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Mormons don’t drink alcohol so there goes the wine,

Well, I hope you don't drink orange juice or use mouthwash.

Laboratory samplings of commonly consumed fruit juices and sugar-based soft drinks purchased from a supermarket (and tested right from the carton the day they were put on the store shelf) all showed measurable amounts of ethanol, up to 0.1 percent.

So if you want to be consistent, you will not drink any fresh fruit drink or soft drink. Frankly I never understood the LDS idea that you could substitute water for the fruit of the vine. While you might have an argument that you should use grape juice (since it is the fruit of the vine), there is no biblical basis that I can even imagine for using tap water.

Now in that regard, I can't help but notice that the Catholics have solved this problem by removing the wine from the sacrament altogether. So MHG, is it truly a biblical Eucharist if there is no wine???

Do you (MHG) think that so many Catholics might be converting to Mormonism because the Church has refused to give them the whole Eucharist (body and blood)?

Or is the blood superfluous?

As an Episcopalian, the question of wine or grape juice is superfluous, but part of what Jesus instituted with His disciples was the blood at the Last Supper(the foreshadowing of the wedding feast to come), and the wine is of this fashion which He started His ministry with at the wedding feast. Besides, He said it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles the man.

I am reminded of the analogies regarding the wine press and the fruit of the vine and the vineyard parables ... Jesus turned water into wine, not wine into water. When the life is in the blood, it isn’t about the water content, it is about the life carrying components.

Transubstantiation might be construed to infer water is fully efficacious in the Eucharist, but then wouldn’t Jesus have changed wine somewhere into water instead of water into wine to complete the wedding festivities?

I am of the school which believes the wedding miracle was the opening of His ministry to reach culmination with Gesthemane. He started His witness to men with water into wine and brought it to a close with sweating as it were great drops of His own blood much the way a winepress crushes out the fluid of the grape for transformation into wine. Then He was crucified for us. Using water in the Eucharist would be rather anemic, not to mention a confusion when baptism in water is in the salvation transformation equation.