[HN Gopher] KC archbishop clarifies wine validity norms
___________________________________________________________________
KC archbishop clarifies wine validity norms
Author : Tomte
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-06-17 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pillarcatholic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pillarcatholic.com)
| foogazi wrote:
| > As a result, he wrote, in those parishes, "for any number of
| years all Masses were invalid and therefore the intentions for
| which those Masses were offered were not satisfied
|
| What about all the weddings?
|
| How can a lay person know if the Mass they are attending "counts"
| ?
| [deleted]
| alexmolas wrote:
| You don't need a Mass to get married. Actually it's a different
| sacrament, and the only things you need are the two spouses and
| a qualified witness (aka the Priest)
| mavhc wrote:
| The MS Office 2003 toolbar version of religion. You got some
| people to write some code/rules, and then didn't fire them, so
| they just kept making the code/rules more complicated to keep
| their job.
|
| I'm super sure that God really really cares about the kind of
| wine, and not the intentions of the humans asking for help
| pianoben wrote:
| Oh, what I'd give for a good old toolbar again. I've still
| never adjusted properly to the Ribbon and its comparative waste
| of space. Give me density, dammit!
| [deleted]
| wwarner wrote:
| I totally agree, but I don't think the reason has anything to
| do with what god would think, actually. It's about trying to
| put yourself in the mindset of christians throughout history.
| That something of the original last supper is preserved in the
| celebration of mass today.
| jawns wrote:
| This is a common criticism: "Why would God care about this
| seemingly minute detail?"
|
| We hear it, as well, with things like, "Does God really care if
| I eat meat on Friday?"
|
| But actually, the whole point is that if we can't expend the
| effort to make trivial sacrifices, or to follow seemingly
| trivial rules about valid matter for the Eucharist, then why on
| earth would we expect ourselves to get more important things
| right?
|
| Catholicism is not as persnickety as you might think, but there
| is a "When you know better, do better" mentality. Now that the
| bishop has realized the problem, he's taking steps to do better
| and rectify the issue. Yes, we trust that God knows what's in
| our hearts, but that doesn't mean we should just shrug our
| shoulders and say, "Not a big deal" when we have the
| opportunity to do better.
| leephillips wrote:
| This seems backwards. I wouldn't expend effort on the trivial
| because it's trivial. I try to conserve my time and effort
| for what's important. (Now excuse me while I spend two hours
| fine-tuning my Vim color scheme.)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > But actually, the whole point is that if we can't expend
| the effort to make trivial sacrifices, or to follow seemingly
| trivial rules about valid matter for the Eucharist, then why
| on earth would we expect ourselves to get more important
| things right?
|
| Reminds me of the Van Halen brown M&Ms
|
| https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-
| contract-2016-9...
| madars wrote:
| Exactly. Validity is extremely important: you want to have
| certainty in sacraments. When you go to confession and hear
| "I absolve you" you want to know that it means what it means.
| vrish88 wrote:
| I don't see how this is Pharisaic in nature. The way I read it,
| the issue is: what is wine? The definition of a thing and debate
| around the definition is something that everybody does. Just
| remember the hot dog/sandwich war which took the lives of so
| many... Pharisaic concerns would be about nonessential things
| like the color of the bottle the wine is in, the cork or bottle
| cap, etc.
|
| What materialists and some scientists forget is that matter
| matters. What materialists, some scientists, gnostics, and some
| Protestants forget is that matter has spiritual matters. God
| became man so that man could become God - Athanasius [1]
|
| Jews (and thus Jesus) followed particular instructions by to
| obtain material effects (think Passover or Jericho). Similar to
| preparing a meal, particular ingredients and particular processes
| yield a particular result. Change some of the ingredients and you
| get a different result.
|
| What Jesus did in the Last Supper was to elevate material
| behaviors to produce spiritual effects. He takes the Passover
| meal and uses it to share his divinity.
|
| If wine and bread is needed to share his divinity, then the
| questions of what is wine and what is bread are of the utmost
| importance for a Catholic.
