Final SCG Chapters on the Eucharist, and the First on Penance

In Chapter 62 of Book IV of Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas outlined reasonable difficulties in believing in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. The last one involved our custom at Mass of breaking the Host.

…It even seems absurd to say that the subject of the breaking of the bread at the Mass is the Body of Christ…

Since Christ’s Body, risen from the dead, and subject to no injury or corruption at this point, cannot be broken.

St. Thomas provided the key to solving this difficulty in Chapter 63. Now, in Chapter 67, he answers this particular objection. 

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 67

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Next, St. Thomas comments on the saying of Christ that supported all the objections to the Real Presence, Namely:

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 68

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Finally, to conclude the section on the Holy Eucharist, St. Thomas considers the use of leavened vs. unleavened bread.

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 69

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The next section of Book IV considers the Sacrament of Penance. St. Thomas begins by considering whether an initiated Christian can sin.

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 70

Solution to Difficulties with the Real Presence

In Chapter 62 of Book IV of Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas laid out a number of serious difficulties with crediting the Church’s faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

Those difficulties include:

How the Body of Christ comes to be on the altar, how His Body can occupy this precise space that was previously occupied by the bread and wine, and how the Body of Christ can have the appearance, taste, and smell of bread, and His Blood the appearance, taste, and smell of wine, not to mention the capacity of bread and wine to nourish and inebriate, or the capacity to spoil or burn.

St. Thomas provides the idea necessary to resolve these difficulties in Chapter 63. The consecration of the Host and Chalice brings about the transformation of the substance of the bread and wine into the substance of the Body of Christ. The consecration does not entail bringing about the presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in their proper dimensions in space.

This distinction is indeed subtle, but we can understand it, if we think of a loaf of bread.

Let’s say it’s Pepperidge Farm pumpernickel. A distinct substance.

The entirety of Pepperidge Farm pumpernickel-ness is in every slice of the loaf, and in the loaf as a whole, and in even a small bite of one slice. Pepperidge Farm pumpernickel-ness does not, in and of itself, occupy space. It occupies space through the dimensions of the bread, and Pepperidge Farm pumpernickel-ness and the dimensions of the loaf are not the same thing. After all, there are tens of thousands of loaves of the same kind of bread all over the world right now. You don’t have to know how many, in order to know what Pepperidge Farm pumpernickel-ness is.

So if you hold a slice of the bread in your hand to put some mustard on it, you are actually dealing with two things: the reality of Pepperidge Farm pumpernickel-ness, and the size and shape of the slice.

Or think of Coca-Cola. The entirety of Coca-Cola-ness resides in a 12-ounce can, or a 2-liter bottle, or the tank for a soda fountain that dispenses Coke. If you go to Mickey D’s and fill a cup with Coke, you’re actually dealing with two things: Coca-Cola-ness and the size of the cup.

The consecration at Holy Mass involves the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, a miracle as great as the creation of the universe out of nothing. It is also involves a second miracle of similar grandeur: the entire dimensions in space of the bread and wine remain, with everything attendant upon that: that is, the sensible qualities and capacities.

With this solution, St. Thomas does not intend to make it easy to believe in the consecration; he cannot do that. The Angelic Doctor concedes, in fact: believing in the Real Presence is super-humanly difficult, and it should be. Only the grace of supernatural faith suffices. We believe by virtue of a gift from heaven.

What St. Thomas does show, however, is: what we believe by supernatural faith about the Blessed Sacrament does not contradict reason; it is not impossible; it is not absurd. When we premise that God Himself brings about the miracle, the whole thing does make sense.

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Solution to difficulties regarding the place of the Body and Blood of Christ:

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 64

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Solution to difficulties regarding the sensible qualities of the consecrated Host and chalice.

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 65

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Solution to difficulties regarding the capacity of the consecrated sacrament to nourish you or make you drunk, or to rot or burn.

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 66

Michael Voris Interview

18th Anniversary

Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ.

Eighteen years ago today, then-Cardinal Archbishop Theodore McCarrick ordained nine of us as priests, sacred ministers of the holy mysteries of Jesus Christ, chaste and loving.

At the ceremony, we all promised to respect and obey the bishop. Over the course of the ensuing years, McCarrick gave me my first three parish assignments. I gladly did his will.

But [PG-13] if he asked me to play with his penis, should I have obeyed?

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The Cardinal was a criminal. For decades he abused his power as a priest, then as a bishop, to obtain cheap sexual gratification for himself.

In May of 2006, right after he gave me one of the happiest assignments I have ever had, McCarrick suddenly announced his retirement. He was evidently able-bodied and vigorous. Something weird was going on.

