Catholic sacrament of the week.

This has not been my experience. I'm curious where you get your information.

Quote: FrGamble

He becomes part of us, nourishing and transforming body and soul to be more like Him in our world.

My understanding is that the host miraculously ("miraculously" is a derogative term to me, btw) transforms from cooked carbs to raw human proteins and fats. Your statement seems to corroborate this, albeit dressed up in seemingly pleasant rhetoric.

And that's cannibalism.

The interesting question is why people would make up something that breaks a rather strong, well-established taboo as an integral part of their religion? Second place is how people keep from being utterly disgusted by this? IMO, to the latter, is that few actually believe it literally; though even symbolically it makes me recoil in disgust.

Look up the concept of Transubstantiation and you will find your concept of what miraculously happens is exactly wrong. While the accidents of bread remain the substance is changed.

Quote: Nareed

The interesting question is why people would make up something that breaks a rather strong, well-established taboo as an integral part of their religion?

These were pagans, who had all kinds of disgusting
rituals. Why this symbolic cannibalism is still
around today is a mystery. Partaking in it is
even more of a mystery.

Quote: FrGamble

Look up the concept of Transubstantiation and you will find your concept of what miraculously happens is exactly wrong.

I lack the desire to do so.

Quote: Nareed

I lack the desire to do so.

{Transubstantiation (in Latin, transsubstantiatio, in Greek μετουσίωσις metousiosis) is the change whereby, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, the bread and the wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become, not merely as by a sign or a figure, but also in actual reality the body and blood of Christ.}

What fun, cannibalism.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/communion/communion.htm

I feel like I had to pull out of a good discussion about the Eucharist and in another thread sacrifice and I'm sorry about that. Duty calls and we just finished a great pastoral leadership retreat. So now that I have a little time to relax I can try to respond to some of these posts again.

It would be very helpful to first define some terms, specifically substance and accidents.

The substance is the essence or the nature of a thing. The accidents manifest the substance. The only way we can truly understand the substance of something is to use our intellect. Our senses which can perceive the accidents of something are often defective. For example when I touch my desk I sense a solid object but there is much more to what I sense than what I perceive. I am helpless for example to sense the atoms or the electrons swirling around the nuclei. They are really there but there is an element of trust in the science of such things that my senses will not perceive. If we make the mistake of confusing or equating our senses with our intellect we will often be confused about what is really truly there.

Likewise a substance is not observable or detected by the sense no matter what sophisticated technology we may employ. The substance of the desk is communicated to me by its accidents but is not directly observed or sensed. It is this substance and it alone that is transubstantiated in the miracle of the Eucharist. It is supernatural and therefore maybe out of the reach of understanding for those who do not believe in such things.

The substance of the consecrated bread at Mass becomes the real body of Jesus. Through concomitance this also is Jesus' blood, soul, and divinity. You cannot separate the person of Jesus from His body or His blood or His Divine soul or Divine personality, etc. It is therefore His complete and Real Presence. Just as if I cut off your ear, it would not be truly you. You are not equated to your ear. You are much more than that and so is Jesus. In every host at Mass the Real Presence of Jesus Christ is present - body, blood, soul, and divinity. Of course you need only read John chapter 6 to see this teaching laid out very clearly in the Scriptures.

To go a little deeper theologically, the Eucharist is the ultimate sign of God's love for us. To be truly present to us today, not just as a symbol or a picture, but to be as present to us as He is in Heaven or as He was in the manger or as He was working as a carpenter or as He was when He worked His many miracles. God doesn't love us half way or give us a piece of Himself, He always loves us fully and gives Himself completely to us as He did on the Cross.

Quote: FrGamble

To go a little deeper theologically, the Eucharist is the ultimate sign of God's love for us. To be truly present to us today, not just as a symbol or a picture, but to be as present to us as He is in Heaven or as He was in the manger or as He was working as a carpenter or

You know what? If this wasn't an age old
ritual, one that's accepted for whatever
perverted reason, if you presented these
ideas out of the blue, they would lock
you away. Drinking blood, eating flesh,
thinking this brings you closer to some
god, is crazy talk. The stuff you see in
vampire movies. Seriously..

Plenty of old rituals go away especially after 2,000 years, in fact you might be hard pressed to name one other than the Eucharist that is so accepted and celebrated after so long. These ideas are presented out of the blue all the time to converts and the Eucharist becomes one of the most amazing joys of being Catholic for them. I think you have a hard time making the cannibal or vampire stuff stick because again the accidents remain unchanged as bread and wine. You are also not eating a piece of anything, but the fullness of who Christ is in every host.

Quote: FrGamble

Likewise a substance is not observable or detected by the sense no matter what sophisticated technology we may employ.

So we can analyze any substance, anywhere in the universe down to its constituent particles, except the magical flat bread that miraculously becomes something we cannot analyze either.

When I say Judaism is the least irrational religion I know, I mean it lacks these kinds of mystical nonsense (though it has plenty of mystical nonsense of its own).