|
| [1] - https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-so-that-we-might-become-
| god...
| dctoedt wrote:
| Y'shua of Nazareth seemed not to have cared much, if at all,
| for formalities or strict definitions -- see his answer, in
| Luke 10:25-37 [0], to the lawyer's question, _what must I do to
| inherit eternal life?_ (TL;DR: Love God, love your neighbor --
| and your neighbor is everyone, even your enemy.)
|
| [0]
| https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A25-37...
| vrish88 wrote:
| You are right, Jesus hated those Pharisaic formalities that
| prevented people from actual loving others. However Jesus did
| participate in other Jewish "formalities". He celebrated the
| Passover, the festival of tents, he was presented at the
| temple, and so on.
|
| To say Jesus believes all formalities are bad is not true.
|
| For this partially question, what is wine, I don't think it
| is preventing us from loving God and neighbor. I do think it
| is important because of the centrality of wine in the
| Gospels. T he miracle of the wedding feast at Cana, image of
| the vine and branches, and with the culmination of the last
| supper.
| dctoedt wrote:
| Please see my comment below [1], which I won't repost here.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36374781
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Wine can of course be anything at all. It could be milk, or
| used motor oil, or hydrofluoric acid. It need not even be a
| liquid, or tangible. Wine could be a really bad poem by an
| amateur, or a class of neutron stars that astrophysicists have
| yet to discover.
|
| Shame on the Catholic Church for trying to pin down a word so
| that it means one thing and one thing only.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| cf. _The Blessed Eucharist as a Sacrament_
|
| https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05584a.htm
| mbg721 wrote:
| This is a lose-lose situation for the few Catholics who know or
| care about the difference between valid and licit Masses (and
| probably went to more traditional parishes anyway) and everyone
| else will be oblivious to the whole thing.
| tiahura wrote:
| [flagged]
| metaphor wrote:
| Market price: $75+ a bottle[1]...of course.
|
| I'm somehow reminded of corporate McDonald's grift of
| contractually forcing Taylor ice cream machines on franchisees.
|
| EDIT: cbfrench below correctly points out that that price is per
| case...the devil was hiding in the details and I stand corrected.
|
| [1] https://www.zieglers.com/church-
| goods/sacramental/sacramenta...
| verall wrote:
| Are there any other manufacturers of commercial scale soft
| serve machines? No matter where I go it's always a Taylor.
| cbfrench wrote:
| For one thing, that's the case price, not the price per bottle.
| And that's not really a sound analogy, as Cribari isn't the
| only sacramental vintner, nor is Ziegler's the only supplier of
| said wine. And there are general canonical provisions (varying
| by diocese, of course) for using wine that isn't approved as
| sacramental; it just saves a few headaches (and, obviously,
| concerns about validity) to go ahead and procure the
| sacramental stuff, especially when it's not exorbitantly
| expensive per case.
|
| Here's a longer, more punctilious discussion of the variety of
| wines that may qualify for sacramental use in the Roman
| Catholic Church: https://wdtprs.com/2013/04/quaeritur-is-
| sherry-valid-matter-...
| metaphor wrote:
| > _For one thing, that's the case price, not the price per
| bottle._
|
| Thanks for the clarification; the devil certainly was in the
| details on that one.
| cbfrench wrote:
| Yeah, it's really not clear unless you click through and
| see that the weight per unit is 37 lbs. Unsurprisingly,
| purveyors of church goods almost invariably have terrible
| websites. Ziegler's is comparatively decent, lol.
| blincoln wrote:
| I'm atheist-leaning agnostic, but having grown up with Christian
| parents, I have to imagine that Jesus (the historical figure)
| would be annoyed at the idea of people two millennia in the
| future arguing about whether or not a particular grape juice
| product[1] was suitable for commemorating the ceremony he put on
| for his disciples.
|
| Furthermore, I'm pretty sure he'd be angry enough to start
| tipping over tables in the square that anyone would claim that
| using a slightly different grape juice product invalidated
| anything about the events where it was consumed.
