From: jocallag@bach.helios.nd.edu (john ocallaghan)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re:      Re: Women's ordination yet again *sigh*
Date: 7 Nov 92 17:43:38 GMT
Organization: OUC, University of Notre Dame

In article <CATHOLIC%92110710212505@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> Jim McIntosh <JIM@AMERICAN.EDU> writes:
>On Fri, 6 Nov 1992 14:21:14 -0700 (Gordon C. Zaft) said:
>
>What is it that causes the bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of
>Jesus? Is it the bread? The wine? Does the priest cause it to happen?
>Perhaps the magic words?
>
>No, of course not. God does it. God chooses to do it. God has promised to
>do it... at least when done by a priest using bread and wine. Does this
>prevent God from doing it at other times? No, again, of course not. God
>can choose to do what God wants to do. All the church can say that it
>feels assured that when a validly ordained priest says the eucharistic
>prayer with bread and wine it will happen.

A little inaccurate, isn't this?  It is the power of Christ acting through
the ritual and visible signs of the actions of the priest; thus Christ
uses the priest as his minister, or instrument..
The Church is not quites os limited as you suggest.  Certainly God could
have chosen all sorts of other food as the sacramental sign of his body
and blood.  But as a matter of historical fact, we knw what choice he made.
Our Faith is an historical faith-- not what could God do, but what has 
God done in His relationship to us.  God can do non-dunumerably many more
things than He will ever do for us, and even more than that.  But in our
life the question is not what can God do, but what has and what is God doing.
Now the Church claims that Christ chose visible, sensible signs and a visible
Church to communicate His saving grace, precisely because human beings are
not spirits, but because they are incarnate spirits, their spirits have being
bodily; what they come to know they come to know in and through their bodily
existence and experience.  In that experience, we know as historical fact
that God chose certain visible, material signs to be the means of communicating
His grace.  The Church also claims that God would not leave humankind without
the means for their salvation, and would not leave humankind in a situation 
where having joined themselves to Him in faith, they would be left in doubt
as to the means of salvation.  The danger of basing sacramental signs upon what
mere humans conceive of what God could do, rather than what God has chosen
to do, is that it leaves the faithful in a situation of real doubt as to
the sacramental means of communicating grace.  After all, if it is possible
that God choose other sacramental means, it is also possible that God not
choose those other means.  But we have no way of knowing that God has chosen
them or not chosen them outside the context of what we know God has in fact done.  If we begin to base our choice of what material to use in the sacraments
upon our own conception of what God can do, rather than what we know God to
have done, then those purported sacramental signs remain open to doubt, and
as open to doubt by the faithful, they cannot function as effective sacremental
signs of Gods grace, effecting what they signify.  But since a sacrament is an
effective sign signifying God's grace, and in turn effecting that grace in the
recipient, matter chosen on the basis of speculation of what God can do, rather
than what God has done, cannot be a sacramental sign, and thus not a sacrament.
So the Church, as I understand the case, has more than just the ability to say
when a sacrament has taken place, but also the conditions under which a 
sacrament has not taken place.

>
>Does this stop God from doing it with the grape juice and honey-nut
>bread? No, of course not. It was God who chose the bread and the wine in
>the first place, and God can certainly choose what God wants to
>transform. All the church can say, is that it can't be sure what happened
>when that poor bishop said the mass with the grape juice and honey-nut
>bread. There is no assurance that it became Jesus's Body and Blood. But
>the church also can't say with any certainty that it didn't. That would
>be limiting God's power.

See what I wrote above for most of this.  However your last statement is
ambiguous.  The Church does not seek to limit God's power, it claims to
recognize the limited effect that God has chosen to cause by His power,
in doing what He has actually done, not in speculating about what He can
do.  There is a very large difference, especially in the case of God,
between what can be done by some power, and what is done by that power.
According to the Church the sacraments involve what God has done and is 
doing, not what God could do; it claims the authority to recognize the
former, and that the latter is not necessary for salvation.

Peace,
John
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