To chew or not to chew?

[pianistclare]

Potentially spitting a piece of the Eucharist onto the ground is not a silly thing.

See this is the kind of comment that drives me nuts.
NO ONE is spitting the host out. People chew with their mouths closed…at least civilized people do.
Sometimes I dissolve, if the host is thin enough. But if it is large, and hard, one must chew. The priest chews! Has no one observed this? If it were the most horrible thing,
NO PRIEST WOULD CHEW. It does NOT mean that people have no understanding of the Real Presence, or that people are disrespectful.
To keep harping on it does mean that people are very judgmental of their fellow Catholics. Which is awful.

 

[revert_jen]

That’s an interesting way of putting it. Aside from all the licet, dicet, oportet, placet, etc. legal aspects, if one were to ask me, I’d go back and question why communion was designed the way it is (round, tongue-sized, flat, easily soluble, etc.) in the first place.

I believe the reason for this has nothing to do with chewing or not. The hosts, made the way they are, are less likely to drop crumbs, so they reduce the possibility that crumbs of Our Lord’s Body will fall unnoticed to the floor. If we just took a loaf and pulled pieces off of it, there would be crumbs everywhere. It would be too easy to miss some.

As for chewing or not chewing, both are allowed, so it is pretty much between each person and God which way he feels closest to Christ when receiving the Eucharist.

–Jen

 

[ProVobis]

.
To keep harping on it does mean that people are very judgmental of their fellow Catholics. Which is awful.

WIth all due respect to both you and him, Clare, the statement from Fr. Serpa could easily be mistaken that we MUST chew on the communion. That doesn’t make sense either, especially to those who have been trained since young age not to chew it. The Church allows chewing, I get that, but to imply it must be chewed, does anyone not see a problem with that? And which Greek translator said that the Greek (or even the Latin munducare) and English chew are exactly the same thing when even synonyms in English have subtle differences?

 

[pianistclare]

WIth all due respect to both you and him, Clare, the statement from Fr. Serpa could easily be mistaken that we MUST chew on the communion. That doesn’t make sense either, especially to those who have been trained since young age not to chew it. The Church allows chewing, I get that, but to imply it must be chewed, does anyone not see a problem with that? And which Greek translator said that the Greek (or even the Latin munducare) and English chew are exactly the same thing when even synonyms in English have subtle differences?

Well, with all due respect to you, Pro, the good sisters also told us to move over and make room for our guardian angels to sit with us at our desks.
there is clearly a difference between a child’s notion of things, and an adults ability to discern the validity of something.


Who said you MUST chew? I read here that people are saying you MUST dissolve. That’s the problem. The Greek simply states what Jesus actually said. If want to interpret the Greek as “dissolve”. well.

Also, I think Fr. Sherpa meant what he said. He never has come across as vague. Not to me, anyway.

 

[Tuxedo_Mark]

The Greek simply states what Jesus actually said.

Not to nitpick (okay, that’s a lie), but the Greek states a Greek translation of what Jesus said in Aramaic (or, in Luke’s Gospel, by his own admission, a Greek translation of a second-hand account of what Jesus said, and who knows who the heck “Mark” is?).

 

[pianistclare]

Not to nitpick (okay, that’s a lie), but the Greek states a Greek translation of what Jesus said in Aramaic (or, in Luke’s Gospel, by his own admission, a Greek translation of a second-hand account of what Jesus said, and who knows who the heck “Mark” is?).

The reason they are called “Gospels” is because they are eyewitness accounts.
I doubt the Apostles would have “embroidered” what Jesus said.
We know who Mark is.

 

[Seraphim73]

Does not have to do with chewing whatsoever.

On the contrary it has everything to do with it. The only reason for not chewing is to prevent possibly spitting out a piece that was stuck in your teeth.

 

[WingsOfEagles]

On the contrary it has everything to do with it. The only reason for not chewing is to prevent possibly spitting out a piece that was stuck in your teeth.

And we have someone more Catholic than the Pope … It’s not a Church requirement. That is a personal concern.

 

[Seraphim73]

See this is the kind of comment that drives me nuts.
NO ONE is spitting the host out. People chew with their mouths closed…at least civilized people do.
Sometimes I dissolve, if the host is thin enough. But if it is large, and hard, one must chew. The priest chews! Has no one observed this? If it were the most horrible thing,
NO PRIEST WOULD CHEW. It does NOT mean that people have no understanding of the Real Presence, or that people are disrespectful.
To keep harping on it does mean that people are very judgmental of their fellow Catholics. Which is awful.

Pardon me but no one has said that:

1. Chewing is the most horrible thing
2. People don’t have an understanding of the Real Presence
3. That anyone was being intentionally disrespectful

Neither is anyone being judgmental. Making a case is not passing judgment.

 

[Seraphim73]

And we have someone more Catholic than the Pope … It’s not a Church requirement. That is a personal concern.

Actually I’m Orthodox, which I suppose makes me either more or less Catholic than the Pope depending on who you ask.

