5 ms·

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 miraculousl

by saghm 3y 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.

alexmolas 3y 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.
- mplanchard 3y 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-the-last-supper 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.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Catholicism is a mass religion, which means you need to be able to have a functioning society of Catholics (whereas if you're just making a religion to get a few dozen people into your cult so you can exploit them however you please, it isn't important whether an entire working society with this religion is even possible) so the rules can't just be complete nonsense. But on the other hand it's important for your religion to stand out. Unless it's going to result in mass persecution or genocide, you want your believers to stand out, the requirements of your religion to impact on everybody else. So you get silly rules - not really that tricky to obey but seemingly pointless because hey, if nobody is grousing about your silly rules, nobody is noticing your religion exists. This sort of thing is only a big problem once it tilts the whole society. People will probably vary in their tolerance but somewhere between "The weird logo on my groceries apparently signifies that a specific religious group may consume this product" and "Your existence is prohibited by the established religion in this country and so you'll be executed" there's a line crossed.
    - mplanchard 3y ago
      Yeah you’re absolutely right, and that’s a good point. For some reason to me it feels sillier when I have an inside perspective than looking at similar things in other religions. Because I have experienced and discarded Catholicism, those arbitrary rules strike me as particularly ridiculous. I don’t have the same knowledge of or disdain for the arbitrary rules of other religions, probably mostly because of lack of familiarity, but maybe also because I have never personally rebelled against them.
- krapp 3y 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.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Well it is a mass. In the Latin rite, the only requirement for a thing to be a valid mass is for a priest to take bread and wine and say 'this is my body' and 'this is my blood'. That's it. If a priest does this with the intention to say a mass he does an illegal but otherwise valid Mass. There is no doubt to this.
- oxfordmale 3y 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.
- tptacek 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
If you're no longer Catholic why would you care one way or the other?
- saghm 3y 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.
- dctoedt 3y 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.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    I'm still Catholic and these would be my reasons too. :)
  - michaelsbradley 3y ago
    I’m still Catholic too, and your argument doesn’t hold water. From the first century A.D. to the present, the Church has cared about holding true to the Apostolic tradition, which includes teachings re: how to treat others as well how to worship God.
    - 3y ago
anon291 3y 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 3y ago
It reminds me a lot of the rules we used to make up while playing games during recess in primary school.

by saghm 3y ago

alexmolas 3y 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.

mplanchard 3y 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-the-last-supper 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.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  Catholicism is a mass religion, which means you need to be able to have a functioning society of Catholics (whereas if you're just making a religion to get a few dozen people into your cult so you can exploit them however you please, it isn't important whether an entire working society with this religion is even possible) so the rules can't just be complete nonsense. But on the other hand it's important for your religion to stand out. Unless it's going to result in mass persecution or genocide, you want your believers to stand out, the requirements of your religion to impact on everybody else. So you get silly rules - not really that tricky to obey but seemingly pointless because hey, if nobody is grousing about your silly rules, nobody is noticing your religion exists. This sort of thing is only a big problem once it tilts the whole society. People will probably vary in their tolerance but somewhere between "The weird logo on my groceries apparently signifies that a specific religious group may consume this product" and "Your existence is prohibited by the established religion in this country and so you'll be executed" there's a line crossed.
  - mplanchard 3y ago
    Yeah you’re absolutely right, and that’s a good point. For some reason to me it feels sillier when I have an inside perspective than looking at similar things in other religions. Because I have experienced and discarded Catholicism, those arbitrary rules strike me as particularly ridiculous. I don’t have the same knowledge of or disdain for the arbitrary rules of other religions, probably mostly because of lack of familiarity, but maybe also because I have never personally rebelled against them.
krapp 3y 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.
- anon291 3y ago
  Well it is a mass. In the Latin rite, the only requirement for a thing to be a valid mass is for a priest to take bread and wine and say 'this is my body' and 'this is my blood'. That's it. If a priest does this with the intention to say a mass he does an illegal but otherwise valid Mass. There is no doubt to this.
oxfordmale 3y 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.
tptacek 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago

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

saghm 3y 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.
dctoedt 3y 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.
- tptacek 3y ago
  I'm still Catholic and these would be my reasons too. :)
- michaelsbradley 3y ago
  I’m still Catholic too, and your argument doesn’t hold water. From the first century A.D. to the present, the Church has cared about holding true to the Apostolic tradition, which includes teachings re: how to treat others as well how to worship God.
  - 3y ago

anon291 3y 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 3y ago

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