Why does the Communion wine have to be alcoholic?

[Roy5]

Protestants use grape juice for a variety of reasons.

1. Since the laity is given both elements, they want to make communion accessible to all, including alcoholics who could 'fall of the wagon' easily.

 2. Some Protestants - Baptists, Methodists, etc. - were much into the prohibition movement. They saw it as a progressive social reform because so many lives were being destroyed, marriages and families were being wrecked, accidents on the road were happening. etc., because of alcohol. It was only when Prohibition failed that they realized it was poor policy. Some still refer to it as "the Noble Experiment".  

 3. Protestants sometimes quote Prov. 20:1 etc."Wine is a mocker...." 

 4. Some Protestant churches today give the laity a choice: wine or grapejuice. 

 5. Some Protestants have contended that much wine consumed in ancient times hadn't fermented enough to be seriously called wine. 

 6. One Protestant friend told how he and his wife figured they had saved at least $50,000, perhaps nearer $100,000, over their years of marriage by not drinking alcoholic beverages. 

 7. Wine and grapejuice have the same basic constituency. The benefits assigned to wine, one reads, are the same as assigned to grapejuice.

 Personally, I don't understand why communion must involve wine and why the bread has to be of a specific consistency. Communion is mainly a spiritual act and God can work miracles in whatever way he pleases.

 

[promethius]

1. Since the laity is given both elements, they want to make communion accessible to all, including alcoholics who could ‘fall of the wagon’ easily.

Stems from a lack of understanding, probably due to lack of general perception of the real presense (in the catholic church), of the fact that Jesus’ Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity are INDIVISABLE… that in true Communion one only needs to partake of the tiniest portion of EITHER the host or the chalice and they will receive the fullness of all that is offered in communion.

1. Some Protestants - Baptists, Methodists, etc. - were much into the prohibition movement. They saw it as a progressive social reform because so many lives were being destroyed, marriages and families were being wrecked, accidents on the road were happening. etc., because of alcohol. It was only when Prohibition failed that they realized it was poor policy. Some still refer to it as “the Noble Experiment”.

Relevance?

1. Protestants sometimes quote Prov. 20:1 etc.“Wine is a mocker…”

proverbs 20:1 is about persons who allow themselves to be “led astray” by alcohol consumption. It has nothing to do with whether or not wine is allowed to be consumed.

1. Some Protestant churches today give the laity a choice: wine or grapejuice.

Irrelevant to discussing why the Catholic church mandates wine.

1. Some Protestants have contended that much wine consumed in ancient times hadn’t fermented enough to be seriously called wine.

They contend incorrectly. Proverbs 20:1 clearly indicates that there was MUCH reason to be cautious of how much wine one had consumed. Barely fermented wine would not have this effect.

The current process of making wine is totally natural and dates back quite literally thousands of years.

1. One Protestant friend told how he and his wife figured they had saved at least $50,000, perhaps nearer $100,000, over their years of marriage by not drinking alcoholic beverages.

That’s nice.

1. Wine and grapejuice have the same basic constituency. The benefits assigned to wine, one reads, are the same as assigned to grapejuice.

Except the alcohol, the tanins, and other acids which are direct products of the fermentation… this is like saying pancakes and matzoh are the same…

Personally, I don’t understand why communion must involve wine and why the bread has to be of a specific consistency. Communion is mainly a spiritual act and God can work miracles in whatever way he pleases.

Take it up with God, He’s the one who instituted the strict regimens associated with the passover (such as the feast of the unleavened bread… where men would literally clean all leaven out of their house with a fine brush).

God set strict standards for passover, and today the Eucharist IS the passover which fulfills our obligation under the old covenant and allows us to enter the new covenant and new life in Christ.

As to communion being “mainly” a spiritual act, you are flat out wrong. I invite you to create a post along that lines in apologetics section here.

You are correct, however, in stating that God can work miracles however He pleases… however, when God ordains that a sacrament be carried out in specific manner, then NOT following the will of God is disobedience rather than faith… it is damnable and not a source of Grace… what you are saying here is that God rewards disobedience with miracles… which is simply untrue.

