4 ms·

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 las

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.

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.