Set me straight about the Eucharist

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carol marie:
opps… we’re SAYING that you say one thing, but actually believe… (sorry typo)
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Although I have mentioned this before maybe expanding on it will help…

Sometimes what seems to our senses to be one thing is actually something entirely different. As the Bible says, “…some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb 13:2)

In the Bible stories of Abraham and Lot (Gen 18 and 19) and Jacob (Gen 32:25-31), they interacted with individuals whom they thought were men but who later turned out to angels in disguise. These angels looked like men, spoke like men, ate and drank like men, wrestled like men, etc., but they were not men. In appearance, they were men but, in reality, they were angels.

Catholics believe that at the Consecration at Mass what was bread, what looked liked bread, smelled like bread, felt like bread, tasted like bread, and sounded like bread is changed into the Body of Jesus Christ. After the Consecration it still looks like bread, smells like bread, feels like bread, tastes like bread, and sounds like bread but it is not bread. In appearance, it is bread but, in reality, it is Jesus Christ.

I guess, if the concept was easy to grasp, there would have been no need for Luther and the other Protestant reformers to think up different ideas…
 
carol marie:
Let me clarify… my friend isn’t doubting that it’s NOT actually Jesus in the Eucharist. Nor is she suggesting that you accept that Lutherans have a valid communion. We are both merely saying that when you state:

Lutheran: Jesus & Bread
Catholic: Only Jesus - NO Bread remains

You don’t actually BELIEVE that… otherwise why would nuns need to make low-wheat hosts? We’re satying that you say one thing but actually believe something else. But we are not taking away from the fact that it IS JESUS in the Eucharist.
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Hi Carole!

I think you’re having a little trouble distinguishing the difference between form and substance. Catholics believe exactly what they are saying. The bread changes in substance but not in form. While in substance the bread ceases to be bread but is instead Jesus Christ, in form the bread is still bread, wheat flour, water, etc.

If you didn’t have a chance to read it please take a look at my last post where I give an example about form and substance.

Pray for understanding. The Lord will be faithful in answering that prayer!!

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
CarolMarie: You’re still getting hung up on equating the accents with the substance. This is what Lutherans do as well. I’m going to try to do this in point form, to make it as clear as I can.

Lutheran View:

Before consecration: Bread and Wine
During Rite: Bread and Wine and Body and Blood of Christ
After Rite: Bread and wine (from what others on this thread said)

Catholic View:
Before: Bread and Wine
During Rite: Body and Blood of Christ
After Rite: Body and Blood of Christ

For Lutherans the body and blood comes to be present with the bread and wine. The bread and wine remains the same, it does not change, but Christ’s body and blood comes to be present with it, and then after the rite, only the body and blood remains again.

For Catholics and Orthodox, the bread and wine ceases to exist. The very substance changes to the substance of the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. However, the accents of bread and wine remain.

This is a very fundamental distinction. Your problem is that you are equating accents with substance. If I tell you that water is wet, liquid, and cool to the touch, have I told you what water is? No, I have not. I have simply told you what the accents of water are. I have not described the very substance of what water is (which I can not do, as we can only observe the accents). In the Eucharist, the accents (observable properties) of bread and wine remain, but the substance of bread and wine ceases to be replaced by the substance of Christ. So basically it is now the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ WITH the accents of bread and wine. So if I am allergic to wheat, I will have a reaction to the host because the accents (observable and/or properties) are still those of wheat. It is Christ, but Christ has come to us under the accents of bread.

Here’s a table (I got the rough idea from Dave Armstrong):
Change Substance Accents
Water becomes ice Still water Liquid to Solid
Raw egg cooked New substance New accents
Blessed Sacrament new substance same accents

Hope I cleared it up a bit. Tell me if I didn’t.

Here’s Dave’s stuff on the Eucharist, by the way. ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ345.HTM#35)%20The%20Holy%20Eucharist%20&%20Sacrifice%20of%20the%20Mass%20/
(I highly recommend his book “A Biblical Defence of Catholicism” as well, see ic.net/~erasmus/RAZHOME.HTM for his main page).
 
Carol Marie,

Have you talked to your friend yet about the 2 points I brought up in my posts above?

How about the Canons from Trent that mrS4ntA included?

