KC archbishop clarifies wine validity norms

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/kc-archbishop-clarifies-wine-validity

by Tomte • 3 years ago

50 111 3 years ago

This is a fairly tough nut to crack, because the FDA in these United States does not have any requirement for winemakers to put ingredients on their label. So you have the situation where you really have no idea what's in the wine, or how it was made, beyond a few disclaimers such as "contains sulfites".

So, like this archbishop has mandated, you can choose only wine that is especially certified for sacramental use, which means that the makers pledge they're following Canon Law in making the wine. But, again, this is a self-certification, and it means you're trusting the makers when they say what the ingredients are. They're still not regulated, they're still not mandated to have a label.

I also learned, from commenters, that some wines are specifically made to be invalid matter, such as Kosher wines, which are boiled, and cane sugar is added, and so they deliberately invalidate the wine so that Catholics cannot use it for the Eucharist, which I suppose would be sacrilegious in the opinion of many Jews.

This also relates to the makers of altar bread, which of course can't really be purchased in a grocery store and so it's always made especially for sacramental use. There has been a marked rise in the use of "low-gluten hosts" for those with Celiac disease or gluten allergies. The Catholic Church has weighed in on this, and has specifically said that there must be gluten in the host in order to be valid matter. So there are altar bread manufacturers who make host out of potato, or rice flour, and while Episcopalians and Lutherans may be OK with this, Catholics are not, and so pastors must be careful that their "low-gluten hosts" are not "gluten-free". Just to confuse the matter, an extremely low-gluten product can be marketed as "gluten-free" according to FDA rules, so enjoy the confusion. I have seen Catholic parish bulletins advertising "gluten-free hosts" and I just cringe, because they're basically saying "we use invalid matter for our Eucharist!" even if they really are using that approved, low-gluten altar bread. And there are nuns who proudly make the stuff just for that reason.

anamexis• 3 years ago

Your comment made me curious so I did a bit of research - kosher wines are not boiled or adulterated for the purpose of making it unsuitable for Eucharist.

Rather, according to ancient Jewish tradition, if kosher wine is boiled (which is called Mevushal wine), it remains kosher even if handled by non-Jews. This is in contrast to uncooked kosher wine, which loses its kosher status if handled by non-Jews.

kodah• 3 years ago

I'd love to hear from someone that knows but afaik most things Kosher derive from ancient food safety where provenance was also part of safety.

mavhc3• 3 years ago

This should be an indie puzzle video game

mistrial92• 3 years ago

this is interesting, but it seems like a cover for old feuds over commercial food services to pious people. In the USA there was a specific, constructed and lawful means to end "pious people captured by commercial efforts masked as piety" and secondly, a constructed reform within religious communities, to move past this sort of obvious, power and profit motivated supply chain control. Not all places or people have been motivated to include themselves in these reforms, of course.

cwzwarich• 3 years ago

Actually, you're both right. One of the explanations (albeit, not the only one) given for why boiled wine remains kosher if handled by non-Jews is that it's considered unacceptable for non-Jews to use in idolatrous rituals.

obiefernandez• 3 years ago

Gluten is indeed the protein in the wheat, so I guess not having at least some would impede transformation of the host into flesh. Makes total sense.

vharuck• 3 years ago

I think the Jewish community took the best method for knowing if a product is kosher: set up their own agencies that permit identifying marks on packaging if standards are met.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_certification_agency

The Catholic Church would do well with this, considering member churches often follow centralized decisions. A certifying agency in each diocese should work well.

pyuser5834• 3 years ago

There was a fascinating article that seems to have gone down the internet’s memory hole:

Eucharistic bread was made by religious communities. Then a for-profit corporation began competing with the nuns, and using brutal tactics was able to get a monopoly on supplying Eucharistic bread.

In any case, there’s no need for certification because there are so few sellers. It’s a specialized product. It’s not like priests are picking it up at the store.