|
| Of course, I'm sure this philosophical difference is exactly why
| there are so many splinter factions of Christianity, but it's
| hard for me to imagine making a religion a central part of one's
| life and then completely ignoring so much of the message that the
| core figure of that religion tried to get across.
|
| [1] or even any dark red beverage, really.
| ttepasse wrote:
| On the other hand Jesus was born and grew up jewish and would
| have been familiar with jewish dietary laws and the sacrifices
| in the temple and the complicated conditions for those.
| mbg721 wrote:
| A lot of the complications came later. The destruction of the
| Temple caused a huge mess with how the Law was handled.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The expansion of ritual purity into everyday mundane life
| was an active area of dispute in the judaism of christ's
| time & place. He certainly would have been aware of the
| general concept and most likely had a take on it.
|
| In fact there's a historically grounded secular
| interpretation of the good samaritan parable indicating
| it's at least partially about exactly this. According to
| contemporaneous jewish moral norms, the priest in the
| parable has valid reason to avoid what he thinks is a dead
| body but _only if_ he has a ritual duty to perform in
| temple in the near future. In the parable he is traveling
| "down from jersusalem" eg his duty is complete for now.
| Jesus is coming down against him maintaining ritual purity
| without a specific liturgical duty to.
| dmurray wrote:
| Time for a schism in the Church, where both sides agree on every
| matter of doctrine and practice, except that one side takes this
| Cansacastran view on the eucharist and the other follows the
| Dogma of St Petersburg, also detailed in the article:
|
| > Any good house wine is fine... Bottom line: the finer quality
| of wine, the better it is. This is an important consideration
| since the wine selected will become the Body and Blood of Christ.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Catholics see what you say, and unfortunately, the right thing
| to do is to say "no", if we are to be consistent. We live
| measured by centuries, not years, so maybe we'll be okay.
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Honest question, no trolling: for Jews and Muslims, the "kosher"
| and "halal" labels are heavily regulated, and AFAIK there isn't
| any great controversy about shady operators self-labeling their
| ordinary foods in order to sell more (or is there?).
|
| So as a (former) Catholic: why can't the Church do something
| similar? Is it only because the market for sacramental wine is so
| much smaller than the market for halal foods?
| cratermoon wrote:
| At least for kosher I'm aware that rabbis inspect and approve
| the manufacturing facility and process directly. This is doubly
| true for items labeled "Kosher for Passover".
| https://oukosher.org/passover/articles/what-is-kosher-for-pa...
| no-reply wrote:
| As far as "halal", there have been shady operators doing self-
| labeling. [1] There are also companies that do not follow the
| halal process completely/properly but still label themselves as
| halal. For example, the animal (cow/cattle/lamb/camel/...) has
| to be slaughtered from below the neck by a Muslim man by hand
| while making the animal face a certain direction and also
| reciting prayer.
|
| What do these companies do ? They have the prayers on speaker
| and a robot/machine that slaughters the animals. Is it halal ?
| No. But there are some agencies who would gladly give you a
| "halal" certification for some money, and now you are certified
| halal.
|
| "Halal" word in Arabic just means permissible. In the food
| context, we look for halal (permissible stuff, not logo) in not
| just meat, but also any product that contains animal by
| products/byproducts, like cheese for example. Microbial rennet
| is okay, animal rennet not so much. We usually avoid eating
| factory made food that contain animal products/byproducts. If
| it is something that can has vegetable and animal sources, then
| we check the ingredients/labels to see if something is
| specified. Sometimes they clearly specify vegetable source.
| Otherwise if source is not clear, or if not sure about the
| certification agency, we either look for a kosher label on that
| (if it contains some animal products/byproducts) or manually
| call the company and ask away any questions. If both of those
| are not possible, we look for something else.
