Posted on 03/24/2006 6:06:40 AM PST by marshmallow
DALLAS. A “host” kept in a jar of water for four weeks grew fungus and bacterial colonies in a natural process, a laboratory report concluded about an incident in a local parish church that created public speculation.
A March 23 letter from Dallas Bishop Charles Grahmann to the pastor of St. James Parish relayed that what some were calling a ‘miracle’ of a host “contains nothing of a supernatural nature.”
The letter to Msgr. Mario Magbanua states: “At my request the object you submitted to me, around which there was heightened publicity, was presented to Dr. Marcy Brown Marsden, chairman and associate professor of biology, University of Dallas, and Dr. Frank Doe of the same department, for tentative identification and characterization of the object.”
The bishop said that after analysis was done he was provided with their conclusion.
They told the bishop: “We conclude that the object is a combination of fungal mycelia and bacterial colonies that have been incubated within the aquatic environment of the glass during the four-week period in which it was stored in the open air.”
The bishop further wrote: ““From this conclusion the phenomenon was of the natural order and contains nothing of a supernatural nature. Thus, you need to remove yourself from any further activity surrounding this matter and its exaggerated claims.”
The incident began about a month ago when a young boy received the Eucharist at Mass and then became sick in the restroom. Ushers who checked on him found the intact host in the bin.
The ushers reportedly summoned Msgr. Magbanua, who came to retrieve the host. He put the host in water to dissolve, where it remained unseen until March 19. Its appearance had changed, viewers said.
Within hours people were coming to the church to see the host, which is located in a low-income area and has approximately 2,000 registered parishioners.
Fueled by telephone and e-mail stories saying a miracle had occurred, as well as media reports, curious scores of the faithful hoping to see something extraordinary began to show up.
Among those was Shirley Vilfordi, a member of St. Rita Parish in Dallas. She was among those who suggested people should not be too quick to rush to conclusions, and thanked those who took quick action to discover the truth.
“We praise God for our beloved church who wants to investigate these things thoroughly rather than falsely mislead the faithful,” Vilfordi said as the investigation was ongoing.
There have been other cases in past years when a host received fungal and/or bacteria contamination when it was not properly consumed and/or disposed.
Church officials said the matter is now closed and called on faithful to end any further speculation.
I really think one has to be very cautious with Malachi Martin's claims. He simply is not credible on some things. I'm sure he is credible on others. But knowing which things are which is the problem with people like him.
The reason this particular claim strikes me as incredible is that throughout history, those who wish to perform Satanic rituals or use the Sacrament for pious but superstitious and sacriligious purposes have sought to steal Consecrated Hosts from tabernacles or otherwise make off with them. Already Gregory the Great (ca. 600) tells of a woman who concealed the Host she received in her mouth, then in a handkerchief and then buried it with her cabbages in order to make them grow better. She was punished by getting sick or something. So the practice goes way back.
But if a priest could simply consecrate validly while at the same time intending to use the Sacrament achieved thusly for Satanic purposes as you describe, why the need to steal Consecrated Hosts down through the centuries?
Moreover, simply prima facie, what you describe here necessarily involves absence of intent to do what the Church intends. For a priest to speak the words of institution with proper intent yet intend the words of consecration to serve a larger Satanic intent defies logic. Surely the larger evil intent renders false any supposed "intent" to achieve a valid Consecration.
I'm sorry, but this way of parsing it reduces the sacrament to magic--turns the words of institution into a magical incantation and that is exactly the reason why "valid intent" is one of three conditions for a valid sacrament--so that it cannot be used in the way described here. If Malachi Martin gave this chain of reasoning, then he discredited himself, in my view. In the interest of making a shocking claim about the Smoke of Satain in the Church he employs a line of reasoning that reduces the Sacrament to magic. I'm sorry, but I have to say that Malachi Martin is not credible on this point.
You misread both Trent and Unitatis redingratio of Vatican II. Trent's anathemas do not say that those anathematized simply cannot be saved. It does say that they are in heresy and need to repent of it. Trent anathematized people on the basis of their beliefs, not on the basis of their "church membership."