 

[Khalid]

Protestants use grape juice for a variety of reasons.

1. Since the laity is given both elements, they want to make communion accessible to all, including alcoholics who could 'fall of the wagon' easily.

 2. Some Protestants - Baptists, Methodists, etc. - were much into the prohibition movement. They saw it as a progressive social reform because so many lives were being destroyed, marriages and families were being wrecked, accidents on the road were happening. etc., because of alcohol. It was only when Prohibition failed that they realized it was poor policy. Some still refer to it as "the Noble Experiment".  

 3. Protestants sometimes quote Prov. 20:1 etc."Wine is a mocker...." 

 4. Some Protestant churches today give the laity a choice: wine or grapejuice. 

 5. Some Protestants have contended that much wine consumed in ancient times hadn't fermented enough to be seriously called wine. 

 6. One Protestant friend told how he and his wife figured they had saved at least $50,000, perhaps nearer $100,000, over their years of marriage by not drinking alcoholic beverages. 

 7. Wine and grapejuice have the same basic constituency. The benefits assigned to wine, one reads, are the same as assigned to grapejuice.

 Personally, I don't understand why communion must involve wine and why the bread has to be of a specific consistency. Communion is mainly a spiritual act and God can work miracles in whatever way he pleases.

Protestants don’t actually have communion, so it really isn’t an applicable case, nor does it matter. Communion is a spiritual act mediated by the real presence of Christ - that is to say, a carnal act, to demonstrate that created nature is good, and to fend off any dualistic heresies like Manichaeism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, or Calvinism - not his “pneumatic presence” according to the grace of the Holy Spirit in the individual communicant. Back in the day, fundamentalists drove prohibition of drugs (and then alcohol: banning alcohol is a great destruction of liberty and was an unmitigated disaster for this country, as, like all prohibition, it didn’t stop anyone, but killed them or jailed them on the tax dollar and increased corruption), and today some still do. Mainly Pentecostals, from what I’ve seen.

I say that banning alcohol is a great evil, and drinking it a great good, even as (or maybe because) a former Muslim. Gambling with extra income is also good, as, as the Jesuit said, “Between Heaven and Mirth”, good humor is the soul of the spiritual life. The letter (legalism) killeth, and the spirit maketh alive. On this matter - alcohol and tobacco, two of many - are Protestants more legalistic than Catholics, even though that is always one of the main charges leveled against the Holy Mother Church.

1. One Protestant friend told how he and his wife figured they had saved at least $50,000, perhaps nearer $100,000, over their years of marriage by not drinking alcoholic beverages.

BS, unless they’re both hardcore alcoholics with a taste for single-malt whisky or 350 years old.

 

[LilyM]

We are told that the Body and Blood are in the appearance of bread and wine. I would think it would at least look as much like blood as possible.

Well, we don’t dye the Eucharistic bread red or pink to make it look as much like flesh as possible

I’m not a first-century Jew, but I imagine then as now wine (including wine for the Passover meal) was made from white grapes as well as red, and that either kind of wine was OK to use.

 

[joanofarc2008]

There is also a more practical reason - the reason that the alcohol content is set as high as it is in Sacramental Wines is to help stop the spread of bacteria from person to person. Obviously if it did not have any alcohol at all it would not be wine but this is why the actual alcohol content is set where it is.

 

[Roy5]

A few responses to #21 and #22.

 1. There are  many legalisms (laws) in the Old Testament that Christians do not feel obliged to follow. The Sabbath Day obviously is one. Circumcision is another. See Ex, 21-22, Lev, 20, and and Deut. 22-23 for others. Jesus often said: "Ye have heard it said...but I say unto you." Do you think we ought to kill heretics? That is what we find in Ex. 22:20. And witches of course, had to be killed - see Ex. 22:18. Even the first commandment - or the second,  depends upon how you number them - forbids making a graven image. And we could go on and on. Christians certainly don't follow other aspects of the Passover - or its calendar (except perhaps among the Orthodox). 