But either way statements like this are designed to shut down discussion. I don’t think anyone has argued it is a Church requirement. We are simply discussing the prudence of the idea. There is no doubt it has been taught at times in various corners of the Catholic Church. The people who taught it didn’t make it up out of thin air. There were good reasons for it. I think those reasons are just as valid today as there were then.

 

[WingsOfEagles]

Potentially spitting a piece of the Eucharist onto the ground is not a silly thing.

This is not exactly a way to start a friendly discussion.

 

[Seraphim73]

This is not exactly a way to start a friendly discussion.

I didn’t start the discussion. I was responding to this.

Wow, and I thought video game fans were nitpicky and argued over the silliest things.

I chew. I was never taught any particular way to consume the wafer. Ever. Really, the fact that this is a four-page thread is mind-boggling.

 

[ProVobis]

The Greek simply states what Jesus actually said. If want to interpret the Greek as “dissolve”. well.

And they all had strong teeth to chew their food the way we do? I believe most had missing teeth, painful teeth, etc. as most did before modern dentistry. The Greeks might have been advanced in science and other things but having the dental care they have available today, I don’t think so. How one can just simply say this is what the Greek says isn’t taking a lot of this into consideration.

Besides, one of the apologists here (I believe it was Fr. Serpa) said that translations themselves are more art than science so I choose to follow that path.

And why pick on the nuns when other teachers, parents, and priests themselves were teaching that one was not to touch the host with their teeth? I know care was taken by the priests to avoid the teeth when placing the host on the tongue. But today they are saying it was all wrong to do so?

 

[ProVobis]

The reason they are called “Gospels” is because they are eyewitness accounts.
I doubt the Apostles would have “embroidered” what Jesus said.
We know who Mark is.

But that’s the point. There were four different eyewitness accounts which don’t agree verbatim with one another. We don’t know precisely what Christ said, whether in Aramaic or Greek. There is no one Gospel which says “for you AND for many” for example. The Mass uses a consolidation (for the lack of a better word) of the different accounts.

 

[Tuxedo_Mark]

The reason they are called “Gospels” is because they are eyewitness accounts.

Not to doubt you, but here’s what I read on Wikipedia:

The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell [5] (rarely godspel), meaning “good news” or “glad tidings”. The word comes from the Greek euangelion, or “good news”.[6] The gospel was considered the “good news” of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and of redemption through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the central Christian message.[7]

Gospel is a calque (word-for-word translation) of the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον, euangelion (eu- “good”, -angelion “message”) or in Aramaic (ܐܘܢܓܠܝܘܢ ewang’eliyawn).

The word doesn’t seem to imply at all that these are eyewitness accounts.

And even “Matthew” and “John” continue the odd Biblical habit of supposedly referring to themselves in the third person and never personally identifying themselves in the narrative (see: any of the “books of Moses”).

I doubt the Apostles would have “embroidered” what Jesus said.

I don’t know what that means.

I could, however, completely believe them misremembering exactly what he said at any given point, particularly if they weren’t taking notes at the time (such as when he talks on and on for chapters on end during John’s version of the Last Supper).

We know who Mark is.

Not really:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_the_Evangelist

 

[ProVobis]

I believe the reason for this has nothing to do with chewing or not. The hosts, made the way they are, are less likely to drop crumbs, so they reduce the possibility that crumbs of Our Lord’s Body will fall unnoticed to the floor.

“Crumbs” will always be there at least in the air, even though we may not see them. For example, if you were to introduce pollen into the formula, one who’s allergic would know this right away. But even if the likeliness of crumbs were reduced, what theological basis is there for producing hosts larger than can be comfortably placed inside the mouth on the tongue without having to chew on them?

 

[USS_Nostromo]

When I was able to take communion, I always chewed. When I was in third grade and preparing to recieved communion for the first time, the nuns told us not to chew as we would make the host bleed. No kiddin! I could not make this up if I tried.

 

[Wassermann]

At the Novus Ordo parishes I attend, people chew the eucharist after they receive it. Receiving Christ’s Blood must help it dissolve.

I go to a Traditional Latin Mass parish, and no one chews the host. I can’t seem to figure out what exactly they do.

Do you chew the eucharist? Do people really let it melt on their tongue, or are they just very discreet about chewing?

There’s no such thing. Comments like this are highly offensive here in 2014.

 

[Seraphim73]

There’s no such thing. Comments like this are highly offensive here in 2014.

What’s offensive?

 

[ProVobis]

When I was able to take communion, I always chewed. When I was in third grade and preparing to recieved communion for the first time, the nuns told us not to chew as we would make the host bleed. No kiddin! I could not make this up if I tried.

So you chewed because the nuns told you not to? Sounds more like defiance than theological reasoning.

That said, I don’t blame you. One of the nuns told the boys in the class they were never to put their hands in their pockets; it was a mortal sin to do so. And what did they do the minute they walked out the door? You guessed it.