Jan
14
Inverse Docetism?
January 14, 2007 | 1 Comment
Fr. Tim Finigan writes one of my favorite blogs, The Hermeneutic of Continuity. Yesterday he wrote a fine piece about Communion on the hand (he’s against it, but although I receive in the hand myself I find there is much to agree with in Fr. Finigan’s post). One thing he wrote struck me as rather strange, however. In the course of discussing the possible danger of sacrilege involved in folks pocketing a host or simply dropping it on the ground, he writes:
Then there is the question of visible fragments. Just as a reminder in case anyone is unsure about this, Our Lord is present in any fragment of the host that has the appearance of bread – rule of thumb is that if it is visible to the naked eye, Our Lord is present.Excursus: We know that there will be molecules of the Eucharistic host invisibly present all over the place – Catholic doctrine is that Christ is present under the appearances of bread and wine. If, for example, a negligent priest allowed hosts in the tabernacle to decay, Our Lord would cease to be present once the Eucharist no longer had the appearance of bread. Our Lord ceases to be present in his Eucharistic presence once the host is broken down in the digestive system – he continues to be present spiritually in the person’s soul, of course.
The suggestion seems to be that molecules of bread that are not apparent to the naked eye somehow “don’t count” for purposes of reckoning Christ’s presence, because they aren’t really “consecrated” in the same way as the bread that is visible. Surely this cannot be right. The expression “under the appearance of bread (and wine)” refers not to the fact that the bread and wine are visible or apparent, but that they are mere accidents. The substance of the bread and wine ceases to be the substance of bread and wine but becomes the substance of Christ, but the accidents (what “appears” to the senses, what is perceptible rather than intelligible) remain the accidents of bread and wine. The difficulty is that this theologoumenon made its appearance long before atomistic thoughts about material substances began to concern those of us living in the scientific age.
One problem with looking at the doctrine in the way that Fr. Finigan does is that it makes Christ’s presence dependent upon a human faculty. It also sounds a little like we’re saying that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is merely an appearance. It isn’t literally saying that, of course, but to the untrained or careless listener it can sound as though that’s what it’s saying, and if what we’re worrying about in the debate over Communion in the hand versus Communion on the tongue are possibilities for abuse or carelessness, well, this seems to me to be a far greater worry than that some kid might drop a host on the floor. When that happens, you pick it up and eat it; when someone begins to believe that Christ is only apparently present, there’s not much you can do. You can tell them the truth, of course, but there is no reason to believe that will have any effect at all, whereas eating a dropped host has an immediate and satisfactory effect.
It seems to me that doctrinal worries are far greater than legalistic worries about where every particle of bread happens to be, but that’s just me. If a molecule of bread hits the floor, that’s not sacrilege, even if that molecule of bread is the Body of Our Lord. Our Lord used to sleep on the ground, after all, and it’s only sacrilege if you throw it down there on purpose. So you don’t get yourself into any doctrinal trouble by claiming that every material molecule of that bread is Our Lord, whereas you do get into doctrinal trouble once you start claiming that some aggregations of molecules of bread are Our Lord and some are not. This is a version of the old sorites paradox, and it is best avoided by saying that it’s Our Lord all the way down to the uttermost of the uttermost materials, because the very essence of the thing has been changed, and the essence does not depend in any way upon any material properties the thing might have.
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A quick speculation on this: a sacrament is an instrumental cause of grace. God uses the instrument of the bread, the substance of which becomes the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, to communicate the grace of the sacrament to us. By the principle of accommodation, God would not use as a sign of a sacrament something that was not apparent to us as that sign. Therefore, although all the substance of the bread (right down to the last molecule) becomes the body of Christ, at some stage in the lifecycle of the particles of the sacrament, God no longer uses those particles as an instrumental cause of grace. It is then left to the prudential judgement of the priest to determine whether such particles are still the body of Christ.
For example, as some stage in the digestive process, the sign is considered to have completed its task and the substance of the body of Christ is no longer considered present in (what’s left of) the host. Manuals such as Davis’ “Moral and Pastoral Theology” indicate times after which prudential judgement may consider such a process to have run its course. On the other hand, crumbs of the host are generally considered still to be the body of Christ. Davis points out that if someone (someone ill receiving viaticum, for example) vomits up the host immediately after receiving it such that the host is clearly not digested, the priest should either consume the host himself or, if he cannot face this (!), he should go reverentially through a process that destroys the appearance of the bread.
The emphasis does seem to be upon the appearance of the particles of the host, but the reason for this is to allow for prudential judgement to tell whether God is still using that particle as an instrument.
Simon.