 2. As for saving $50,000 to $100,000. The couple has been married for 60+ years. They estimate that they would have spent $20 or more a week on wine for the two of them. That would be $1000 per year. That would be $60,000 (at least) over sixty years. It adds up fast. And if they had guests.... 

 3. True, Protestants are likely to be more moralistic when it comes to drinking, smoking and gambling. I doubt if you will find a Protestant church that even sponsors bingo. Many of them were against smoking well before the evil effects were universally acknowledged. Baptists, Methodists and most evangelicals have long traditions against alcohol. They emphasize the negative impact it has on society, especially in promoting crime, marital discord, poverty, health problems and fatal accidents. 

 4. Traditional Catholics - true - do not think that Protestants have a valid communion. Protestants differ a bit among themselves as to precisely how to view communion. Lutherans, for examine, and Episcopalians are inclined to give it special meaning and emphasis. Consubstantiation for example. All Protestants would say that they certainly believe in the real presence of Jesus at communion as at every other service and circumstance. "Lo, I am with you always." Mainline Protestants usually practice 'open communion', inviting all who seek to be followers of Christ to receive.

 5. I don't believe all Protestants have communion. Quakers, for example, believe athat every meal together as Christians should be viewed as a kind of communion. They have no sacraments as such. They feel that dependence upon sacraments can negatively impact lives dedicated to helping one another (Matt. 25). 

 6. Many mainline Protestants, especially, are concerned that communion is where Christianity and paganism can come closest together if care is not taken. They see the Perpetual Adoration of the Eucharist, for example, as a pagan holdover. Most mainline Protestants are not anti-Catholic, as they are inclined to respect all faiths - even non-Christian religions - but many nevertheless tend to view traditional Catholicism as cultic, authoritarian, and/or medieval in some respects. They place considerable emphasis upon freedom of belief, permitting a wide variety of religious convictions within the same denomination. 

 I hope no one is offended. I simply wanted to present the Protestant position as I understand it.

God bless everybody. I believe that any religion which promotes love, peace, understanding, and humility is a true religion, regardless of its distinctive theology and traditions. Coming from a Catholic-Protestant background myself, I look forward to the day when there will be genuine reconciliation among Christians and with other faiths. Religious bigotry, like racial bigotry, is - in my view - a sadness and in conflict with the spirit of Christ and the Christian faith.

 

[rowlands]

A few responses to #21 and #22.

 1. ...... Christians certainly don't follow other aspects of the Passover - **or its calendar (except perhaps among the Orthodox)**.

This is explicitly forbidden at the level of an Ecumenical Council which expressly forbids linking the observance of Pascha to that of the Jewish Passover or the determining of the date of Pascha according to Jewish calendars and practices. In the Orthodox Church Pascha can thus neither precede nor coincide with the Jewish Passover.

 

[Laudate_Dominum]

1. Traditional Catholics - true - do not think that Protestants have a valid communion.

No need to qualify Catholic with “traditional”. Just Catholic will do.

 

[Roy5]

I find that Catholics are very divided on how to view Protestantism. Benedict XVI has indicated that Protestant clergy are not legitimately empowered to administer the Eucharist, and that their churches should not be considered true churches but ecclesial agencies (or whatever term he used). Traditionalist Catholics would tend toward this position.

However, I try to be an independent student of such matters, and my own finding is that many Catholics, probably most, regard Protestantism as a form of Christianity that they respect even as they recognize existing disagreement. Indeed, many Catholics seem to have adopted a mainline Protestant attitude, which is to respect differences of opinion without dismissing one religion as right and the others all wrong. Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and even many Baptists and Lutherans etc. tend to allow wide variations when it comes to doctrine. Some would be very liberal, while most will be moderate (folks who don't focus that much attention on doctrine), and still others are conservaive. I find the same split among Catholics.