MandieD2• 3 years ago

Episcopalian here: we're more than ok with gluten-free wafers - not figuring out how to offer gluten-free wafers to someone whose health will be harmed by consuming even a small amount of gluten (anyone with celiac, for starters) is shoving them away from Jesus' (and not our) table. Given the last few years, a lot of people are, for good reasons, hesitant to sip out of a cup a bunch of other people just drank out of, no matter how carefully the person handling the chalice wipes it, and we're rational enough to understand that 19% alcohol Port really isn't killing anything, so wafers safe for everyone are necessary.

My parish deals with it the easy way: we just do gluten-free wafers for everyone, and our priest reminds us not to intinct (dip) the wafers if we'd rather not drink the wine, as intinction is far worse than sipping for sharing germs... hands are filthy.

NoZebra120vClip8• 3 years ago

That is very easily accomplished in any Roman Catholic church by simply offering them a sip of the Precious Blood. Your slur of "shoving them away from Jesus' table" is a strawman.

WWLink2• 3 years ago

You go to a mass. The church serves you grape juice and rice crackers. Just once.

Do you think after you die, at the pearly gates, you're going to get sent to hell for "consuming invalid Eucharist?"

That... just... takes things to a whole new level. This idea of "Commercial goods with a catholic church seal of approval!" seems to go directly against at least a few of Jesus' teachings.

tptacek9• 3 years ago

The idea isn't that you get in trouble for taking invalid communion, but rather, that particular communion doesn't count; you participated in one fewer eucharists than you thought you had.

(I think, but am not totally sure, that this is a fringe tradcath belief, and that for the overwhelming majority of Catholics (including the clergy), this doesn't matter at all; if you felt it counted, did it in good faith, &c, it counted.

NoZebra120vClip8• 3 years ago

It's the priest who's at fault, because he's the one who's supposed to be informed and know better. Knowingly confecting an invalid sacrament is one of the worst sins you can commit as a Catholic. In Canon Law, it's known as "simulating a sacrament", i.e. going through the motions and faking it.

It's not unforgivable, but it's reprehensible.

bediger4000• 3 years ago

Great article! I was unaware of he existence of "valid matter", "dubious or doubtful matter", and "invalid matter" until now.

I was similarly unaware of organizations like Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and Society of the Divine Word. Heck, I was unaware of the word and concept "dicastery". This has been very illuminating.

NoZebra120vClip8• 3 years ago

There are actually many more Dicasteries than there were a year ago, since Pope Francis reorganized the Roman Curia. Previously, many of them were called Congregations. So far, it is basically a name change for the same sort of orgs, but it represents a sort of change in orientation.

readthenotes12• 3 years ago

In addition, it made me wonder how Jesus felt when all the sudden his blood is full of sulfates!

NoZebra120vClip8• 3 years ago

I don't think that you meant to use that word. But you're very busy being cute and clever and insulting, what could it matter?

mavhc3• 3 years ago

The MS Office 2003 toolbar version of religion. You got some people to write some code/rules, and then didn't fire them, so they just kept making the code/rules more complicated to keep their job.

I'm super sure that God really really cares about the kind of wine, and not the intentions of the humans asking for help

wwarner• 3 years ago

I totally agree, but I don't think the reason has anything to do with what god would think, actually. It's about trying to put yourself in the mindset of christians throughout history. That something of the original last supper is preserved in the celebration of mass today.

pianoben• 3 years ago

Oh, what I'd give for a good old toolbar again. I've still never adjusted properly to the Ribbon and its comparative waste of space. Give me density, dammit!

jawns2• 3 years ago

This is a common criticism: "Why would God care about this seemingly minute detail?"

We hear it, as well, with things like, "Does God really care if I eat meat on Friday?"

But actually, the whole point is that if we can't expend the effort to make trivial sacrifices, or to follow seemingly trivial rules about valid matter for the Eucharist, then why on earth would we expect ourselves to get more important things right?

Catholicism is not as persnickety as you might think, but there is a "When you know better, do better" mentality. Now that the bishop has realized the problem, he's taking steps to do better and rectify the issue. Yes, we trust that God knows what's in our hearts, but that doesn't mean we should just shrug our shoulders and say, "Not a big deal" when we have the opportunity to do better.

leephillips• 3 years ago

This seems backwards. I wouldn’t expend effort on the trivial because it’s trivial. I try to conserve my time and effort for what’s important. (Now excuse me while I spend two hours fine-tuning my Vim color scheme.)