|
| [1]. https://www.google.com/search?q=fake+halal+meat
| MandieD wrote:
| Huh. I've had a very devout (hair-covering hijab, wouldn't
| even go swimming at the same time as our male colleagues in
| her "burkini") Muslim colleague tell me that she doesn't mind
| eating kosher meat if that's what's on offer, because Jews do
| things properly; otherwise, it's vegan for her to avoid
| whatever Germans do to otherwise perfectly good green beans
| or Kasespatzle (for those unfamiliar with southern Germany:
| yes, there's probably pork in there, unless otherwise
| specified)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| It is also common for the butcher to just have the bismillah
| written on the knife (at least in Pak)
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The kashrut authorities have found an interesting loophole.
| It's a violation of the first amendment for a state to directly
| ban the labeling of unkosher food as kosher. Too much
| entanglement with religion. However the various authorities
| have registered trademarks like ou and k. Enforcing ordinary
| trademark law runs into no constitutional issues.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I see the kashrut trademarks as a good workaround that lets
| legitimate religious objections work well with American law.
| tptacek wrote:
| Is this a traditionalist ("tradcath") thing? I feel like there
| was no such scrupulousness about the wine at masses when I was
| growing up.
|
| I don't mean this as a dismissal. If you're not Catholic you
| might not have noticed that there is a weird cultural moment
| happening right now, with a very small but noisy (or prominent,
| if you like) faction of traditionalists, many of them young
| hipsters. It's oddly centered on New York City and
| Kansas/Nebraska.
|
| So I see things like this, almost unrecognizable from the church
| I grew up in, and I wonder if this is just another tendril of
| that movement.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Speaking from my personal experience, I feel my (South
| American) priest would have rolled his eyes at this, the same
| way I would feel about (say) the Rust foundation releasing a
| clarification document on tabs vs spaces.
|
| I understand the need for a baseline to keep churches from
| holding mass with Fanta, and I agree that good wine is better
| than bad wine. But I easily imagine a Last Crusade moment where
| we learn that Jesus actually drank poor people's wine and, in
| an ironic twist (as suggested by a dead comment), it turns out
| that his wine was diluted and wouldn't fit the definition here.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right! I mean: there's nothing wrong with this stuff; Jewish
| people have kashrut, Muslims have haram and halal, Hindus (or
| at least a big chunk of them) have ovo-lacto vegetarianism.
|
| But: this seems like something new. I doubt many people in my
| parish would care at all about the specific wine used at
| mass. For that matter: most people don't even take wine at
| mass.
| madars wrote:
| n=1 data point -- as a practicing Catholic who cares about the
| discipline of sacraments, this is the first time I hear about
| concerns regarding sacramental wine. At the same time, the
| story of using invalid baptismal formula ("we baptize" instead
| of "I baptize"; discussed on HN here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30348624) definitely made
| rounds in my circles (attending Ordinary Form Mass but also
| leaning traditional).
|
| In general, what I see gives me a lot of hope: people care (and
| that they care about the right stuff; worrying about sulfites
| is likely misguided). Overall, it can't be that a confession
| line is always empty but line to receive the Eucharist is 100%
| of parishioners.
|
| (Shoutout to Boston HNers - check out OMV churches like St.
| Clements or St. Francis; historically, St. Clements was the
| first church in the Boston area to offer public Masses and
| sacrament of penance during the early days of COVID, including
| special-made arrangements like
| https://www.facebook.com/StClementShrine/posts/pfbid0zmWzyKa...
| They also have ample Eucharistic Adoration. IYKYK.)
| mikece wrote:
| Makes me wonder if "I've been a traditional Catholic since
| 1975 AMA" would be an active topic on HN. :-)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| This is a fairly tough nut to crack, because the FDA in these
| United States does not have any requirement for winemakers to put
| ingredients on their label. So you have the situation where you
| really have no idea what's in the wine, or how it was made,
| beyond a few disclaimers such as "contains sulfites".
|
| So, like this archbishop has mandated, you can choose only wine
| that is especially certified for sacramental use, which means
| that the makers pledge they're following Canon Law in making the
| wine. But, again, this is a _self-certification_ , and it means
| you're trusting the makers when they say what the ingredients
| are. They're still not regulated, they're still not mandated to
| have a label.