 In this area, the Catholic churches pick up converts from Protestantism each year. However, some Protestant churches, both mainline and evangelical, appear to be full of former Catholics. These churches seldom use the word 'converts' in such instances, however. 'Converts' usually seems to be applied by evangelicals to people who accept Christ rather than move from one form of Christianity to another.

 Now, as to wine at communion, Episcopalians and Lutherans use it, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and others usually don't. Since they don't accept transubstantiation. grapejuice or wine, unleavened bread or regular bread - all are viewed as acceptable. Most Protestant churches practice 'open communion' and consider it a relationship between God and the communicant. God alone decides whether the communion was 'valid' as God alone knows the heart and soul of the communicant. Some churches - usually evangelical churches - may announce that communion is only for those baptized and/or 'born again'.

To many Protestants the principal meanings of communion are (1) to recall the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ and (2) to gather at the Lord's Table as part of the family of Christ to celebrate the fellowship in Christ.

 

[promethius]

1. There are many legalisms (laws) in the Old Testament that Christians do not feel obliged to follow.

A few things to this:

• We DO follow the commandment to keep God’s day holy. However, we find that Sunday is the Lord’s Day, now, the eighth day of creation. Thus we no longer keep the sabbath (saturday), but we keep the higher feast of the pascha which is ever present on every Sunday.
• There are moral laws which are part of the old covenant, and moral laws which are independent of that covenant. The death of Christ on the Cross fulfilled the old covenant, and so the punative laws attached to the old covenant are fulfilled as well. The moral laws, however, still apply (such as do not murder, do not steal, etc)
• We do not mandate circumcision, because circumcision is an old covenant prefiguring of baptism. In other words, we baptise instead because, as per Paul, baptism is the new sacrament that circumcision was… and here we touch on a prime argument for baptism of babies… just as babies were circumcised.
• We STRICTLY follow the mandatory aspects of Passover, but we follow them in their fulfilled and perfected form in the Eucharist. What you should do is attend a passover meal, and then attend a mass. You will quickly find out that they are highly related. The reason we don’t follow the lunar calendar of the Jews, however, is because we translated to a solar calendar long ago. Then again, so have the Jews… they now insert leap months into their calendar so that it doesn’t run far off from the Gregorian calendar.

1. True, Protestants are likely to be more moralistic when it comes to drinking, smoking and gambling.

I think what you mean to say is that protestants are more likely to be legalistic when it comes to those things. I reject the notion that protestants have any authority to define dogma on morality, so it is impossible for them to be more “moralistic” in their teachings that the church.

I doubt if you will find a Protestant church that even sponsors bingo.

I live in the south. Baptists LOVE them some bingo nights.

Many of them were against smoking well before the evil effects were universally acknowledged. Baptists, Methodists and most evangelicals have long traditions against alcohol. They emphasize the negative impact it has on society, especially in promoting crime, marital discord, poverty, health problems and fatal accidents.

But herein lies the problem: these things are NOT objective evils when taken in small portions. The sin is in drunkeness, not in consuming a glass of wine with dinner. It is in addiction, not in enjoying a cigar on New Years.

Sins like these are often sins of the character, not sins attached to a mere action.

1. Traditional Catholics - true - do not think that Protestants have a valid communion.

You can knock off the word traditional. All Catholics believe that we, and we alone, have the REAL PRESENCE of Christ. Not just a spiritual presence, a physical one. Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, they are all right there.

1. Many mainline Protestants, especially, are concerned that communion is where Christianity and paganism can come closest together if care is not taken.

Yes, having been forced to attend protestant churches as a child, I can assure you I’m familiar with the phenomenon of Church shopping. The problem is that if the Church is truly established by God, then it is one of eternal and objective truth… namely that it demands change of it’s constituents, and does not change for them. And the loss of mystery in the protestant churches (that have lost mystery, at least a few still have it) is a truly tragic thing, because meditation on the mysteries is what brings us intellectually closer to God. The result of this loss of mystery is the tendency to view Catholicism as cultivistic… so I generally find that the response to this sort of charge is to have sympathy on the person who abuses the church with such sillyness.