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 3 years ago

But actually, the whole point is that if we can't expend the effort to make trivial sacrifices, or to follow seemingly trivial rules about valid matter for the Eucharist, then why on earth would we expect ourselves to get more important things right?

Reminds me of the Van Halen brown M&Ms

https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9...

madars2• 3 years ago

Exactly. Validity is extremely important: you want to have certainty in sacraments. When you go to confession and hear "I absolve you" you want to know that it means what it means.

mavhc3• 3 years ago

They specifically said all the masses where you used the wrong wine don't count, God will have ignored all your intentions said during those masses

metaphor2• 3 years ago

Market price: $75+ a bottle[1]...of course.

I'm somehow reminded of corporate McDonald's grift of contractually forcing Taylor ice cream machines on franchisees.

EDIT: cbfrench below correctly points out that that price is per case...the devil was hiding in the details and I stand corrected.

[1] https://www.zieglers.com/church-goods/sacramental/sacramenta...

cbfrench2• 3 years ago

For one thing, that’s the case price, not the price per bottle. And that’s not really a sound analogy, as Cribari isn’t the only sacramental vintner, nor is Ziegler’s the only supplier of said wine. And there are general canonical provisions (varying by diocese, of course) for using wine that isn’t approved as sacramental; it just saves a few headaches (and, obviously, concerns about validity) to go ahead and procure the sacramental stuff, especially when it’s not exorbitantly expensive per case.

Here’s a longer, more punctilious discussion of the variety of wines that may qualify for sacramental use in the Roman Catholic Church: https://wdtprs.com/2013/04/quaeritur-is-sherry-valid-matter-...

metaphor2• 3 years ago

For one thing, that’s the case price, not the price per bottle.

Thanks for the clarification; the devil certainly was in the details on that one.

verall• 3 years ago

Are there any other manufacturers of commercial scale soft serve machines? No matter where I go it's always a Taylor.

dmurray• 3 years ago

Time for a schism in the Church, where both sides agree on every matter of doctrine and practice, except that one side takes this Cansacastran view on the eucharist and the other follows the Dogma of St Petersburg, also detailed in the article:

Any good house wine is fine... Bottom line: the finer quality of wine, the better it is. This is an important consideration since the wine selected will become the Body and Blood of Christ.

mbg7214• 3 years ago

Catholics see what you say, and unfortunately, the right thing to do is to say "no", if we are to be consistent. We live measured by centuries, not years, so maybe we'll be okay.

mbg7214• 3 years ago

This is a lose-lose situation for the few Catholics who know or care about the difference between valid and licit Masses (and probably went to more traditional parishes anyway) and everyone else will be oblivious to the whole thing.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

Honest question, no trolling: for Jews and Muslims, the "kosher" and "halal" labels are heavily regulated, and AFAIK there isn't any great controversy about shady operators self-labeling their ordinary foods in order to sell more (or is there?).

So as a (former) Catholic: why can't the Church do something similar? Is it only because the market for sacramental wine is so much smaller than the market for halal foods?

cratermoon• 3 years ago

At least for kosher I'm aware that rabbis inspect and approve the manufacturing facility and process directly. This is doubly true for items labeled "Kosher for Passover". https://oukosher.org/passover/articles/what-is-kosher-for-pa...

bradleyjg• 3 years ago

The kashrut authorities have found an interesting loophole. It’s a violation of the first amendment for a state to directly ban the labeling of unkosher food as kosher. Too much entanglement with religion. However the various authorities have registered trademarks like ou and k. Enforcing ordinary trademark law runs into no constitutional issues.

mbg7214• 3 years ago

I see the kashrut trademarks as a good workaround that lets legitimate religious objections work well with American law.

no-reply• 3 years ago

As far as "halal", there have been shady operators doing self-labeling. [1] There are also companies that do not follow the halal process completely/properly but still label themselves as halal. For example, the animal (cow/cattle/lamb/camel/...) has to be slaughtered from below the neck by a Muslim man by hand while making the animal face a certain direction and also reciting prayer.

