[Sca-cooks] Bread and wine in the Catholic church

ranvaig at columbus.rr.com ranvaig at columbus.rr.com
Sun May 21 14:06:57 PDT 2006


I am not Catholic myself, but here is how I understand it.  This is a 
very medieval issue, and is something that most of our medieval 
personas would but have known.  Theology is such a touchy thing, 
please, I don't mean to offend anyone.

The doctrine of transubstantiation means that the bread and wine 
become the actual body and blood of Christ and not just food and 
needed to be treated appropriately.

If you ate the bread, of course there was also blood in the body, and 
that you didnt need to actually drink the cup, which was easier to 
spill.

Ranvaig (well.. it IS food related)

excerpted from http://users.ev1.net/~damonm/catholic-chronicles/chron1.html
The teaching of transubstantiation does not date back to the Last 
Supper as most Catholics suppose. It was a controversial topic for 
many centuries... The idea of a physical presence was vaguely held by 
some, such as Ambrose, but it was not until 831 A.D. that Paschasius 
Radbertus, a Benedictine Monk, published a treatise openly advocating 
the doctrine. It was not made a dogma, until 1215 A.D.

The historian Tertullian tells us that when this doctrine first began 
to be taught in the Middle Ages, that the priests took great care 
that no crumb should fall lest the body of Jesus be hurt, or even 
eaten by a mouse or a dog! There were quite serious discussions as to 
what should be done if a person were to vomit after receiving the 
sacrament. At the Council of Constance, it was argued that if a 
communicant spilled some of the blood on his beard, both beard and 
the man should be destroyed by burning!

By the end of the eleventh century, lest someone should spill God's 
blood, some in the church began to hold back the cup from the people, 
and finally in 1415, the Council of Constance officially denied the 
cup to laymen. Although today, by decree of the Vatican, churches may 
now offer the cup optionally to communicants.



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