I find that Catholics are very divided on how to view Protestantism. Benedict XVI has indicated that Protestant clergy are not legitimately empowered to administer the Eucharist, and that their churches should not be considered true churches but ecclesial agencies (or whatever term he used). Traditionalist Catholics would tend toward this position.

Yes, some catholics view protestantism a little more aggressively than our pope. What Pope Benedict said was that protestantism should not be regarded as a separate church, which would place them as enemies of God’s true church, but rather should be regarded as they are: as separated brothers of the Catholic church, who teach truth insofar as they have preserved what was handed out through the catholic church.

That is not a traditional position: the traditional position when protestantism first started away from the church was that protestantism was a heresy for which it’s adherents would burn in eternal hell if they had no excuse (invincible ignorance). What has changed is that the members of protestantism are generational descendents these days… raised with no real understanding of Catholicism or the fact that their church traces back to Catholicism and represents a departure from ultimate truth. Ergo, we should look on these people as sincere in their beliefs and regard as good whatever teachings of theirs fall in line with God’s revealed truth.

It’s not a traditional view, it’s revolutionary.

However, some Protestant churches, both mainline and evangelical, appear to be full of former Catholics.

If I had a dollar for every “former catholic” I’d met who couldn’t even name the seven sacraments or even one of the cardinal virtues, then I’d be able to retire right now and buy a mansion in Hawaii…

 

[Roy5]

Do you mean that there are Baptist churches in the South that sponsor bingo? I’m very surprised. This is not to suggest that many Baptists don’t go to bingo elsewhere, just as many Catholics ignore regulations of their church (e. g., ABControl). I know of no Protestant church in this area (northeast) that offers bingo, but I may have missed one or more.

Many Protestants would agree that alcohol in itself may not be bad, but the safest course to take is total abstinence. Like sex. Nothing wrong with its per se - actually, a necessity for the continuation of human life - but abstinence is best prior to marriage. I know that millions of Christian young people, Catholics and Protestants, ignore that standard, but that's what it has been.

 Protestants I know insist that they believe in the real presence also. But that presence is not concentrated in the host or the wine. It's simply that Christ promised to be present with us always. So, of course he is present at communion. 

  Coming from a mixed Catholic-Protestant heritage my own experience is that Catholics as a whole are a bit less ecumenical than mainline Protestants but far more ecumenical than many evangelical Protestants. For example, mainline Protestant clergy and RC priests usually participate in local clergy associations, while often some evangelical ministers won't. In this community every other year the ecumenical service in January (Week of Prayer for Christian Unity) is held in a Protestant Church one year and in a Catholic Church the next, etc. I like that.

  When Catholics think of Church Unity they sometimes (clergy anyway) view it as a 'journey home' of Protestants to Catholicism. Protestants see unity more as a spirit of unity rather than organic unity. The more of that the better - my view. Unity is one thinkg. Union is another.

  My own view is that Tetzel, Luther, Loyola, Calvin - maybe even some of those misled Inquisition monsters - and many other bitter Refomation figures are in eternity, drinking together some of that delicious nectar that they serve 'up there'. Probably they've all been forgiven their arrogance, superstitions and atrocities and dwell together in peace. They may even join hands and sing 'Amazing Grace', written by John Newton who gave up slave trading to become a minister. Isn't it great that Catholics and Protestants now sing so many of the same hymns?

Let us make religion a bridge rather than a barrier.

 

[Laudate_Dominum]

I find that Catholics are very divided on how to view Protestantism. Benedict XVI has indicated that Protestant clergy are not legitimately empowered to administer the Eucharist, and that their churches should not be considered true churches but ecclesial agencies (or whatever term he used). Traditionalist Catholics would tend toward this position.

