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The mystery of transubstantiation is this: when taken as part of a ritual, the wafer and wine become the flesh and blood of Christ. However, this does not mean that the wafer becomes a sliver of flesh or the wine 25ccs of human blood. The wafer and wine retain the accidents of wafer and wine - flavour, texture, atomic mass - while also being the body and blood of Christ.
Okay, so they don't change in any observable way, but they're spiritually the body and blood of Christ?
"Adulterated with poison" is actually neither an essential quality nor an accident - if a glass of wine with poison in became human blood, it would presumably be human blood with poison in instead, because the poison would not transubstantiate.
Of course, this would not come up, because trying to poison somebody with a wafer would mean that you were not performing mass, but rather trying to poison somebody in the guise of Mass. Since transubstantiation is a ritual mystery, that means it would not occur.
I brought up poison originally because it harkened to something that someone I once knew said. He was a "Catholic Enthusiast" I suppose, though not a Catholic himself, and he claimed that if the wafers and wine for mass were consecrated, and before mass an individual confessed to a priest that the host had been poisoned, that the priest still was required to use the consecrated hosts and wine in the ritual. Bollocks, really, but it stuck in my head. Using a comic was a poor example, admittedly.
The aforementioned person learned magic from a group that frankly was filled to the brim with arseholes, he would only refer to his belief as "The Craft" (although this was before the film of the same name) and in later years of our acquaintance he started bragging that he had begun posing as a priest at various local churches and performing mass, claiming that the articles he used were now no longer considered consecrated. I informed him that he was a dick, and stopped talking to him. Later found out from a mutual acquaintance that he had actually been performing mass at these churches. I bet Middle America is chock-full of kids like that.
Sorry, that was off-topic. It seemed relevant at the time.
To be honest I don't get why you're posting on a spirituality programme when you're so disinclined towards belief...
The assumption here being that because I don't believe in an established religious framework means I'm not spiritual. Huh.
I'd suggest you start a thread discussing faith in Temple so we can really bite into the cookie.
The Temple gives me dysentery. |
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