Vatican II does not say that all non-Catholics are saved. It says that they can be saved even while not formal members of the visible Catholic Church. It turns on the distinction between those who knowingly persist in erroneous, heretical doctrine and those who adhere to a non-Catholic denomination without fully realizing the reasons why. Someone who has been misinformed about what Catholics teach and believe might adhere to a non-Catholic denomination because he believes Catholics teach something truly wrong when in fact they do not teach what he thinks they teach. He is not culpable for error in the same way that the 16th-Century Reformers might have been, especially after they were directly admonished as to what the Church does teach, in the decrees of Trent.
Moreover, mere formal membership in the Catholic Church does not guarantee salvation. Many Catholics could and probably will end up in Hell. Those who have had fuller exposure to the truth and do not live according to it are more culpable than those who through no fault of their own have never been exposed to Catholic teachings and believe, falsely instructed, that Catholics are pelagians or practice idolatry. Of course a person so instructed has a responsibility to check out whether the things he has been told about what Catholics believe are true or not. So those non-Catholics who engage in polemics on the internet about Catholics being pelagians or idolaters at least have been told these claims are not true. The ball is then in their court to find out who is right--the Catholics who say, no, we don't teach works-righteousness or magic or idolatry or the neo-Reformation anti-Catholic polemicists who continue to insist that Catholics to worship idols and believe in works-righteousness.
But the run-of-the-mill Evangelical Protestant who firmly believes in Jesus Christ as God incarnate and has never paid attention to whether the stuff he's been fed about Catholic errors is true or false, is not in the same category as someone who has deliberately and knowingly rejected the truth.
This is called invincible ignorance and it was allowed for already at the time of Trent and was explicitly formulated by 19thc Catholic official teaching. It was not simply invented at Vatican II but is the consistent teaching of the Church. Mere membership in the Catholic Church or not in the Catholic Church by itself does not save or damn. What counts is how one acts on the basis of what one knows and whether one has, knowing that the Catholic Church's claims are true, then deliberately and knowingly rejected them.
That's actually a very clever criticism. Congratulations. :-) There's a bit of a difference, but I'll admit it's subtle.
In the case of the Host, God says clearly, "This is the body and blood of the risen Christ." It's obvious (because of appearances) that it doesn't look like the glorified flesh and blood of the risen savior, but notice that God didn't say what it looks like, but only what it is. It's also obvious that the reason it still looks like bread is not that God intends to deceive you (he already told you the truth about what it was), so there must be some other purpose to the unchanged appearance. (Obviously, most people would recoil at the idea of receiving a bloody piece of human flesh in their mouth, so it's a condescension.)
WRT creationism, though, God (apparently) said he did things one way in the Bible, but appearances again do not seem to agree. This a bit different, though, since is not a distinction about what something is, but about how it came to be.
Now, God cannot deceive. (If you think that's an obvious statement, please understand that there are some people -- they shouldn't be Christians, because the NT specifically says that God cannot deceive (e.g., Heb 6:18) -- who specifically argue that God does deceive to trap the wicked.)
It is therefore impossible for God to build a universe that looks 20 billion years old but is really 6500 years old, not because such a thing cannot be done, but because it would constitute telling a lie.
That means there are only two choices. One is that the science that says that the universe is ca. 20 billion years old, not about 6500, is mistaken on some tremendously major point. I think that's hard to defend, but it's not inimical to faith.
The other possibility is that it is wrong to take the early chapters of Genesis as literal narrative history (the way people in our day would write history), but that they are "myth," understood in the narrow sense as "a story told to teach cosmic truths". (Please notice, "myth" is not "lie". For example, Catholics are required by their faith to believe in a literal Adam and Eve, and a literal fall. The fine-print details may be mythic and often symbolic, but the basic events and characters were real.)
That was the option St. Augustine chose, and he's a persuasive enough authority for me. In fact, he described Genesis using essentially the same words I used above to describe the unchanged appearance of the Host: he said it was a condescension to our limited ability to understand what really happened.
The Host is not dead, so your question doesn't apply.
Then will not even have the guts to say what the council of Trent declared. That all protestents are beyond salvation in any way. What does anathama mean if not that.
Don't you think we can define our own terms? "Anathema" was a formal excommunication. The penalty itself no longer exists since 1983. You can't excommunicate a Protestant since they aren't communicants in the first place.
The Church said very clearly in Vatican II that Protestants are not "beyond salvation in any way". Neither, for that matter, is anyone else if, aided by grace, they do God's will to the best of their ability to understand it.
So "Christ" became moldy? Is that what this means?
