Priest Stopping

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='1202888' date='Feb 22 2007, 09:23 PM']If any ingredients are added prior to consecration (poison or otherwise) it invalidates the consecration. Transubstantiation does not take place. The wine can be disposed of any way the priest sees fit[/quote]

I remember reading that the consecration would be valid...

[Sojourner]

[quote name='StThomasMore' post='1202890' date='Feb 22 2007, 09:24 PM']I remember reading that the consecration would be valid...[/quote]
Look.

hot stuff has a degree in theology.

You are 13.

Saying this, without some sort of support other than "I think I read this somewhere," is a waste of bandwidth.

[Jaime]

From the GIRM

[quote]That wine, or rather liquor, cannot be regarded as valid matter, which is extracted from apples or other fruits, or which is made chemically, although it have the color of wine, and may be said in a way to contain its elements; nor wine to which water has been added in a greater or equal quantity[/quote]

Nothing but wine and water. (This includes poison) Anything but invalidates the consecration.

[Didymus]

I dont mean to let this go into a tangent, but where do we draw the line on that? I've heard priests tell me they never forget to use the pall (or paten, I cant remember) at Mass because they once had to consume a fly that fell into the chalice at some point during the Liturgy. Where does the church draw the line as to contents that invalidate the sacrament? Am I safe to assume it has to do with intention?

Edited February 23, 2007 by Didymus

[philosophette]

Consume a fly? That HAS to be going too far.

Do we now consider the fly washed in the blood of Christ? haha...

sorry.. its just kinda weird.

[Didymus]

I'd prolly do it, cuz it wouldnt be that big of a deal, you just drink.

[Theoketos]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='1202888' date='Feb 22 2007, 10:23 PM']If any ingredients are added prior to consecration (poison or otherwise) it invalidates the consecration. Transubstantiation does not take place. The wine can be disposed of any way the priest sees fit[/quote]

I have to disagree for certainly everytime bread is made or wine is fermented there are foreign substances in them. (Did you know that the FDA has a mandate for an acceptable amount of bug parts in bread and peanut butter?)

What would make the matter invalid is if enough of a particular substance (such as yeast) were added to the beard or wine to no longer make it bread of wine. I think that this is implied with your quote later on which I did not cite.

Ergo, St. Thomas More is correct.

I will post the two source he probably read in a second.

[Jaime]

Well yes Theo, you're correct (especially about bug parts) but the GIRM is clear on adding anything that isn't called for will invalidate the consecration.

For example, if a parish uses its own recipe to make bread and someone adds honey to it to "add a little flavor" that act would invalidate the consecration. If a foreign substance was intentionally added to the wine (like the poison example) it would clearly invalidate the process and transubstantiation will not occur.


So in that example St Thomas is less correct. (and more wrong)

[Theoketos]

From

[url="http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2006/09/more_on_adding_.html"]http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fide...on_adding_.html[/url]

(The question is whether adding unconsecrated wine to consecrated "wine" (aka The Blood Chirst) would not longer make it valid.

That fact might lead one to suppose--and I'm not at all saying that Ed supposes this, those someone might--that one could continue to add wine to the Precious Blood without the Real Presence ceasing at all.

This would not be the historic understanding of the Church.

This can be seen from the document De Defectibus in Celebratione Missae Occurentibus ("On Defects Occurring in the Celebration of Mass"), which is a document that deals with liturgical abuses and used to be printed in the front of every Missal before the reform of the liturgy following the Second Vatican Council.

It so happens that I have just translated this document (and will be putting it online soon, after I polish the translation and have it vetted), but since Ed has raised an excellent question, I'll share one bit of the draft translation here:

If a fly, or a spider, or something else falls into the chalice before the Consecration, he [the priest] pours out the wine in a decent place, and he puts other [wine] in the chalice, mixes in a little water, and offers it, as above, and the Mass proceeds. If after the Consecration a fly or something of this sort has fallen in, he removes it, and washes it with wine. After the Mass is finished he burns it, and the ashes and the liquid of this kind is poured into the sacrarium [De Defectibus X §5].

The document thus expressly directs priests to wash whatever has fallen into the chalice with wine. This would make no sense if the addition of wine did not cause the Real Presence to cease, since the whole point of washing the thing that fell in the chalice is to cause the Real Presence to cease, so that it can be reverently burned.

The Church--in a document that was part of the Roman Missal for 400 years--thus has understood the addition of wine in sufficient quantity to cause the Real Presence of the Precious Blood to cease.

Which gets us back to Ed's question: At what point does this happen?

My answer would be that this would happen when, in the opinion of reasonable men, so much wine had been added that what is in the chalice would no longer be judged by the senses to be the same wine that was there before. I'm talking, in this case, about the wine that was in the chalice as a whole, not the taste or color or other properties it has.

It's difficult to verbalize what I mean since "wine" in this context if functioning as a mass noun rather than a count noun, and we don't have a good word in English for the particular body of wine that is poured into a chalice, but I can offer a couple of examples that should be illuminative:

1) Suppose that a priest had a chalice with the Precious Blood in it and the accidents of wine in this case were of white wine. But then suppose that (God forbid) he started pouring unconsecrated red wine into the chalice. If he poured in only a drop and then mixed it throughly, it seems to me that a reasonable man would say that he had not substantially changed the accidents that were in the chalice--any more than pouring a drop of water in would substantially alter them. The Real Presence would thus remain.

But if he poured in a large amount of red wine then at some point a reasonable man would say, "That's not the same wine any more" and at that point the accidents masking the Real Presence would have changed so much that the Real Presence would have ceased.