What do these companies do ? They have the prayers on speaker and a robot/machine that slaughters the animals. Is it halal ? No. But there are some agencies who would gladly give you a "halal" certification for some money, and now you are certified halal.

"Halal" word in Arabic just means permissible. In the food context, we look for halal (permissible stuff, not logo) in not just meat, but also any product that contains animal by products/byproducts, like cheese for example. Microbial rennet is okay, animal rennet not so much. We usually avoid eating factory made food that contain animal products/byproducts. If it is something that can has vegetable and animal sources, then we check the ingredients/labels to see if something is specified. Sometimes they clearly specify vegetable source. Otherwise if source is not clear, or if not sure about the certification agency, we either look for a kosher label on that (if it contains some animal products/byproducts) or manually call the company and ask away any questions. If both of those are not possible, we look for something else.

[1]. https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+halal+meat

selimthegrim• 3 years ago

It is also common for the butcher to just have the bismillah written on the knife (at least in Pak)

MandieD2• 3 years ago

Huh. I've had a very devout (hair-covering hijab, wouldn't even go swimming at the same time as our male colleagues in her "burkini") Muslim colleague tell me that she doesn't mind eating kosher meat if that's what's on offer, because Jews do things properly; otherwise, it's vegan for her to avoid whatever Germans do to otherwise perfectly good green beans or Käsespatzle (for those unfamiliar with southern Germany: yes, there's probably pork in there, unless otherwise specified)

ttepasse2• 3 years ago

Canon law itself is rather laconic on the ingredients to be transsubstantiated:

Can. 924
§1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed.
§2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling.
§3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and not spoiled.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/docume....

tenpies• 3 years ago

An interesting point regarding Catholic Canon Law is that there is a distinction between validity and liceity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_and_liceity_(Catholic...

To a casual reader, it may seem the "valid" and "licit" are nearly interchangeably in this article, but they are two different things and there are cases where an action is valid and illicit, or invalid, but licit.

Canon 126 is also relevant for this particular case:

Can. 126 An act placed out of ignorance or out of error concerning something which constitutes its substance or which amounts to a condition sine qua non[1] is invalid. Otherwise it is valid unless the law makes other provision. An act entered into out of ignorance or error, however, can give rise to a rescissory action according to the norm of law.

This is part of why Catholicism does not view itself as legalistic despite having a well-developed code of law. In minor things, it is assumed that God gives the benefit of the doubt so mistakes made out of ignorance/error do not affect the validity of the action. This also helps with scrupulosity and splintering over minor things.

---

[1] Latin for "an essential condition" or "something absolutely indispensable"

tptacek9• 3 years ago

Is this a traditionalist ("tradcath") thing? I feel like there was no such scrupulousness about the wine at masses when I was growing up.

I don't mean this as a dismissal. If you're not Catholic you might not have noticed that there is a weird cultural moment happening right now, with a very small but noisy (or prominent, if you like) faction of traditionalists, many of them young hipsters. It's oddly centered on New York City and Kansas/Nebraska.

So I see things like this, almost unrecognizable from the church I grew up in, and I wonder if this is just another tendril of that movement.

probably_wrong• 3 years ago

Speaking from my personal experience, I feel my (South American) priest would have rolled his eyes at this, the same way I would feel about (say) the Rust foundation releasing a clarification document on tabs vs spaces.

I understand the need for a baseline to keep churches from holding mass with Fanta, and I agree that good wine is better than bad wine. But I easily imagine a Last Crusade moment where we learn that Jesus actually drank poor people's wine and, in an ironic twist (as suggested by a dead comment), it turns out that his wine was diluted and wouldn't fit the definition here.

tptacek9• 3 years ago

Right! I mean: there's nothing wrong with this stuff; Jewish people have kashrut, Muslims have haram and halal, Hindus (or at least a big chunk of them) have ovo-lacto vegetarianism.

But: this seems like something new. I doubt many people in my parish would care at all about the specific wine used at mass. For that matter: most people don't even take wine at mass.

madars2• 3 years ago

n=1 data point -- as a practicing Catholic who cares about the discipline of sacraments, this is the first time I hear about concerns regarding sacramental wine. At the same time, the story of using invalid baptismal formula ("we baptize" instead of "I baptize"; discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30348624) definitely made rounds in my circles (attending Ordinary Form Mass but also leaning traditional).