However, I try to be an independent student of such matters, and my own finding is that many Catholics, probably most, regard Protestantism as a form of Christianity that they respect even as they recognize existing disagreement. Indeed, many Catholics seem to have adopted a mainline Protestant attitude, which is to respect differences of opinion without dismissing one religion as right and the others all wrong. Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and even many Baptists and Lutherans etc. tend to allow wide variations when it comes to doctrine. Some would be very liberal, while most will be moderate (folks who don't focus that much attention on doctrine), and still others are conservaive. I find the same split among Catholics.

They have dissented from Church teaching. They do not get to claim Catholicism whilst holding to and preaching error.

 

[Khalid]

This is explicitly forbidden at the level of an Ecumenical Council which expressly forbids linking the observance of Pascha to that of the Jewish Passover or the determining of the date of Pascha according to Jewish calendars and practices. In the Orthodox Church Pascha can thus neither precede nor coincide with the Jewish Passover.

To clarify, neither Orthodox calendar will, whether they use the Julian (Old Calendarists, and many individual parishes) or the Revised Julian (most of the individual Orthodox communions do officially, even if dispensations are granted to parishes). I don’t believe any Orthodox church, at least none that I have heard of, uses the Gregorian (modern, Western civil) calendar.

You can knock off the word traditional. All Catholics believe that we, and we alone, have the REAL PRESENCE of Christ. Not just a spiritual presence, a physical one. Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, they are all right there.

I agree in knocking off “traditional”, but Orthodox also have the true Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which is acknowledged by the Catholic Church (legitimate orders = legitimate Eucharist). I’m generally a harsh critic of many aspects of Orthodoxy on these forums, but they most definitely do have a real Eucharist.

 

[Khalid]

 Protestants I know insist that they believe in the real presence also. But that presence is not concentrated in the host or the wine. It's simply that Christ promised to be present with us always. So, of course he is present at communion.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the doctrine of the Real Presence. Of course Christ is present everywhere - he’s God. Catholics believe in the same “real presence” as that in all of the sacraments, but a direct and different kind of Real Presence (capitalized) in the Eucharist. It has nothing to do with a spiritual presence, but a real, literal, bodily presence of the essence, divine and human, of Christ in the Eucharist. You are describing at best the “pneumatic presence” that I mentioned in my first post, which is the common belief amongst more traditional Reformed (Calvinist) believers, and at worst the sort of symbolic presence as believed by many Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Fundamentalists (a doctrine descended from Zwingli), which have much less theological teaching or understanding in general compared to Calvinists, Lutherans, etc., much the same groups that teach “free grace”, with all the emphasis on Me, and little of the emphasis on God (and great theological confusion, in the case of “free grace”).

 

[Zundrah]

Do you mean that there are Baptist churches in the South that sponsor bingo? I’m very surprised. This is not to suggest that many Baptists don’t go to bingo elsewhere, just as many Catholics ignore regulations of their church (e. g., ABControl). I know of no Protestant church in this area (northeast) that offers bingo, but I may have missed one or more.

Many Protestants would agree that alcohol in itself may not be bad, but the safest course to take is total abstinence. Like sex. Nothing wrong with its per se - actually, a necessity for the continuation of human life - but abstinence is best prior to marriage. I know that millions of Christian young people, Catholics and Protestants, ignore that standard, but that's what it has been.

 Protestants I know insist that they believe in the real presence also. But that presence is not concentrated in the host or the wine. It's simply that Christ promised to be present with us always. So, of course he is present at communion. 

  Coming from a mixed Catholic-Protestant heritage my own experience is that Catholics as a whole are a bit less ecumenical than mainline Protestants but far more ecumenical than many evangelical Protestants. For example, mainline Protestant clergy and RC priests usually participate in local clergy associations, while often some evangelical ministers won't. In this community every other year the ecumenical service in January (Week of Prayer for Christian Unity) is held in a Protestant Church one year and in a Catholic Church the next, etc. I like that.

  When Catholics think of Church Unity they sometimes (clergy anyway) view it as a 'journey home' of Protestants to Catholicism. Protestants see unity more as a spirit of unity rather than organic unity. The more of that the better - my view. Unity is one thinkg. Union is another.

