said:
Is it not easier just to follow the norms?
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I ask myself this question so many times. In that same vein, why is “say the black, do the red” so hard to follow?
 
tafan2 said:
Why purchase one in the first place, why go to the trouble of bothering one’s bishop for permission, and why open yourself up for criticism?
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The priests don’t always purchase their own. In many situations these are given as gifts (perhaps by someone who didn’t bother to check with the priest first), or inherited from other priests who died.
 
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It would seem the church makes a distinction between glass and crystal, whether there is a foundational chemical difference or not. This is in line with many other things where we (and the church) divides things as it traditionally would be, not necessarily how it technically is, such as calling table salt (NaCl) “salt” when technically on a chemical level a salt is any time a metal and non-metal are bonded, meaning you could have a lead salt, and it still be properly referred to as salt, the church’s definition of glass is rather vague, some types of stone are considered glass (such as obsidian) but, would the church ban an artistic Chalice made of obsidian (possibly, but more likely due to it being black than it being “glass”).
 
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