Catholic4AReason, Todd Easton and twf are trying to address your concern about why it’s perhaps necessary for nuns to make non-wheat bread or whatever. May I suggest you read St. Thomas Aquinas on this? That may not help, and I think what he says is summarized here, but he often brings up excellent points on specific things. Here’s a link:

newadvent.org/summa/4.htm

You can scroll down and find the chapters on the Holy Eucharist and click on the topics to go to the sub-topics. I’d recommend topics 75, 76, and 77. That will take you some time to go through, but if you get what he’s saying then it should really help you out, and answer your questions.
I’m not recommending an easy way out, it will take time, but if this is keeping you from being Catholic, maybe it’s worth taking the time to look into.
 
Will do. Thanks & God Bless.

P.S. Not sure anything at this point would keep me from being Catholic. I’m just trying to make sense of it all… not doubting whether or not it’s true. 🙂 CM
 
I think what needs to be re-stressed here is the distinction of “substance” and “accident”; the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, is a transition of “substance”, not “accident”. The molecular structure of wheat (gluten, etc) is within its “accident”, whilst substance is not neccessarily something perceptible to our senses. I mean, you can’t physically points out where “I” lie in my body. You can have the accidents of my body, but you can’t really physically see my substance, can you?
 
With respect to celiac disease:

Substance of the bread is gone. Appearances remain.
Appearances are what is perceptible to your senses.
That includes your digestive system, which will react to the appearances of bread which do remain. (That is, after all, what we mean by perceptible to the senses.)

But the substance of the bread is gone, replaced by Jesus Christ in his entirety.

Your friends difficulty is this: because the appearances of bread remain, she believes that the bread is still there. It’s not.

(Of course, for a Lutheran service, we believe that it remains bread in any case.)

Someone else mentioned a case in which a celiac did NOT react to the appearances of bread after consecration. If that happened, it would fall into the miraculous category, not the “ordinary” course of transbutstantiation.
 
carol marie:
OK, so here’s the follow up. Spoke to my friend - read all the replies together and we agreed that, sorry to say you’re trying to have it both ways. Catholics & Lutheran believe the SAME THING about the Eucharist. Catholics SAY they believe it’s ONLY Jesus, on one hand, but then on the other hand you say that sweet nuns are trying to make hosts that contain less wheat for Celiac sufferers. Can’t have it both ways. If it’s ONLY Jesus and no longer bread that isn’t necessary. Lutherans say that it’s totally Jesus but it’s also bread. You may say something different in an attempt to distance yourself from Protestants (?) but you obviously believe the same thing.
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I believe the difficulty is that you both are viewing this from a post-reformation era philosophical viewpoint. Such philosophical schools of thought were so foreign to the 1st millenium of Christianity. Instead, perhaps investing some time in understanding the philosophical foundation of the 1st century through the reformation era, so you can understand the vernacular used in apostolic, post-apostolic, and pre-reformation Church. Post-reformation philosophy tends toward materialism, which rejects a science of the immaterial (metaphysics), and consequently, such philosophy will invariably have difficulty translating ancient theological expressions into terminology that makes sense to their new viewpoint.

A study of Catholic theology, I believe, requires a study of Plato an Aristotelian philosophy. The discussion of “appearance” vice “substance” comes from metaphysics. If you have never studied metaphysics, it will all sound “greek” to you.

There is indeed a difference in theologies. Lutheran theologians and Catholic theologians are quite clear on the difference and both admit the difference, even if Lutheran and Catholic laity have not had the prerequisite education to undstand the theological differences. Just because that difference is detailed and involves an understanding of prerequisites in philosophical studies that the average joe does not have, does not mean that Catholics are trying to “have it both ways.”
 
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Malachi4U:
…By the way, Catholics DO NOT belive the Eucharist is the same as the Lutheran communion ‘symbolic’ remembrance. Transubstantiation vs. Substantiation (sp?). Not the same belief at all…
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Transubstantiation = Catholic Faith. Bread and wine become Body and Blood but only apear in their old form. Kinda like mixing yeast, flour, sugar, butter and water and then becoming bread, something new but still appearing as the old but can never be seperated out.

vs.

Consubstantiation = Luthers opinion. Bread and ‘wine’(grape juice?) stay bread and wine and Jesus just goes into it for a while but does not replace it. Like mixing oil and water. They never combine and become one and then can be seperated again.

OK, I had a senior moment and forgot how to spell late at night.:o I at least knew I might be using the wrong spelling.

I know Luther invented ‘faith alone’ while in the privy, did he invent ‘cansubstantiation’ there as well?😉
 
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