In this case it would be easy(er) to tell because the color would have changed (and the taste as well), but I think the same thing would hold even if the color and taste and smell don't change. At some point so much wine is added that it no longer appears to be "the same wine" (meaning the same unit of wine) that was in the chalice.

Thus my second illustration . . .

2) Suppose that the priest had a large vat full of white wine and then put some of this in a chalice and consecrated it. He then (God forbid) took the Precious Blood in the chalice and pours it back into the vat and mixes it thoroughly.

It seems to me that a reasonable man would say that the unit of wine that appeared to be in the chalice is no longer present. It has been mixed into the vat of wine and has no independent status any longer. Consequently that unit of wine is no longer present, and neither is the Real Presence.

Now, at what precise point the Real Presence would cease is not something that can be determined, any more than the precise point that so much water is added that it ceases can be determined. We can say, in general terms, that this happens when so much water has been added that it would no longer appears to be wine, but we can't specify a percentage of change where this happens. It's a fuzzy boundary, like the boundary between red and orange on a color spectrum.

In the same way we can't specify precisely when too much wine has been added to the Precious Blood, but in principle it seems to me that it would be the point where the unit of wine that appeared to be in the chalice is so substantially altered that it no longer appears to be the same unit. It has been mixed into another unit of wine and no longer has independent status.

Incidentally, we know by faith that these accidents are divisible in the sense that you can drink part of it and leave enough of the apparent unit of wine in the chalice that the Real Presence stays. The apparent unit of wine can be diminished through drinking without losing the Real Presence as soon as the first sip is taken, and the sip also retains the Real Presence. Though at some point, so much can be removed that the Real Presence does cease--as would happen if there were only an undrinkably thin film of wine molecules (or apparent wine molecules) that refuses to form a drop were left in the chalice.

But it seems to me that the accidents masking the Precious Blood can be altered in two ways that cause the Real Presence to cease: (1) they can alter in quality such that it no longer seems to be wine at all or (2) they can alter in quantity such that they no longer appear to be the same unit of wine that was consecrated.

At least that's the best I can make out of the Church's historic understanding that the addition of wine to the Precious Blood can cause the Real Presence to cease.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: After writing the above, I decided to check the Summa Theologia to see what Aquinas said, and he says the same thing. He even uses some of the same examples, like adding red wine to white, and speaks in terms of the wine having to be not just qualitatively but "numerically" the same wine that was consecrated, which is what I was getting at by talking about it being the same "unit" of wine that was consecrated.

[Jaime]

Again, I don't disagree with what is being said. However that does not address the intentional act of adding something that does not belong. (i.e. the poison question)

If poison, (or koolaid) or any other matter is intentionally added (even without the priest's knowledge) prior to the consecration, it will invalidate it.

[Aloysius]

Theo, your artical seems to specify adding something to the precious blood after the consecration. the question of adding something to the wine prior to consecration is different: altering wine prior to the consecration to the point where it is no longer able to be considered wine makes it so that there is no valid consecration.

hot stuff's quote from the GIRM says it must be wine fermented from grapes (not from any other fruit or chemical) and that if water is added equal to or more than the amount of wine then it is too far dilluted to be valid wine for consecration.

it does not seem to indicate anything about adding some trace amount of another substance. it says it has to be grape wine and not dilluted.

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw here. I first questioned this myself in response to that aweful reformation poem about a woman poisoning the wine for consecration.

it would seem from Theo's quote that the proper thing to do if poison is found out to have been added to the wine prior to consecration and then it was consecrated, the wine must be dilluted with other wine or water in excess of the amount of wine that was consecrated and then poured down the sink in the sacristy.

I think the consecration would, in fact, take place if wine was consecrated with a slight amount of poison in it. I know there have been rulings that bread with a slight amount of honey added to it would not be able to be validly consecrated; but I see nothing in the GIRM quote which says the same thing for a small amount of some other liquid added to legitimate fermented-grape-wine.

[dandy777]

When you say "invalidates", what do you mean? What happens to the wine? Is it disposed of an replaced by a different type/bottle of wine?

[MissScripture]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='1203439' date='Feb 23 2007, 03:37 PM']Well yes Theo, you're correct (especially about bug parts) but the GIRM is clear on adding anything that isn't called for will invalidate the consecration.

For example, if a parish uses its own recipe to make bread and someone adds honey to it to "add a little flavor" that act would invalidate the consecration. If a foreign substance was intentionally added to the wine (like the poison example) it would clearly invalidate the process and transubstantiation will not occur.
So in that example St Thomas is less correct. (and more wrong)[/quote]
Wait...so a few years back, people in our parish would make the bread for Mass. I think it had honey in it. Does this mean that the consecration was not vaild and we didn't actually have the Eucharist for like a year?

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='MissScripture' post='1204129' date='Feb 24 2007, 04:09 PM']Wait...so a few years back, people in our parish would make the bread for Mass. I think it had honey in it. Does this mean that the consecration was not vaild and we didn't actually have the Eucharist for like a year?[/quote]

yep

[jeffpugh]

Tangent alert... though I like where this is going... I didn't really realize that the true presence could cease to exist like that... How can the true presence cease in the accident of bread?
Anywho...
To protect the Eucharist, the best thing sounds like consuming it, though some pastors keep the tabernacles well stocked (in lack of better words). It looks like it is down to words, stand and fight, but not kill.

"should the priest stick with words, running, and shielding only?"

I voted yes for this without realizing the contradiction on voting yes to the second question... Actually I don't like the wording of the third choice... take out the word 'only' and it would make the poll better because words are a powerful thing. Use them along with fists... but fists proceed words, no?

Edited February 25, 2007 by Sacred Music Man