The lord gives me explosive diarrhea.
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The problem is with out rules, you get everything watered down and/or different and then you end up with 101 flavors and the original truth is lost.
Why not something like Pop Tarts if traditions don’t matter? At what point did a previous thing cease to be a thing and is now something else?
To say “it doesn’t really matter” (which if you don’t believe you can say about any religion and it’s traditions) belittles the fact that it’s a holy sacrament to the followers.
I mean, that’s like someone getting me a Jango Fett and I am like, “Oh thanks.” I mean, it’s close enough to Boba Fett, right? It shouldn’t really matter, right? WELL IT DOES MATTER, JESUS CHRIST MOM YOU HAD JOB!!! I ASK FOR ONE GODDAMN THING ALL YEAR AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GET? Sorry, what were we talking about?
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Gosh it would be a real shame if Catholicism suddenly lost the plot.
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You are aware that Jesus was Jewish, and that the Last Supper which inspired the Christian sacrament was a Passover supper? And that therefore, the bread in question was definitely not “regular bread,” but unleavened flat bread?
There’s definitely a million lightyears difference between an unleavened handmade loaf of flat bread and your generic mass produced, non-perishable communion wafers (which taste more like cardboard than bread). However, Jesus would no more have dreamed of using “regular bread” for the Last Supper than he would have dreamed of eating shellfish.
As @mister44 points out, actually what goes in it remains very important, because you have to draw the line somewhere. There’s not a lot of difference between cardboard and the wafers Catholic churches in the US use for hosts, but that difference (that the wafers have to contain at least some wheat flour and thus at least some gluten, that the wine has to be made from grape juice and not pear juice or grape flavoured sparkling water) is the Catholic church’s line that they will not cross.
@Jorpho linked to something showing that communion wafers have been “lunchable”-ized for a long time among protestant churches, where the ingredients might once have been in the same room as actual grapes and actual flour. This letter from Roche is basically the Catholic church announcing that they have higher standards.
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I’m glad that this matter has been clarified.
It really took a loaf off my mind.
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I think the point stands though, do you think Jesus would have refused to do the sacrament if he didn’t have access to a specific type of bread? Granted this is speculation, but i would guess that he wouldnt’ve minded. If he would have i would also guess that he would have been very specific about it with his disciples, which he wasn’t.
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Yeah! He wouldn’t have used the non traditional bread in the event he was creating a new tradition for his followers. Like @Glaurung said, it’s from the Jewish tradition.
That’s like saying to a devout Jew or Muslim that they can have some bacon bits on their salad because its only a little bit pork, and in spirit, it’s still a salad.
As a side note, there are little “t” and big “T” traditions within the Catholic church. Little “t” traditions can and do change over time. Big “T” traditions don’t as they defining traditions to the faith.
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The more fundamental question is does the Church have the authority to authorize use of something other than unleavened wheat bread? According to doctrine the Eucharist was instituted directly by Jesus. The ritual of the Eucharistic concentration is one of the few rituals which comes directly from the bible. Most other are subject to modification by the Church because they are a discipline of the Church.
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They just want to make sure they’re good hosts.
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i don’t think it really is. This is the opposite, as they sin if they DO NOT eat the host. So it’s sort of 180 degrees from interchageable.
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Unleavened bread in the Jewish faith commemorates the exodus of their people from Egypt. Jumping forward to the last supper Jesus offers them bread as a sacrament, while the supper may have been done during passover or emulating it it does not adhere to the specifics of it because the significance of what he was doing was separate from the passover tradition. To me obsessing over the content of the bread is focusing on the wrong aspects of what Jesus was trying to do and say. If these particulars were truly important he would have been quite specific, which he wasn’t. With the wine i would presume it was a grape wine, but again… did Jesus say what kind of grapes or how it was prepared? Do you think he would be upset if a Christian used the wrong kind of grapes?
Ultimately what i’m trying to say is that i don’t see the point of the obsessive nature of religious practices. Being agnostic (almost atheistic) perhaps i lack the kind of understanding for these kinds of things. As far as i know Jesus was more concerned with doing social good than “eating the right kind of bread and drinking the right kind of wine”.
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o_0 no it isn’t.
Your argument doesn’t hold water. There needs to be a definition on the bread and wine (wheat/grape). The fact that they aren’t SUPER specific doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be SOME specifics.
You can go to your local Baptist church if you want to drink grape juice, but you might also have to believe dinosaurs were on the Ark. Pick your battles.
Eucharist is only part of what it means to be Catholic. They aren’t focusing on it to the exclusion of other things.
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then how are they at all comparable? One you’re supposed to eat or else, and the other you can’t eat, or else.
The or else is the same, but that’s just authority.
This is a separate discussion, being able to take the sacrament or not. I’d consider it a bit of a derail to get into it. I’m not particularly knowledgeable on it despite being raised Catholic, but as far as i know the person has to be “free of sin” which means they have to go to confession with a priest. Oh and they have to be part of the church. I’m sure i could Google the details into this but i’m about to eat lunch so i can’t be bothered lol
Bonus question from chemistry exam: 10g of bread and 50mL of wine undergo transubstantiation. How many Joules of energy are released?
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that’s sort of why I pointed out that bringing what Muslims cannot eat by decree is not equal to what a catholic cannot eat because allergy.
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HOLY SHIT!
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I agree that a definition of these things is an inherent necessity, but saying that making them gluten free somehow makes them lose their religious significance/power is something i don’t buy.
However from what i recall if someone is unable to take the Eucharist the priest ingests it (and the wine) as a symbolic gesture that he is accepting those in place of those that can’t. So there’s that.
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Well, some people’s auto-immune disorders that try to kill them when they interact with the lord…
Oh man, I hope this discussion results in a “Will it Transubstantiate” Youtube channel…
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