Posted on 03/15/2005 6:19:49 AM PST by NYer
Ugh.
Well, at least they have a place to celebrate Mass until the main building is repaired.
When St. Agnes Church in NYC burned, we ended up with an even better one! (Of course, that was before Cdl. Egan...)
If we ask the Vatican, they'll say, get out of the building as quickly and safely as possible.
Now this is getting ridiculous. When the Priest accidentally drops a Host on the ground while giving Holy Communion, no desecration or sacrilege has occurred, despite the "unintentional carelessness".
A desecration would be for the Priest to purposely throw the Host to the floor or to step on it ("Then came the unbelievers/who wrecked the House of God/the Sacrament of Jesus/beneath their feet they trod"), or for anti-Catholic bigots to purposefully burn down the Cathedral. OTOH, an electrical fire or lightning strike would not cause a desecration, and the Church would not need to be reconciled afterwards, because no evil had been done. Nor is a Church reconciled after a Host is accidentally dropped.
The sacred linens are supposed to be washed until the traces of wine are so diluted as to no longer be wine - since He is only present under the species of wine and bread, when all semblance of wine and bread disappears He is no longer present.
You cannot make it "so diluted as to no longer be wine". That is a physical impossibility. Wine does not transmorgify itself because a lot of water has been added to it (just like Coors Lite is still vaguely a beer-like substance). Two drops of wine in a barrel of water are still two drops of wine, and can be detected by chemical testing. Two drops of Sarin Gas will kill you. If I splash you with two drops of Sarin and a barrel of water, would you feel better about it?
The sacrarium is a way of disposing of any minute droplets in a respectful way where they can peacefully decompose over time into basic chemical subtances without disturbance. It does not "un-Transubstantiate" the wine.
He is only physically present in the communicant for a few minutes.
Because the physical elements are broken down into something else by the digestive process (namely, into sugars). Dilution with water is not involved - it is a chemical transformation.
Also, recall the pious practice of ... drinking only water for the hour following Mass.
I've never heard of such a thing anywhere, and common practices such as the Easter Vigil feast immediately following Mass, or the Monastic schedule where breakfast immediately follows the conventual Mass put the lie to it. Someone has sold you a bill of goods there I think.
I was thinking the same thing as I listened to new reports of this.
>> After all, doesn't the washing of sacred linens in the sacrarium result in particle of the precious blood being washed down the drain? <<
Hermann... I saw your name on another thread, realized I hadn't seen you and wondered what you'd been up to. So I went to your page, saw this interesting article and popped here. And I find you asking something ELSE you certainly should know better than to have to ask.
Which makes me ask something seriously I was almost going to say jokingly before:
Are you the same person, or are you the son/wife/friend of the Hermann I knew, using the same screen name, like Ann Landers or Beetle Bailey or Englebert Humperdink?
The dilution of wine with water doesn't make the wine disappear. It dilutes it. We believe that Christ is present in there merest spec or droplet that is still bread or wine. Therefore, the consecrated wine droplets washed off the sacred linenes into the sacrarium are still consecrated wine until such time as they break down into vinegar. Or do you also believe that water is a transmorgifier and can change wine into something else merely by adding enough of it to the wine?
What exactly have you been taught about the Sacrarium? And did you read my #25 here?
The idea of the sacraium is the proper and repsectful disposure of the particles of the sacred species on the linens, not their annhilation.
>> What exactly have you been taught about the Sacrarium? <<
It sounded like you were suggesting that disposing of the washwater was equivalent to pouring the wine out onto the ground!
(two points for the comment about Coors Lite, by the way.)
If so, that wasn't my intent. My larger point was that there is no sacrilege in not rescuing the sacred species from a fire, although it is certainly pious to do so if there is no risk to oneself.
Our current priest began his ministry as one of the priests serving at the cathedral in Worcester, MA. According to him, about once a week the burglar alarm would go off. It was his duty to go to the cathedral and check things out. Usually it wasn't anyone breaking in, but a bum who had passed out under a pew during the day trying to break out.
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