[blue-duncan]

“When those accidents no longer remain, neither does the Real Presence.”

Accidents are the qualities of things. Accidents always remain, that’s how you recognize “things”. When Jesus says “this is my flesh, this is my blood” under the doctrine of transubstantiation, the “substance” of the bread and wine changes into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus, based on the interpretation of John 6. Where in the scripture do you find that it changes back to the “substance” of bread and wine during the digestive process?

This question is not meant to be ridicule but to reasonably follow this doctrine to its logical conclusion.

By the way, where is the warrant for changing Jesus explicit commands and Paul’s admonishment to “eat and drink” to “eat and/or drink”?

[Petronski]

Accidents always remain...

The accidents of the host do not always remain. The wine neither. Christ specified bread and wine. When the consecrated bread and wine no longer remain as bread and wine, the Real Presence does not remain either.

[Mad Dawg]

I'm not going to address the communion in one kind thing. That's about the authority of the Church v. the Authority of Scripture - a whole different ballgame.

FWIW for Aristotle and Aquinas the accidents related to a substance do NOT always remain, (and those guys would be the authorities NOT for the correctness of our explanation, but for understanding it correctly.)

So if consecrated wine were to turn to vinegar and if a consecrated wafer were to mold and decay, in this thinking they would no longer have the accidents of bread and wine and would no longer be the locus for the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. (To the best of my recollection, Aquinas "works" this very problem. I don't have the complete Summa, when I studied this it was on a photocopy.)

Anyway, without a forensic lab or the like I think the accidents of a thoroughly rotted wafer would not remain and not pass your 'test' of recognition. Let it rot, dessicate crumble and blow away as dust. Let a mote of that dust lodge right alongside the beam in my eye. It would not be recognizable as bread.

Does that address your argument?

BTW thanks for posing the question. It IS a very different way of looking at things.

Let me know if my suggestion about river and, say, swamp, is apposite.