[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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