Sure. Is the catechism official enough for you?Gorgias:
Do you have an official source for this?
A particle of the Eucharist, floating in liquid, which still subsists as a particle of the Eucharistic species (as such)… continues to be the Eucharist.
We soak the linens a long time (typically overnight). When I talked to the head of the Office of Divine Worship (who is very careful) he thought that amount of soaking time is sufficient to ensure that any small fragment, trapped under water in the immersed fabric as it would be, could safely be assumed to be saturated with water.
1377 Does not mention any accidents. It specifically mention spieces. And what do you think happen when a fragment of the host is soaked in water? Do you think the molecules fall apart?Michaelangelo:
Sure. Is the catechism official enough for you?Gorgias:
Do you have an official source for this?
A particle of the Eucharist, floating in liquid, which still subsists as a particle of the Eucharistic species (as such)… continues to be the Eucharist.
As it was explained to me, bread is not bread when it is bread soaked with water any more than wine remains wine when it is wine sufficiently diluted with water. (If too much water were to be poured into the wine prior to consecration, the wine would no longer be valid matter for consecration. When the Precious Blood is diluted that much during the purification, then in a like manner the eucharistic species no longer persist.)
Fair enough. Yet, that wasn’t the context of what you originally wrote (and to which I replied), and you explicitly affirmed this:
The fragments in question – those which the priest rinses – still have the accidents of bread. “Diluted with water” doesn’t change that fact. (The ones that you soak overnight? Maybe, and maybe not. Have you ever soaked a host? It retains the “accidents of bread” for a long time!)
‘Species’ have ‘accidents’. If the species subsist, then they have the accidents of those species.
I think that this fragment (eventually) will no longer have the accidents of bread. There will be ‘molecules’, but not ‘accidents of bread.’
Wine “sufficiently diluted with water” no longer has the accidents of wine. Bread “soaked with water” remains bread – at least for a period of time. Eventually, it no longer has the accidents of bread, and at that point, is no longer Eucharistic species.
Yes, in practice the altar linens are all soaked in that manner. If there were some fragment that he did not consume as he intended, whether or not it was slightly moistened in the process, it would be consumed immediately if it were to be seen but still it can be assumed it would be thoroughly soaked prior to the linens being laundered if everyone just missed it. The only exception would be if there is something that is dry-clean-only. If we had to clean something like that, we’d just have to look it over as carefully as we could and then we send it to the cleaners. (This would be something like the burse or the chalice veil; those rarely need cleaning.)
If it didn’t remain on the paten, you mean. In that case… are you saying that the “unseen particle” represents a ‘profanation’ (in this case, by the priest), as the OP is worried about?
I took @HomeschoolDad to mean a fragment that was missed out of carelessness or on a presumption that care isn’t justified because any fragment left must be a small one. Just because it wasn’t seen initially doesn’t mean it isn’t there, that is all I’m saying. Still, the linens have to be washed eventually. We soak them out of an abundance of caution. You can only do what you can do.
Of course bread is still bread even when soaked in water. What you have is wet bread. And if you dilute wine with water, all you get is more diluted wine. Since wine already mostly consists of water anyway.
I’m relating what was related to me when I was taught to clean the linens. I do know it is not true that bread or wine can be diluted with water indefinitely and yet still remain valid matter for consecration. There is a limit.
And yet, the standard is merely “unseen”, and not more than that.
This is a different case. Give me a portion of wine and a sufficient quantity of water, and I can demonstrate that the resulting solution no longer has the accidents of wine.
If we leave ancient greece, step into this century and look at what actually happen when a fragment of a host is soaked in water… can you tell me what separetes a so-so dry host (as is the case in reality) from a soaked host? At what point does it cease being wet bread and becomes something else?Michaelangelo:
‘Species’ have ‘accidents’. If the species subsist, then they have the accidents of those species.
To make this claim you need to specify what those “accidents” of bread are.
I do understand this is what you have been told. And I’m not arguing at you personally. Please don’t take it as such. But I tend to go into full Asperger mode whenever I hear these claims originating from ancient philosophy and having nothing to do with how we understand the world today.
Oh I have. And they all agree that this has everything to do with ancient wordview clashing with modern understanding thereof.
Dilute 1dl wine with 2l water and consume and you will have every bit as much wine in you as if you consumed the 1dl directly. Less plasma concentration of each specific component yes. But that does not change anything about the components per se.Michaelangelo:
This is a different case. Give me a portion of wine and a sufficient quantity of water, and I can demonstrate that the resulting solution no longer has the accidents of wine.
Let’s see what the Angelic Doctor has to say about it:
*/ \
Well, here is the deal: sometimes, later, I see one. I’ve learned not to act as if one couldn’t possibly be there. You start to think, “oh, I’m not going to find anything” and then one week, there is another one. It happens. I’ve learned to be careful through experience.
A lot of people are still going through what they bought prior to its disappearance. Also, some distilleries are making it and selling to the general public, although many distilleries are prioritizing the health care workers and first responders and/or their local community, so if you live at a distance and want some from them you won’t get it unless maybe you’re a hospital or a charity.
Not the question at hand.
Yep. Be careful… but not beat yourself up, out of a sense of scrupulosity.
Yes! You can only do what you can do. When we used to train altar servers, we used to tell them to remember the Mass is Heaven. It isn’t the military; it isn’t stiff or regimented. The angels and the saints are serene and peaceful. They serve in love and not in fear; they are neither hurried nor worried. The Mass is an assembly at which Heaven truly makes itself present and God pours Himself out, not an appeasement of an angry deity looking to whack anybody who makes a mistake. No, it is a carefulness that is mindful of the True Presence, that is all. The Blessed Sacrament is not a thing, but that Person Himself whom we love deeply.