From: mfulsmb@uts.mcc.ac.uk (Martin Barry)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: The Real Presence
Date: 25 Jan 93 11:07:31 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre, Manchester, England, M13 9PL.

In article <C19v6M.3q7@news.udel.edu> 15942@brahms.udel.edu (Stephen Barr) writes:
:       Christ said "This is my body". Before he took and
: blessed the bread, it would have been correct to say "this is a
: piece of bread", but false to say "this is the body of Christ".
: After he took and blessed it and pronounced those words,
: it would have been correct to say "this is Christ's body"
: but false to say "this is a piece of bread".

Yes. This is (what I consider to be) exactly (neither more nor less than)
the faith of the Church.

:      That, in my view is the whole content of transubstantiation.
: One does not need to study Aristotle to understand what is
: meant. 

No. Your summary is well short of what some would require as adherence to
a doctrine of transubstantiation. What you say next adds a great deal which
I would not agree with, and wouldn't accept as stemming logically from
acceptance of your first paragraph. Specifically, the claim that 'bread' has
an existence independent of its physical properties; and the idea that this
is best expressed as the 'subject' about which these properties may be
considered the 'predicate', to use the scholastics' grammatical analogy.

:       Now, before consecration "this is bread", after
: consecration "this is the Body of Christ." Something
: is the same about those two sentences. What? THe word 
: 'this'. The word 'this' does not specify a thing by what
: it is but by indicating or showing it. I say "look at
: this." I am not telling you what it is, I am showing it to
: you. So what has not changed is what is shown, the appearance,
: what is manifested to the senses.
:        But something is different about the two sentences.
: "This is what?" In one case bread, in the other the body of Christ.
: What has changed is the answer to "What is this?" This
: is what is meant by the "substance": the "what" that "this"
: is. The "what" has changed. 

A wholly accurate rendition of the Scholastic position (as far as my limited
knowledge allows me to judge). But to accept this one would have to justify
the axiom here that the 'subject' (= 'this') has an ontologically prior
existence to the entire proposition, by virtue solely (if one looks at it
critically) of the syntactic structure of the sentence. The idea that
grammatical categories correspond to philosophical categories is a lynch-pin
of scholastic (and aristotelian) philosophy, but it does not stand up to
objective scrutiny. 
 
:        If you believe that before consecration "this is
: bread" and after consecration the only correct answer
: is "this is Christ's body", then you believe in transubstantiation.
: If you believe that after consecration the correct answer is
: "this is bread together with the body of Christ" then you
: believe in consubstantiation.

No, in both cases the sentence should have the arguments reversed: if you
believe in transubstantiation, then you believe that before consecration
"this is bread" and after consecration the only correct answer
is "this is Christ's body"; one can, however believe the then-clause (what
we rhetoricians call the "apodosis") without subscribing to or finding
intelligible the if-clause (the "protasis"). Note, though, that to deny that
the philosophical apparatus underpinning transubstantiation is of any use is
different from denying the truth which its proponents are seeking to
articulate: which is why we both agree with your opening encapsulation of
the Church's faith in the blessed sacrament.

:        Now, what remains is the appearance of bread. The
: appearance would include what appears to our senses either
: aided or unaided. What remains has the appearance of
: bread to the naked eye, to the nose, through a microscope,
: through an electron microscope, etc. etc. 
:        Some people might be tempted to say "if it looks like,
: bread, smells like bread, and in everyway acts like bread
: then it is bread", I would answer no. You may say it is
: in every way perceptible to the senses bread, but you
: may not say "it is bread". It appears to be, but it is not. 
: That's it.

I would answer no as well. We believe that a God who transcends yet inheres
in the material universe can take any form it pleases him, without having to
pause to justify himself before the laws of physics, nor, I respectfully
submit, the 'laws' of philosophy.

: That is transubstantiation. 

No it isn't :-). See above.

: What is left
: not to be bread if every observable is that of bread? 
: Maybe nothing. Of course this a philosophical not really a
: scientific issue. Science describes what is observable and 
: says nothing one way or another about anything else.
: But suppose there is "nothing to" an ordinary piece of bread
: except the totality of observable properties of it. And
: suppose those all remain after consecration? Can we say that
: all that ever did exist of the bread is still there? 
: Perhaps. I don't know. All I know is that the Church tells me
: that after consecration it is wrong to say "this is bread". 
: She tells me "it is not bread, it is the body of Christ."
: I think we may adopt any philosophical framework we want
: but we must adhere to those two statements. "It is not bread".
: "It is the body of Christ." 

Sigh. We agree, as ever. Where's John O?

:        Suppose God decided that every time I saw a certain person
: I would see a lion instead, an illusion. Suppose it were very realistic.
: No matter what I did it seemed like a lion in truth. But it is not.
: Well, perhaps transubstantiation happens like that. It would be
: true that empirically, experimentally, operationally, a lion is
: there. By observing carefully, I might even learn about the
: behavior or physiology of lions. But no lion is there. It is an
: illusion. Such an interpretation of transubstantiation would
: be quite consistent with the Church's teaching, and quite 
: consistent with science and reason.

That's more like it! No, this is ludicrous. Whatever takes place at the
consecration in the Mass, it's not an optical illusion.

As I see it, the question is: what can happen to bread to make it not-bread,
and yet leave the physical properties intact? If transubstantiation is not
the answer, then what is the appropriate domain for enquiry? Some thelogians
have sought to answer these questions by talking about 'transfinalisation'
and things like that. Their answers, I gather from someone's earlier post,
have been ruled out by the Vatican, rightly or wrongly. But that in itself
does not demonstrate the correctness of the transubstantiation view, nor
does it remove the question marks that have given theologians cause for
further enquiry. The questions are still open.

Martin Barry.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU