If the eucharist (the consecrated cracker of the Catholic Church) becomes the body of Jesus and the wine becomes the blood of Jesus, then a priest should be able to tell the difference between a consecrated (blessed) wafer that is Jesus and a regular one that isn’t.
Of course a scientist should, too, especially in this age of analysis. But let’s just depend on the priest for now. Does anyone want to guess what the results would be if a priest were tested to see if they could tell the difference? We would even allow him to communicate with the divine if he can’t figure it out on his own. God at least should know, and everyone knows the priest is the mediator between men and God.
That experiment will never happen, because everyone — even Catholics — knows it would fail. There’s no way of telling the difference between a blessed wafer and a non-blessed wafer unless someone marks it. There’s no way of knowing if the water in the vial you bought for $20 is really “holy water,” even if it smells bad and has weird stuff floating near the bottom.
If anyone wants to take up this experiment, I’d be willing to put a large bet on the results — as long as it was not organized or sponsored by a Catholic organization!
“…as long as it was not organized or sponsored by a Catholic organization!”
Nono, go for it even then. IPU knows they have the funds to cover your bet.
Just tell them they have to vet the setup with Randi.
In theory, there should be a way to tell a consecrated cracker from unconsecrated – the consecrated cracker will have spent a longer time in someone’s hands being blessed. Will have to control for skin oils to make this a proper double-blind test.
@wazza: I don’t think they handle every wafer. When I was a Catholic, they often did it in bulk.
But we might have to control saliva and anything that drops from the hands if it is waved over it. Some plastic wrap should do it, that is if the magic can go through the plastic…
To understand transsubstantiation, you need to grok a little Aristotelian metaphysics (the early Church basically picked up Greek philosophy from the surrounding Roman culture and built their theology around those categories). As I understand it, Aristotle distinguishes between the “accidents” of an object (what it looks, feels, smells, tastes, etc, like) and its “substance” (what it “really is”). Normally, substance and accident correspond to each other — water looks like water, rocks like rocks, bread like bread, and so on. The Eucharistic miracle consists in magically changing the substance of the elements into the substance of Christ, while leaving the accidents those of the pastry it started with.
Obviously the ancients didn’t know about chemistry etc, but I would guess that the official view of “accidents” now extends to cover modern methods of analysis as well. IOW, from a scientific POV the eucharistic claim is unfalsifiable.
The metaphysics of course, is hopelessly obsolete. Today we consider the distinction between substance and accident nonsensical — macroscopic physical properties derive from the properties of the constituents and the way they are assembled; but the constituents themselves have properties derived from a finer level of description, and so on. There is no substance; it’s accidents all the way down ;-).
@Eamon: Yes, you are right. I remember reading Aristotle in college and thinking “so that’s where Catholics got all that stuff.”
But the question remains: how would they know the substance changes, if it can’t be detected in any way?
Faith explains all.
Just not terribly convincingly.
Does anyone remember a book by Neil Boyd from the 70′s entitled “Bless Me Father”? There is a chapter where the priest is visited by some monks who decide to have a private mass in the parlour and afterwards there are crumbs everywhere. The priest decides that the only way to be sure that all the host is recovered from the carpet is to buy a new vacuum cleaner and bury it after cleaning the front room.
I don’t know why but this whole “cracker” thing makes me think of that story everytime I hear it.
If you have ever lived with someone who gets sick psychosomatically I think you can catch the idea that sometimes the effect has nothing to do with the putative cause. Perhaps the cracker isn’t changed so much as the person who contacts it. That does not change the value of the symbol itself or the validity of the protective response of the person for whom that symbol has value.
“That does not change the value of the symbol itself or the validity of the protective response of the person for whom that symbol has value.”
Even if the response is to kill someone in order to protect that cracker?
This has often made me wonder: how do you train to consecrate a wafer? How much can you mumble before the incantation looses its power? How does your teacher judge whether you did it correctly, so he can decide whether you passed or flunked the course?
@Beowulff: Your last question especially shows the absurdity of it all. How can they ever know if they were successful?
This comment thread is probably stale now and it is likely that no one is reading but I will offer this response:
wazza said:
““That does not change the value of the symbol itself or the validity of the protective response of the person for whom that symbol has value.”
Even if the response is to kill someone in order to protect that cracker?”
1. Killing? Really? Killing?
2. I take it you do not have any family or friends in the NRA who talk to you about the 2nd Amendment?
We don’t have an NRA here… in NZ, gun laws are fairly strict, but it’s still possible to get a rifle (though not a handgun) for hunting purposes and home defence.
And yes, killing. PZ has a great post a few weeks back about the history of Host desecration.