Reminds me of when then-U.Va. basketball coach Terry Holland named his dog Dean Smith. 
Yes, and my earlier phrasing was clumsy. I said:
That’s wrong. Catholic doctrine holds that when bread and wine is consecrated during Mass, it changes to the actual, real body and blood of Christ. The bread is the Body; the wine is the Blood.
Now, there is no requirement to receive both; the whole and entire Christ and the true sacrament are received under either species. A communicant receives the fullness of grace of the sacrament by receiving the Sacred Host alone, or the Precious Blood alone, or by both together.
Just to make the point that while Communion is available at every Mass, a practicing Catholic is only required to receive once a year at Easter. However, attendance at Mass each week is required.
And I’ll add that I have always been told that one should limit oneself to taking it once per day at the most, as more than once is considered “excessive peity.” (I think the thought being that you risk taking it for the wrong reason, and committing the sin of pride.) Not sure if this is a hard and fast rule, or just a guideline (it’s amazingly difficult to distinguish the two sometimes!)
Mangetout explains my intended meaning well. The “sons by adoption” bit is from Paul and not a part of the Christological doctrine that I was otherwise triying to explain.
For those having difficulty with the idea of something being a core element of something but not perceivable by the senses – consider love. Love is a very real phenomenon experienced in different ways by the overwhelming majority of human beings. While there may be external sensory cues that X loves Y, there may also not be such cues, and the conclusion as to whether X loves Y depends entirely on subjective individual testimony by X.
In the same sense, the experience of “making a good communion” will vary from individual to individual, is quite real but totally based in personal subjective experience, and as objective phenomenological behavior maps to a basic receiving of bread/host and wine/grape juice that may be rote or heartfelt and from which no one can detect what goes on in the individual – just as no one can truly know the sense of love that X feels for Y.
Yep, definitely only once per day that you’re celebrating. For example, at daily Mass on Saturday and at Saturday vigil Mass for Sunday would be OK. But attending two Sunday Masses? Receive at only one of them.
Scrupulosity in modern terms is a manifestation of OCD focused on religious behaviors; having to perform rituals in exactly a certain way, going to confession way more than needed, etc.
Faith?
Thank you Bricker for such a clear and interesting explanation of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
On the other hand, at least from the papacy of Pius X in the early 20th century, (and periodically throughout history), Catholics are generally encouraged to receive communion any time they participate at mass. (Yes, there is the “only once a day except for Easter” limit on receiving more than once, but the current understanding is that each Catholic who is not in grave sin will receive communion when attending mass, regardless that the rule only insists on receivimg the Eucharist once each year during Eastertide.)
There are many times Jesus said,“My Father and yours.” I doubt that Jesus thought of Himself as any more God than His peers. I know I could be wrong,but I began to believe this after many times reading the Gospels and thinking about what it could mean. I believe the Word “God” had different meanings in the pre- Christian era.
Monavis
You’re very welcome.
It wasn’t my intention to convert anyone. But after reading the other threads that touch on this topic, I really wanted to shut down the strawmen that were cavorting around. I perfectly understand anyone saying, “There’s no evidence for this idea, and so I reject it.” But it was very irritating to read, “No lab test will discover any difference in the bread! Ah ha! Gotcha!”
Ok this will be a rare moment for me so be patient:
I even as a hard athiest think that the way this whole wafer stealing stunt went down is epic assholishness. Not because I have any particular respect for the ritual, but because I mentioned this incident to a friend who was raised in a very catholic family. The first thing he said was “Why didn’t he ask for an extra one for a sick relative”. I asked him to elaborate, he said it was fairly common to be able to do this and many churches even had little portable communion service sets you could check out for just such situations.
In light of this, this person set out not just to hijack a wafer, they went out to make a scene, when there were simple less disruptive options.
Just because your friend knew of this option doesn’t mean the guy who took the wafer did.
He claimed he was taking it back to his seat to show a friend, not to abscond with a wafer.
And the portable kit usually gets taken by a Eucharistic minister who visits shut-ins or people who can’t make it to church – I didn’t think anyone could just ask for it.
As far as I have ever heard, you are right…I’m pretty sure they only give it to those who have been through training to be a EM. Typically, a parishioner with a shut-in relative will call the parish office and request that communion be brought to the person, and a priest or a eucharistic minister will pay them a visit (if it’s a permanent shut-in situation, you can set up a regular schedule). If a person asked for an extra Host for that purpose, they would probably be directed to call the parish office to set up a visit. I really don’t see the priest or Eucharistic minister just handing over an extra…that risks the exact situations we’ve been discussing here that they try to avoid.