  My own view is that Tetzel, Luther, Loyola, Calvin - maybe even some of those misled Inquisition monsters - and many other bitter Refomation figures are in eternity, drinking together some of that delicious nectar that they serve 'up there'. Probably they've all been forgiven their arrogance, superstitions and atrocities and dwell together in peace. They may even join hands and sing 'Amazing Grace', written by John Newton who gave up slave trading to become a minister. Isn't it great that Catholics and Protestants now sing so many of the same hymns?

Let us make religion a bridge rather than a barrier.

I liked a lot of that, but not the last paragraph.

It’s beautiful what you are saying, but a devout Catholic understands that true depths of Christianity and the fullness of being a Christian can only ever be achieved through Catholicism. How then can anyone in their right mind just leave protestants as they are without trying to teach them what they themselves know and feel?

 

[rhiannonh]

Because we’re not Puritans, Muslims, or Mormons, and Jesus’ first miracle was to make alcoholic wine; he drank alcoholic wine at the last supper; and he was accused of being a drunkand.

The Eucharist is the re-presentation of the last supper and the Passion, with Christ present. He didn’t say, “this is the cup of grape juice spilled out in the new covenant in my blood, do this in remembrance of me”. Grape juice would have been poison in warm areas in those days, without preservatives or refrigeration. Alcohol was safe to drink.

And as far as we know neither did he say “this is thecup of wine spilled out of the new conenant in my blood…” This is my blood, is what is written.

But as you hinted at, non alcholic stuff didn’t last very long in that climate with the modern technology. Alcohol products were not as they are today either.

If when the actually items consecrated does it really matter what they are if they all turn into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ anyway, remembering its the consecration that turns it into the Body and Blood. I’ve been to Roman Catholic services where it has been fresh local bread and not wafer etc… Is the product more important than the consecration?

 

[Khalid]

It must be wheat bread, and it must be wine. The wafer is just a Latin custom.

 

[Khalid]

I liked a lot of that, but not the last paragraph.

It’s beautiful what you are saying, but a devout Catholic understands that true depths of Christianity and the fullness of being a Christian can only ever be achieved through Catholicism. How then can anyone in their right mind just leave protestants as they are without trying to teach them what they themselves know and feel?

As regards that last paragraph you spoke of - Torquemada should have been canonized, and is a saint compared to the barbarian Luther, the dictator Calvin, the weasel Cranmer, the other dictator Cromwell, the fanatic Zwingli, or any number of witch-burners (granted, Cranmer wasn’t worse than Alexander Sextus, but he was still bad). The Inquisition was intelligent and generally effective - that’s why it didn’t burn fictional witches as was all the craze in Protestant countries. It had rules of evidence, and found that the evidence against most witches was incredibly weak. The way it wrote off witch cases was truly modern. (Not that I doubt there were, and are, some actual devil-worshiping witches, male and female, attempting to do harm to the world, and even given power to perform what appear to be miracles from the Devil, but there weren’t tens of thousands in 16th-century England.)

 

[Joan_M]

Well, we don’t dye the Eucharistic bread red or pink to make it look as much like flesh as possible

I’m not a first-century Jew, but I imagine then as now wine (including wine for the Passover meal) was made from white grapes as well as red, and that either kind of wine was OK to use.

Actually, I understand that white wine is also made from red grapes! When you remove the skin from the grapes you get white wine. Red wine is made from grapes that still have their skin on.

 

[dochawk]

Actually, I understand that white wine is also made from red grapes! When you remove the skin from the grapes you get white wine. Red wine is made from grapes that still have their skin on.

Close.

White wine comes from fermenting without the grape skins, while they’re left in for, iirc, 3-7 days for a red.

White wine has far more need to add yeast–whch is found on the skin of grapes in the first place. Even so, some of the yeast gets in when crushing the grapes–I had a bucket of freshly crushed grapes start fermenting on its own on my porch in PA once

hawk