"excepte necessitie otherwise require" : comments [Matthew's Journal]

I quite often try getting the last little dribble out of chalices! After draining them, we wash them with water and consume the water. I accept that even that probably leaves a tiny amount of the consecrated wine in the chalice, but we then use purificators to wipe the chalice, and when the purificators are washed, the water is poured into the sacrarium, onto the earth. If there still remain some molecules of the consecrated wine on the chalice, then it matters not, because the vessel will never be used for any other purpose. At all points the chalice and the water and purificators used to cleanse it are treated with due reverence.

None of this would be true if people get the consecrated wine on their hands. If they wash their hands afterwards, then the water will pass into the common sewer. If they fail to do so, then they'll end up spreading the consecrated wine all over things they touch.

Edited Date: 2009-07-29 01:34 pm (UTC)

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There's respect, and then there's obsession!

What happens if one of the biscuits breaks?

S.

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One of the biscuits (or 'wafers' as we usually call them) is always broken, but this is done over the ciborium or patten, so any crumbs will fall into it, and the ciborium and patten are cleansed afterwards as with the chalice. The wafers are quite robust, and I've never heard of one breaking by accident. However, it does seem to me one advantage of receiving on the tongue, that there's no danger of any particle of the wafer getting left on the communicant's hands.

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Cool. When I break things like that crumbs fly everywhere, but I'm glad all yours always fall straight downwards.

(Of course, you should be using proper bread, but if we were to start, why start there?)

S.

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The Orthodox church does use bread.

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So does Coventry Cathedral.

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Do they really? Interesting.

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To our own special (and secret!) recipe, I'm told. Occasionally they ask for more volunteers to bake it.

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I know. So do properly reformed churches. It's just that Anglicanism was regrettably infected by Catholicism back in the nineteenth century, the attempted inoculation back in '46 obviously having failed to take.

S.

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I don't think it has anything to do with being "properly reformed". I've been to Lutheran churches where wafers were used. Wikipedia states that several protestant demoninations use unleavened matza.

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Believe me, if you try to break normal matza the crumbs will get everywhere.

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Anglicanism is (by its own definition) both Catholic and Reformed (http://www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=about). Perhaps you don't consider it to be "properly" reformed, whatever that means. By "proper" bread you presumably mean leavened? Of course St Paul has something to say about the yeast of sin.

(http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/5-8.htm) ()

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This person posted anonymously, so LJ has eaten their links. They were:

i) Catholic and Reformed

ii) yeast of sin

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Editorial note

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