Catching Up With Il Papa

Why are the Proddies thinking like Papists?

Blimey, this has long been true among the left footers:

Non-alcoholic wine and gluten-free bread should not be used as substitutes during Holy Communion, the governing body of the Church of England has ruled.

Church guidance makes clear that bread must be made from wheat flour and wine must be the fermented juice of the grape in order to be consecrated as part of the service.

In papers released ahead of the Church’s General Synod, which opens on Monday, the barrier for those who are unable to consume wheat flour or alcohol was described as an “injustice”.

Oddly, this is an area where I'd expect CoE to not be Papist.

Which leads to what I always think of as terribly Catholic reasoning. By which I mean an absolute insistence on basic precepts and the logic that flows from them however stupid the end result might seem.

So, transubstantiation. The bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ. Well, blood doesn't have - well, some mornings, maybe - the amount of booze in it that will trigger an alcoholic. So, given the literally therefore taking properly blessed communion wine cannot trigger an alcoholic.

It is also a duty of a priest - duty, not an option - to say Mass every day, including the wine into blood bit and consumption thereof. Which, if you've a priest who is an alcoholic - a not unusual occurence, chastity, poverty, obedience being heavy burdens to carry for a lifetime - then this is, as the cool kids say these days, problematic.

At which point we get to that logical structure I'm describing as Catholic. Our original precept is that the transformation is literal. This is a matter of base belief, it is one of those things the Faith insists is not an optional nor arguable belief. So, if we let off priests who are alcoholic from the consumption of that wine which has been - recall, wholly literally - converted into the blood of Christ then and therefore we are casting doubt upon that literal transformation. So, we can't do that then.

Priests who are alcoholic (or gluten in the wafer, whatever) just have to put up with it. We could say this is because of the literal transformation. We could also say it's because we're not going to allow doubt to be cast on a basic presumption of the faith. But put up with it they do have to.

Of course, the actual solution is that everyone agrees that this is so and how could it be otherwise? And if a priest declines to be so triggered by putting a bit of red ink in the water and blessing - thus transforming - that then as long as no one does it in the streets and frightens the horses then that's between his confessor and himself. No one does actually believe that's the sort of sin that casts into the seven fiery pits. Whereas causing the faithful to doubt by denying the transubstantiation might well be.

But Proddies don't believe in transubstantiation. They believe in consubstantiation. Somewhere between represents and is of a dual nature with. Therefore you'd think that Proddies are fine with booze free wine at communion in a way that Catholics aren't.

Now, I'm not wholly certain that I've every detail of the theology correct there. But I think it does still get over the real idea I'm proposing, which is of that Catholic way of thinking. Start with the basics, follow the logic and there we are, however odd the end result looks. The bloke who wrote the English church's opposition to the MMR vaccine taught me history for a bit. The logic being, good cannot come from evil. The rubella part of the combined vaccine came from an affected and aborted foetus. Abortion - even for rubella - is in and of itself sinful. Therefore Catholics cannot partake of the triple vaccine and should insist upon getting the three individually from non abortion sourced vaccines. QED.

And now to the real conclusion here. My pedantry - pendantry as we say - is a result of having been educated along these lines. Of the Catholic faith there is not a scrap remaining. Of the Catholic way of thinking rather a lot actually. The Jesuits had a point about getting the lad when he’s young.