Turns out that the highest authorities in the Church were working behind the scenes to cover-up McCarrick’s crimes. My own current bishop, Barry Knestout, was apparently in-the-know about the cover-up.

It was an institutional deception piled on top of a criminal betrayal. When we learned the truth, over a decade later, many of us experienced intense anger and pain. I will spend the rest of my life trying to deal with the effects of this betrayal of my trust in Church leadership.

We priests do our best to obey. But we are also baptized and confirmed Catholic Christians, who have to prepare ourselves for judgment by God, just like everyone else.

We’re human beings. We’re not trained monkeys.

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Last year, Bishop Knestout assigned me as prison chaplain for the diocese. I could not undertake the assignment because…

1. The pandemic has prevented prison ministry for the past year.

2. Bishop Knestout suspended my priestly faculties shortly after giving me the assignment.

A local businessman here recently offered to purchase a building for me to set up an independent church. “Father, people will come from all over!”

This kind, well-meaning Christian has the necessary money. But I do not have the will to do such a thing. I believe in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, governed by Pope Francis, and all the bishops in communion with him.

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I obey my suspension and celebrate Mass in the company of just the Lord, the angels, and the saints. Today my Mass will be for Theodore McCarrick, that he might get to heaven somehow. The pope kicked him out of the priesthood two years ago.

I wrote my bishop last month, asking him if we could try to find a compromise about this blog, so that I could undertake the assignment he gave me last year, before he suspended me.

He wrote back, insisting that I would never have an assignment. He urged me to ask the pope to remove me from Holy Orders. Then he quickly wrote again, informing me that he had asked the pope to laicize me. So I could wind up just like the former Cardinal who ordained me. Seems strange, since McCarrick abused people, and I just wrote about it.

Every priest I know finds Bishop Knestout’s petition breathtakingly unbelievable. Especially when you consider that there are convicted criminal pedophile priests alive and well today, who have never been laicized.

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I do not know what my bishop has sent to Rome. I have asked for more information, and for a chance to understand the rationale and defend myself.

In his letter to me, Bishop Knestout referred to my “persistent disobedience.” He says I should be kicked out of the priesthood for a failure to honor my promise to obey. He has ordered me to shut up about all this. I have not done so.

Can’t we keep this in mind here, please: I made my promise of obedience to a criminal, a criminal that everyone in a miter covered-up for.

I’m doing my best here. I really am, all things considered.

How about cutting a suffering dude a break? I will happily minister to the incarcerated criminals.

After all, a criminal ministered the holy priesthood to me, eighteen years ago today.

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Holy Virgin, help of Christians and Mother of the Church, pray for us who have recourse to you.

Objections to the Real Presence, with Reply

Difficulties with the Real Presence:

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 62

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A solution to the difficulties: Transubstantiation.

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 63

Denazification of the Church

Yesterday the Vatican presented to the world a three-year plan for holding Holy Meetings (Synods). The topic of the Holy Meetings? Holy Meetings.

A well-meaning Parish-Council chairman once asked me if we could hold a few council meetings–not about building plans or language barriers between parishioners, but about “the role of the Parish Council.” I replied, “Okay. But I would prefer that you beat me with rods. The ‘role’ of the Parish Council is to discuss actual problems with me.”

If Geoffrey Chaucer remained on earth with us, he could produce a fitting memorial to the three-year Vatican Synod on Synodality. It might include: “Roman Monsignor with an Outdated Laptop Tale,” and “Chancery Steubenville Grad Loses His Mind Tale,” and “Nun in a Pantsuit Tale.”

Seriously, though, I would like to propose an actual topic for universal discussion in our Church, during this “synodal journey.” I thank Mr. Chris O’Leary for giving me the idea, which he broached in one of his podcasts.

Chris has broken new ground in understanding the Catholic sex-abuse cover-up. He has uncovered evidence of a pattern that no one, to my knowledge, had identified before.

By studying priest-assignment records, Chris figured out that his parish was a “holding-tank” for criminal sex-abuser priests. The Archbishop of St. Louis regularly assigned such priests as parochial vicars there, one after another, for a quarter-century.

Why?

Certainly not to protect children. Chris himself was abused by one of those parochial vicars–with the knowledge of then rectory-resident Father Timothy Dolan, now Cardinal-Archbishop of New York.

Chris speculates that the diocese used the parish as a holding-tank in order to protect the criminals from prosecution. The parish lies in a suburb that likely had policemen and judges who would not have prosecuted clergymen, or even arrested them, during the period that Chris has studied, the second half of the last century.