In general, what I see gives me a lot of hope: people care (and that they care about the right stuff; worrying about sulfites is likely misguided). Overall, it can't be that a confession line is always empty but line to receive the Eucharist is 100% of parishioners.

(Shoutout to Boston HNers - check out OMV churches like St. Clements or St. Francis; historically, St. Clements was the first church in the Boston area to offer public Masses and sacrament of penance during the early days of COVID, including special-made arrangements like https://www.facebook.com/StClementShrine/posts/pfbid0zmWzyKa... They also have ample Eucharistic Adoration. IYKYK.)

mikece• 3 years ago

Makes me wonder if "I've been a traditional Catholic since 1975 AMA" would be an active topic on HN. :-)

kevinmchugh• 3 years ago

I've seen a priest raid the pantry for bread to perform the sacrament and I think decided triscuits were better than cheese wheat thins. I've also seen a priest talk about the provenance of the wine and which member of the congregation had provided it from their travels. Only one bottle was transubstantiated, the second bottle came out for tasting later.

pyuser5834• 3 years ago

This is very mainstream. There was a period of experimentation and lax discipline corresponding to my own youth. Catholicism was whatever the local priest wanted.

There pre-Vatican rules regarding Eucharistic matter have been almost perfectly followed for a few decades.

mistrial92• 3 years ago

this seems like a topic mainly of interest to people who are interested in making divisions between communities larger

foogazi• 3 years ago

As a result, he wrote, in those parishes, “for any number of years all Masses were invalid and therefore the intentions for which those Masses were offered were not satisfied

What about all the weddings?

How can a lay person know if the Mass they are attending “counts” ?

alexmolas2• 3 years ago

You don't need a Mass to get married. Actually it's a different sacrament, and the only things you need are the two spouses and a qualified witness (aka the Priest)

anon2915• 3 years ago

You don't need a priest for a wedding. In the Latin rite, a couple marries themselves. In the medieval times, the church allowed couples to marry in secret without a priest (and without any witnesses). The only sacramental requirement for a marriage is a man and woman make a solemn commitment to live together as husband and wife with full understanding and full freedom to enter into the agreement.

However as you can imagine this became an administrative nightmare as couples sought to divorce after such a secret marriage and no one could say whether the marriage was valid.

So the church required marriage vows to be made public and in front of witnesses in order to be legal.

However, the couple is the minister not the priest. During a Catholic marriage, the couple is seated on the sanctuary along with the priest . One of the few times laypeople can do that.

saghm2• 3 years ago

As someone who grew up Catholic but isn't now, it's always very bizarre to see stuff like this. Catholic teaching explicitly claims that the wine is miraculously transformed into the "blood of Christ", but I guess it only works if the wine doesn't have additives? It's hard enough for me to imagine a god that wants to bless his followers by letting them drink his blood; I can't take seriously a claim that he will do this _only_ if the wine doesn't have extra sugar or elderberries added to it.

alexmolas2• 3 years ago

The point is that Catholics believe the words that Jesus said during the last supper, and He used wine without additives. The Mass is the repetition of that last supper and the death of Jesus in the cross. So to be faithful to what Jesus did it's important to use the same type of wine He used.

mplanchard2• 3 years ago

I would imagine that most modern wine is not necessarily the same type as the wine that would have been used as (presumably) table wine at the last supper.

Indeed it seems likely based on archaeological evidence that common wines drunk in the region and at the time contained additives for flavor! See https://www.vivino.com/wine-news/searching-for-the-wine-from...

Furthermore, how far should one take this silly adherence to imagined fact? If we discover that in Jerusalem they drank predominantly wine from some now extinct local varietal, does that make all masses since invalid?

I, like the poster you’re replying to, grew up Catholic, and this sort of slavish adherence to stuff some church person made up at some point in the past has always struck me as one of the more ridiculous parts of the religion.

krapp• 3 years ago

So to be faithful to what Jesus did it's important to use the same type of wine He used.

