Unintentionally, perhaps? You know one of the nick-names for Episcopalians “Whiskeypalians.”
This is all true. I was an altar boy, and we dealt with this stuff al the time.
It struck me as interesting that people handled “holy” things as if they were radioactive – special handling garments, taking exceptional care not to get any dropped or mishandled, then washing all traces and placing it in a separate and secure location – sort of a Holy Waste Dump, rather than a toxic waste dump.
I was sort of disappointed to find that the special drain you poured the water used to wash off the priest’s fingers into drained into what was basically a pit in the ground, without any special lining or anything. It was like those pits for atomic waste they used in the 1950s in Washington state! (concrete walls, but no bottoms) This meant that, if the water table was high enough, people could get unexpectedly high levels of holiness in their drinking water!
How would you test for that?
Eucharist can actually be ground up and sent down the sacrarium, not just the residue that is washed out after cermonies.
For example, the priest hands someone a host, the person tucks it into their pocket and walks away. The Eucharist is to be retrieved and eaten or ground up and washed down the sacrarium (true case).
We had someone walk away with the host, then drop it, go to pick it up and then accidentally step on it. It was a winter day and the host was wet and dirty in a matter of 5 seconds after someone received it. The priest jumped into action to grab the host.
We fully expected that we’d be grinding the host up to be washed down the sacrarium, but our priest gobbled up the now filthy/soggy host, had the area cleaned, and then we washed the paper towles down the sacrarium.
The host should be eaten or washed into the ground under the church. So, not just residue can find its way into the ground under the church.
I guess you’d have to squirt it in Bunnicula’s eyes.
Maybe that’s what caused those periodic bouts of guilt nearly ruined our lives.