|
| I also learned, from commenters, that some wines are specifically
| made to be invalid matter, such as Kosher wines, which are
| boiled, and cane sugar is added, and so they deliberately
| invalidate the wine so that Catholics cannot use it for the
| Eucharist, which I suppose would be sacrilegious in the opinion
| of many Jews.
|
| This also relates to the makers of altar bread, which of course
| can't really be purchased in a grocery store and so it's always
| made especially for sacramental use. There has been a marked rise
| in the use of "low-gluten hosts" for those with Celiac disease or
| gluten allergies. The Catholic Church has weighed in on this, and
| has specifically said that there must be gluten in the host in
| order to be valid matter. So there are altar bread manufacturers
| who make host out of potato, or rice flour, and while
| Episcopalians and Lutherans may be OK with this, Catholics are
| not, and so pastors must be careful that their "low-gluten hosts"
| are not "gluten-free". Just to confuse the matter, an extremely
| low-gluten product can be marketed as "gluten-free" according to
| FDA rules, so enjoy the confusion. I have seen Catholic parish
| bulletins advertising "gluten-free hosts" and I just cringe,
| because they're basically saying "we use invalid matter for our
| Eucharist!" even if they really are using that approved, low-
| gluten altar bread. And there are nuns who proudly make the stuff
| just for that reason.
| WWLink wrote:
| You go to a mass. The church serves you grape juice and rice
| crackers. Just once.
|
| Do you think after you die, at the pearly gates, you're going
| to get sent to hell for "consuming invalid Eucharist?"
|
| That... just... takes things to a whole new level. This idea of
| "Commercial goods with a catholic church seal of approval!"
| seems to go directly against at least a few of Jesus'
| teachings.
| tptacek wrote:
| The idea isn't that you get in trouble for taking invalid
| communion, but rather, that particular communion doesn't
| count; you participated in one fewer eucharists than you
| thought you had.
|
| (I think, but am not totally sure, that this is a fringe
| tradcath belief, and that for the overwhelming majority of
| Catholics (including the clergy), this doesn't matter at all;
| if you felt it counted, did it in good faith, &c, it counted.
| obiefernandez wrote:
| Gluten is indeed the protein in the wheat, so I guess not
| having at least some would impede transformation of the host
| into flesh. Makes total sense.
| anamexis wrote:
| Your comment made me curious so I did a bit of research -
| kosher wines are not boiled or adulterated for the purpose of
| making it unsuitable for Eucharist.
|
| Rather, according to ancient Jewish tradition, if kosher wine
| is boiled (which is called Mevushal wine), it remains kosher
| even if handled by non-Jews. This is in contrast to uncooked
| kosher wine, which loses its kosher status if handled by non-
| Jews.
| kodah wrote:
| I'd love to hear from someone that knows but afaik most
| things Kosher derive from ancient food safety where
| provenance was also part of safety.
| tubs wrote:
| Two reasons.
|
| There were some alleged cultist/idolatry practices
| involving wine that would cause it to become non kosher so
| it's easier to just blanket ban anything handled by a goy.
| I think boiling makes it unusable for those same rituals.
|
| It's also to discourage fraternising (especially
| romantically) with goyim.
| mavhc wrote:
| This should be an indie puzzle video game
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is interesting, but it seems like a cover for old feuds
| over commercial food services to pious people. In the USA
| there was a specific, constructed and lawful means to end
| "pious people captured by commercial efforts masked as piety"
| and secondly, a constructed reform within religious
| communities, to move past this sort of obvious, power and
| profit motivated supply chain control. Not all places or
| people have been motivated to include themselves in these
| reforms, of course.
| cwzwarich wrote:
| Actually, you're both right. One of the explanations (albeit,
| not the only one) given for why boiled wine remains kosher if
| handled by non-Jews is that it's considered unacceptable for
| non-Jews to use in idolatrous rituals.