Chris raises the question: Was this a national, or even international, practice? Finding jurisdictions where sex-abuse arrests and prosecutions of priests wouldn’t happen, then assigning the criminals there?

We do not know. Hence, my proposal…

(photo by Reg Speller)

Adolf Hitler presided over a criminal national government. The Nazis ruled Germany for over a decade, and they systematically violated the most-sacred laws that govern human society, the fundamental rules that protect the innocent and the weak from arbitrary violence. The Nazis did this without having to face justice, because they were in charge of all the nation’s institutions.

After the Allies finally defeated Hitler, the occupying powers faced the task of “denazifying” Germany. The Allies attempted to put on trial the Nazis who had abused their power of office during Hitler’s regime. And denazification also involved weeding-out from any position of authority anyone associated with the Nazi criminal enterprise.

The success of denazification is a matter of historical debate, but that’s not my point here.

The term that the United Nations now uses for this type of effort is: transitional justice. Recognize and account for the abuses of a criminal regime. Establish a means to keep the offenders out of power. Re-build a government based on human rights and genuine legal principles. Root out the corrosive ideology that justified the crimes of the old regime.

Don’t we need just such a process of “transitional justice” in our Church?

The Pennsylvania Grand-Jury Report of August, 2018, gave us a model of the kind of investigation we need, in every diocese, in every country in the world. We are, in fact, dealing with a kind of Holocaust. The Catholic sex-abuse crisis has cost thousands of lives, and God only knows how many souls.

And, as the Vatican’s McCarrick Report demonstrates–by its total absence of any accountability for any living prelate–the false governing ideology endures. Cover up. Cover it all up, in the name of preserving the irrational prerogatives claimed by the hierarchy: government by absolute, unchecked power.

In the Pennsylvania counties covered by the 2018 report, the grand jury uncovered a tip of a Greenland-sized iceberg.

In our diocese, the crimes and cover-ups remain hidden. One of our priests became the first bishop of Memphis, Tennessee. He was a criminal sex abuser. To this day, his victims live in the shadows. No one has been held accountable for helping the malefactor avoid justice under law. Bishop Knestout commissioned a secret “reconciliation” program which has successfully swept the whole business under the rug.

Instead of holding Holy Meetings about Holy Meetings, why not use this three-year process to discuss this problem and try to deal with it? To face the fact that our Church needs a “transitional justice” program? To conquer the culture of secrecy, weed-out cover-uppers, and re-establish the rule of law in our community?

Short SCG Chapters on the Sacraments of Initiation

St. Thomas has outlined an analogy between bodily life and spiritual life. Now he develops that analogy to explain the sacraments of Christian initiation…

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Holy Baptism

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 59

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Confirmation

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 60

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The Holy Eucharist

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 61

SCG on the Sacraments

Three short chapters.

On having visible sacraments…

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 56

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On the sacraments of the Law, and of the Gospel…

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 57

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And on the number of the sacraments, which reflects what is necessary for the propagation and sustenance of bodily life…

Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chapter 58

Interview from the Ecclesiastical Gulag

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Some of my previous Gulag Dispatches…

(I wrote nine last year, but these particular ones are perhaps worth revisiting now)

#1 attempts to make sense of my “offenses” under Church law (May 15, 2020)

#2 considers the Roman tribunal that will consider the case and asks for a recusal (May 17)

[NB on dispatch #2. Donald Card. Wuerl turned 80 last November, which means he no longer sits on any Roman tribunals. The Vatican appears to have timed the release of its McCarrick Report to correspond with Wuerl’s aging-out of official Vatican roles, since the report casts enormous shadows on Wuerl’s credibility. Nonetheless, I fear that he continues to exercise influence over the decisions of the Cong. for the Clergy.]

#5 considers freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and evangelization (June 4)

#6 asks, What does “Justice for Father Mark” Mean? (July 4)

#7 outlines The Discussion We Want to Have (July 16)

#8 Canonical Arguments and the Secret McCarrick Report (August 4)

#9 Walter Winchell + the Gas-lit Gulag (August 25)

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Pretty grim situation.

But, on the flip: We can hope for holy water in the stoups at the church doors soon 🙂 We will be able to bless ourselves coming and going, like was always did before. Rebirth.

Catholic Whistleblowers Letter

The Catholic Whistleblowers is an organization dedicated to supporting sex-abuse survivors.

I am honored by this letter to Bishop Knestout.

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Plus a tweet from my mom:

Cover-Up Bishop Canceling Honest Priest https://t.co/OPufd97n0v. A bishop’s vicious attempt to kick @martinsvillemar , my son and brother of @morningmoneyben , out of the priesthood.

— Ann B. White (@AnnBWhite1) May 14, 2021