But the last supper wasn't a Catholic mass. Why is this one arbitrary detail so important when the entire ritual bears only a superficial resemblance to a dinner held by Jews in 33AD Jerusalem?

It seems odd that the man who said (paraphrasing because I don't want to look it up) "The Sabbath was made to serve men, not men the Sabbath" would insist on such pedantry.

oxfordmale• 3 years ago

There is no evidence in the bible what kind of wine Jesus used. Wine in biblical times could refer to fermented or unfermented drink.

During Jesus lifetime, there is archeological evidence that apices and fruits - including pomegranates, mandrakes, saffron and cinnamon - were used to flavour wines, and tree resin were added to help preserve them.

So, the wine drank at the Last Supper might actually resemble the mulled wine some of us drink at Christmas.

Basically, this has nothing to do with being faithful to Jesus, but more with archaic rules that were agreed upon centuries after Jesus' lifetime.They are canonical to Catholic teachings though.

tptacek9• 3 years ago

That sounds like it might be true, but whereas I can't say I'm totally sure about the church being fastidious about the wine (most people don't take wine at mass, and I certainly didn't), I know for a fact that they'd not at all scrupulous about bread; I've taken communion from consecrated ordinary leavened bread, and when that happened, the priest who did the service explained that, essentially, bread was bread, and the words were what mattered.

I'm sure there's some traditionalist Catholic rebuttal to this! And I'm fine with that. I'd just say: traditionalist Catholicism is not the same religion that ordinary mainstream Catholics practice.

knodi123• 3 years ago

and He used wine without additives

He used a specific bottle. But catholics were pragmatic enough to say "well, surely he didn't mean that bottle specifically." And they don't latch on to the vintage, either- doesn't have to be the same grapes grown in the same region. They don't latch on to the age of the wine, or its alcohol content. But those variations don't matter! Because.... I guess because, uh.... oh heavens me-oh-my-oh, this is a pickle. Turns out it's all subjective.

neverartful• 3 years ago

If you're no longer Catholic why would you care one way or the other?

saghm2• 3 years ago

I don't think I care in any particularly strong sense, but it was part of my experience growing up, so it's hard not to have any opinion about it at all. I'm fortunate that the friends and family I have who still are members are accepting of my choice not to be a member anymore; it's not like I don't associate with anyone at all who is Catholic. At least in my immediate family, discussing religion isn't something that will cause arguments, so sometimes the topic comes up when I talk with my parents. I'm sure there are plenty of things I'd find silly in other ideologies as well; I just don't have the same level of exposure.

dctoedt7• 3 years ago

If you're no longer Catholic why would you care one way or the other?

Another former Catholic here. We should all care because a controversy such as this:

- diverts attention from Jesus' "Prime Directive" — which was straight from the Hebrew Bible, of course (Leviticus 19:18) — that we seek the best for others, even our enemies, as we do for ourselves; and

- falsely implies that not following pharisaic rules makes one less worthy and thus excluded from the Prime Directive.

This harms civil society in general, not just Catholics.

anon2915• 3 years ago

It's not that God cannot it's that the human church cannot say for certain whether God does.

For example, God can come back tomorrow riding in from heaven on a Ford mustang but the church isn't going to declare this as true and make everyone wait for it tomorrow.

If God tells you to do X so Y happens, then you should do X. You should not do Z and then expect Y to happen with certainty. It might. It might not. You cannot know.

callalex• 3 years ago

It reminds me a lot of the rules we used to make up while playing games during recess in primary school.

blincoln• 3 years ago

I'm atheist-leaning agnostic, but having grown up with Christian parents, I have to imagine that Jesus (the historical figure) would be annoyed at the idea of people two millennia in the future arguing about whether or not a particular grape juice product[1] was suitable for commemorating the ceremony he put on for his disciples.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure he'd be angry enough to start tipping over tables in the square that anyone would claim that using a slightly different grape juice product invalidated anything about the events where it was consumed.

Of course, I'm sure this philosophical difference is exactly why there are so many splinter factions of Christianity, but it's hard for me to imagine making a religion a central part of one's life and then completely ignoring so much of the message that the core figure of that religion tried to get across.