| vharuck wrote:
| I think the Jewish community took the best method for knowing
| if a product is kosher: set up their own agencies that permit
| identifying marks on packaging if standards are met.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_certification_agency
|
| The Catholic Church would do well with this, considering member
| churches often follow centralized decisions. A certifying
| agency in each diocese should work well.
| MandieD wrote:
| Episcopalian here: we're more than ok with gluten-free wafers -
| _not_ figuring out how to offer gluten-free wafers to someone
| whose health will be harmed by consuming even a small amount of
| gluten (anyone with celiac, for starters) is shoving them away
| from Jesus ' (and not our) table. Given the last few years, a
| lot of people are, for good reasons, hesitant to sip out of a
| cup a bunch of other people just drank out of, no matter how
| carefully the person handling the chalice wipes it, and we're
| rational enough to understand that 19% alcohol Port really
| isn't killing anything, so wafers safe for everyone are
| necessary.
|
| My parish deals with it the easy way: we just do gluten-free
| wafers for everyone, and our priest reminds us not to intinct
| (dip) the wafers if we'd rather not drink the wine, as
| intinction is far worse than sipping for sharing germs... hands
| are filthy.
| saghm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| krapp wrote:
| > 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| 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.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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...
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| neverartful wrote:
| If you're no longer Catholic why would you care one way or the
| other?
| saghm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| I'm still Catholic and these would be my reasons too. :)
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| [flagged]
| itnAAnti wrote:
| [flagged]
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Great article! I was unaware of he existence of "valid matter",
| "dubious or doubtful matter", and "invalid matter" until now.
|
| I was similarly unaware of organizations like Dicastery for
| Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and Society
| of the Divine Word. Heck, I was unaware of the word and concept
| "dicastery". This has been very illuminating.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| There are actually many more Dicasteries than there were a year
| ago, since Pope Francis reorganized the Roman Curia.
| Previously, many of them were called Congregations. So far, it
| is basically a name change for the same sort of orgs, but it
| represents a sort of change in orientation.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| In addition, it made me wonder how Jesus felt when all the
| sudden his blood is full of sulfates!
| ttepasse wrote:
| Canon law itself is rather laconic on the ingredients to be
| transsubstantiated:
|
| > Can. 924
|
| > SS1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with
| bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed.
|
| > SS2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that
| there is no danger of spoiling.
|
| > SS3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and
| not spoiled.
|
| https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/docume....
| tenpies wrote:
| An interesting point regarding Catholic Canon Law is that there
| is a distinction between validity and liceity:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_and_liceity_(Catholic...
|
| To a casual reader, it may seem the "valid" and "licit" are
| nearly interchangeably in this article, but they are two
| different things and there are cases where an action is valid
| and illicit, or invalid, but licit.
|
| Canon 126 is also relevant for this particular case:
|
| > Can. 126 An act placed out of ignorance or out of error
| concerning something which constitutes its substance or which
| amounts to a condition sine qua non[1] is invalid. Otherwise it
| is valid unless the law makes other provision. An act entered
| into out of ignorance or error, however, can give rise to a
| rescissory action according to the norm of law.
|
| This is part of why Catholicism does not view itself as
| legalistic despite having a well-developed code of law. In
| minor things, it is assumed that God gives the benefit of the
| doubt so mistakes made out of ignorance/error do not affect the
| validity of the action. This also helps with scrupulosity and
| splintering over minor things.
|
| ---
|
| [1] Latin for "an essential condition" or "something absolutely
| indispensable"
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| No doubt because the submitter thought it was intellectually
| interesting and enough upvoters agreed:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Religious practices are often quite interesting if one can
| relate to them out of curiosity (the intended spirit of this
| site). The challenge is that intense emotions, identities, etc.
| can also get activated and those can easily drown out the
| interesting aspects. Curiosity isn't a high-intensity
| phenomenon - it requires a light touch.
|
| Quite a few commenters in this thread have been managing to
| discuss the OP in the curious spirit, which is good - probably
| better than median for this type of topic!
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this seems like a topic mainly of interest to people who are
| interested in making divisions between communities larger
| Bud wrote:
| [dead]
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