BWAHAHAHAHA! Thanks for the ping, Gamecock. :)
Thanks for the advice, I've heard it all before although you have been the most charitable. Fr. Martin, was a saintly priest who has been the victim of much slander and calumny because he dared to draw attention to the crisis in the Church and specifically the link of Satanism with the Homosexual lavender mafia. Aside from his books, he was speaking about this in taped interviews, (some by Bernard Janzen that I highly recommend)in the early and mid 1990's - long before the crisis hit the front page news - and he named names.
Well, perhaps (and Deo Gratias) there just aren't enough Satanic priests to go around. There are also many "amature" Satanists out there.
Would that seem confusing to you?
Yes it is confusing to Catholics as well as Protestants and pagans. The Catholic Church is now going through the greatest crisis since the time of St. Athanasius. Trent was an infallible council, it defined doctrine, and bound the faithful to it. The 'separated brethren' is just what you say it is, something that is 'in vogue' with Modernist Churchmen, some who are actively seeking to destroy the Church from within, others who are just willing pawns. (They won't succeed in the end though). Ecumenism is not a doctrine it is a policy, and a failed one at that.
I have no doubt that some of Malachi Martin's claims about the Curia are true. I just do not believe that one can believe all of them. I'm am quite convinced that he told the truth about some things. However I also am quite convinced that he went beyond the pale and became reckless and claimed things to be true or described things in exaggeration and misrepresentation. Since I am in no position to distinguish the true from the false in his accusations nor even with any confidence to know whether a lot of his charges or only a few of his charges are true, I take his specific claims with considerable skepticism but consider his general accusations generally and approximately credible. I would not be so quick to apply the term "saintly" to him and I think it very unwise to take him as a fundamental guide to that era in the Curia and the Church.
P-Marlowe -
The idea of the "substance and accidents" of things was explained systematically by Aristotle in his work on Logic, and has been the foundation for just about all studies of philosophy ever since. St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle's thinking and expanded on it to explain transubstantiation. That is how a communion wafer can still look, taste, and seem to the touch to be a communion wafer (its "accidents"), while also BEING our Lord at the same time (its "substance"). This is why when the "accidents" of the bread break down, the "substance" of Our Lord is no longer there - the reason why the priest put it into the water in the first place, so that when the "accidents" of the bread disolved he could be sure that the "substance" of Our Lord was no longer there. I believe you can find out all you need to know in the "Summa Theologica" and other works of St. Thomas Aquinas. There is also a wonderful show on EWTN where the host explains St. Thomas' work on this subject (I don't remember the name), as well as documents in the EWTN library.
I think when you finish reading up on it you will realize that it is neither "gnostic" nor "voodoo" but is actually a very sophisticated philosophical explanation for one of the greatest gifts to us from Our Lord.
I wondered where this whole idea came from. Obviously it wasn't from the Bible.
All this hocus pocus about the substance of the Lord being dissolved in water? I'm sorry but chemically speaking when the substance of something is dissolved in water it merely is in a state of suspension. When the water evaporates, whatever was dissolved reappears. I don't think either Aristotle or Aquinas was aware of this fact.
It certainly is chemically possible (with God). But if it is chemically acheived, then the wafer would taste like human flesh and the wine would taste like blood.
There was no physical "transubstantiation" at the Last Supper. Jesus was not passing his flesh around at the Last Supper. His flesh was on his body and was not in the bread. His blood was in his veins and not in the cup. The Last supper was a spiritual "transubstantiation" and not a physical one.
If in fact there is a physical transubstantiation, then men would not die physically if they partake of the eucharist. They would live forever.
How do you know there was no physical transubstantiation at the Last Supper? Jesus said, "This is My Body." He did not say, "This is my body within the bread" or "This bread is a symbol of my body" or any other variation. He said it IS MY BODY. The Bible clearly teaches what He said. He meant that it was His body, and His disciples knew He meant it, too, because the Bible says they thought it was a hard saying and some of them left Him over it.
I used the phrase "chemically changed" because you did. You still aren't getting the idea of "accidents" and "substance" and that the "substance" of the communion wafer can be Jesus' Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity while the "accidents" are still bread.
You wrote: "If in fact there is a physical transubstantiation, then men would not die physically if they partake of the eucharist. They would live forever." It looks to me like that is exactly what Jesus said here in John 6:53-58:
***Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.***
I am sincerely interested in how, if evolution is correct, you have an Adam and an Eve.
Can you elaborate in simple english.
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