[1] or even any dark red beverage, really.

ttepasse2• 3 years ago

On the other hand Jesus was born and grew up jewish and would have been familiar with jewish dietary laws and the sacrifices in the temple and the complicated conditions for those.

mbg7214• 3 years ago

A lot of the complications came later. The destruction of the Temple caused a huge mess with how the Law was handled.

michaelsbradley5• 3 years ago

cf. The Blessed Eucharist as a Sacrament

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05584a.htm

vrish883• 3 years ago

I don’t see how this is Pharisaic in nature. The way I read it, the issue is: what is wine? The definition of a thing and debate around the definition is something that everybody does. Just remember the hot dog/sandwich war which took the lives of so many… Pharisaic concerns would be about nonessential things like the color of the bottle the wine is in, the cork or bottle cap, etc.

What materialists and some scientists forget is that matter matters. What materialists, some scientists, gnostics, and some Protestants forget is that matter has spiritual matters. God became man so that man could become God - Athanasius [1]

Jews (and thus Jesus) followed particular instructions by to obtain material effects (think Passover or Jericho). Similar to preparing a meal, particular ingredients and particular processes yield a particular result. Change some of the ingredients and you get a different result.

What Jesus did in the Last Supper was to elevate material behaviors to produce spiritual effects. He takes the Passover meal and uses it to share his divinity.

If wine and bread is needed to share his divinity, then the questions of what is wine and what is bread are of the utmost importance for a Catholic.

[1] https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-so-that-we-might-become-god...

dctoedt7• 3 years ago

Y'shua of Nazareth seemed not to have cared much, if at all, for formalities or strict definitions — see his answer, in Luke 10:25-37 [0], to the lawyer's question, what must I do to inherit eternal life? (TL;DR: Love God, love your neighbor — and your neighbor is everyone, even your enemy.)

[0] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A25-37...

vrish883• 3 years ago

You are right, Jesus hated those Pharisaic formalities that prevented people from actual loving others. However Jesus did participate in other Jewish “formalities”. He celebrated the Passover, the festival of tents, he was presented at the temple, and so on.

To say Jesus believes all formalities are bad is not true.

For this partially question, what is wine, I don’t think it is preventing us from loving God and neighbor. I do think it is important because of the centrality of wine in the Gospels. T he miracle of the wedding feast at Cana, image of the vine and branches, and with the culmination of the last supper.

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 3 years ago

Wine can of course be anything at all. It could be milk, or used motor oil, or hydrofluoric acid. It need not even be a liquid, or tangible. Wine could be a really bad poem by an amateur, or a class of neutron stars that astrophysicists have yet to discover.

Shame on the Catholic Church for trying to pin down a word so that it means one thing and one thing only.

tptacek9• 3 years ago

Again: I don't think this is a mainstream Catholic church thing. You'll see downthread people besides myself relating stories of priests consecrating Triscuits or wine parishioners brought back from trips. Eastern-Rite Catholics all use leavened bread, apparently.

Traditionalist Catholicism (tradcath-ism) is not the same religion as Roman Catholicism. It's a weird splinter thing.

gameshot911• 3 years ago

Wine is fermented grapes?

plorg• 3 years ago

The argument is not that the definition of wine is malleable (which it definitely can be without falling down your slippery slope), but that being picky about the definition misses the point of the Eucharist entirely.

pyuser5834• 3 years ago

If you tried to sell a bottle of milk as wine, you’d get in trouble fast.

pyuser5834• 3 years ago

Just look at how much time EU devoted to defining all the different types of wine.

A thing is what it is.

rendang• 3 years ago

Very strange that we don't have ingredient labels for alcoholic beverages, even though pretty much every other substance you ingest has them, and even many things you don't, e.g. soap and shampoo.

adolph• 3 years ago

How Catholics Saved California Wine: https://www.tastingtable.com/1232442/church-loopholes-during...

lukeholder• 3 years ago

The LDS church uses water but if you don’t have water you can use whatever you have available. It’s just a symbol of the blood.

thesimpleone• 3 years ago

Sounds like the modern Pharisees.

KC archbishop clarifies wine validity norms

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