Sacrament and beyond

A little light theological speculation for Sunday…..

According to Catholic doctrine, during Mass, the consecrated wafer and wine are “transubstantiated” into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, which are consumed by the worshipers. The question is, what happens then?

In the first place, since you are what you eat, doesn’t that mean that all practicing Catholics are partially composed of divine substance, in the same proportion as the ratio of consecrated wafers to everything else they eat?

Even more disturbing, the molecules making up the wafer and wine, having played their roles in the body’s chemical reactions, are eventually passed back into the lower digestive tract and excreted. Remember, this is material which the Church’s doctrine claims is actually the physical substance of a deity. Consecrated communion wafers are holy objects requiring special handling. So what is the theological status of feces and urine containing the same substance? Are the sewer systems in Catholic countries suffused with a faint radiance of the Divine?

(Similar questions could be posed concerning semen — would fellatio qualify as an indirect form of receiving communion? — but that really has more ramifications than I have room to get into here.)

I wonder if the Church’s theologians have ever considered this problem.