Science Defeats a Rogue Communion Wafer

sceince being sceince,this should be repeatable. try dropping a wafer on your floor and see what happens.does it turn red ,what about on other church floors,or is it just this church floor,might still be unanswered,then what would we do,mmmm

Ndonnan: I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at, here. Obviously there is not this sort of fungus on everyone’s floor. Are you suggesting that because this occurrence was rare and not likely to be repeated in most situations, that it can still classify as a miracle? Or are you suggesting we start a new fad by seeing how many colors we can turn our water? 🙂  Elaborate!

This isn’t shocking. The Catholic church embraces science. If you want to bash science haters, you need to look at other branches of Christianity like Baptist.

I’d have to add a caveat to this. The Catholic church is extremely diverse and you have different factions with different levels of support for things like church tradition vs biblical inerrancy, and science vs miracle claims with priests and congregants on both sides of many of these debates.

You can run into a Jesuits who are just as atheistic as Tillich or the local priest which ultimately defended his faith by founding it on a single miracle: the shroud of tourin (seriously).

Just remember, the flat earth society meeting was majority Catholic (which is very tiny tiny amount of Catholics).

Defending his faith by using the shroud of tourin is no different than using a bible. None of it’s true, unless you believe.

Sure. What do they teach in Health class?

I think this is great news… seeing as the Catholic Church once determined the capybara was a fish, so it could be eaten on Fridays.  And yes, they do embrace science… in a way.  I remember my 6th grade science lab at a Catholic school.  There were two time lines that wrapped around the walls of the classroom.  One showed the scientific understanding of history at that time, the other (which was underneath) was of the six days that god created the earth.  I just remember that the first day (of the Catholic, biblical timeline) spanned millions of years of the geologic time line.  This was in the 70s.  So, basically, I’m not surprised by this post, but I am glad they had the moldy host tested… and reported the results accurately.

Before it was politicized, an old gay friend of mine was talking about how the local priests at his church-run summer camp taught kids about safe sex and condoms. But this was the 70’s/80’s.

We were taught about all forms of birth control. Even condoms. 

 It was like that in the early 90s. When I was looking in to sending my eldest to Catholic school, just a few years ago, I was told that it was still like that.

As an atheist, I would still prefer to send my kids to Catholic school. At least there, they aren’t taught creation in science class. It’s unfortunate that I can’t afford it.

This must be too good to be true. Are you sure this isn’t from a spoof website Hemant because I really would like this story to be true.

If you’re going to insist that the Catholic Church is completely anti-science and will never change, then of course this is a shock to you.  But if you actually paid attention to what the church has done, this wouldn’t be surprising at all.  They’re not completely pro-science, especially when it has anything to do with sexuality, but they’ve come a long way from the political ostracizing of Galileo three hundred and fifty years ago.

Well, this one miracle may have just been a fungus.  But all those eucharistic miracles that happened before we had the ability to check?  Totally miraculous.

Continuing the Catholic Church’s embrace of science, the Vatican has announced an ambitious survey to finally determine scientifically how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Dubbed The Papal Pinhead Project, a team of Bishops will work with a team of some of the most respected experts in microscopic observation. A collection of hundreds of pins from around the world will be blessed and scrutinized under dozens of similarly blessed optical microscopes, transmission electron microscopes, and scanning electron microscopes. Side by side, both scientists and clergy will observe the Holy pinheads through the Holy microscopes while Holy dance music is played 24 hours a day, seven days a week for at least one year to see what they can Holy See.

A team of expert psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists will also be close by at all times to attend to the mental health needs of the observers.

The Catholic Church actually had official astronomers and an observatory for many centuries. And still do. It was of interest to them because they could determine the exact date of holidays .

As you said, they are somewhat selective in what they accept. If it fits with their ideology and political goals, they certainly do. If not it’s ignored and suppressed

Umm.  I think your a little confused.  The actual process would be to take another sample of said red material and confirm it’s make up.   I have no doubt that the results would be repeatable.   
If your suggesting a scientific test to determine how easily said bit of grub can pick up fungus, that is an entirely different scenario and has nothing to do with the claim that *this* particular wafer was the subject of a miracle .

Huh. My sex ed consisted of “Don’t have pre marital sex. You will catch a disease, die and go to Hell for having pre marital sex”.   This was late 70’s early 80’s.

“The host in question has been disposed of in a manner prescribed by church law.”I’m trying to picture this. An alter boy being given the thing in a petri dish and tossing it out the back door of the sachristy? A priest blessing a sink, then pouring it dour the drain? What is the prescribed church law?! Inquiring minds want to know!

Heliocentrism only took centuries to confirm if you think of Nicolaus Copernicus who published the idea in 1543 – or of other people who came to the same conclusion much earlier. Of course there was considerable inertia because ancient Greek philosophy and concepts were still widely accepted, just as Galen’s flawed medical ideas were the standard for over one and a half thousand years. They clung to it because had been accepted for so long, not because there was any proof for it. But the work of Johannes Kepler and Isaac Netwon pretty much established heliocentrism as the best theoretical model in the late 17th century and by then better telescopes enabled better physical observations.

One often forgotten event in the Galileo affair is that he published a book that critiqued the whole debate (in the form of a dialog) and one of the characters was perceived to be stand-in for the Pope. This character was portrayed somewhat as a fool, or at least he was thought to be. The Pope (by then the old one had died and Urban VIII came to power) was then persuaded that this was really an intentional attack on him. That wasn’t the case – at most it could have been written better. But previously he  defended Galileo and they used to be friends, but turned him against Galileo who also lost other important supporters over it. If he still had them on his side during the 1632 trial things would have ended differently.

Still, the main point remains the Church’s stubborn refusal to publish and tolerate anything that contradicted scripture. That’s how it started and it’s what he was condemned for

Steve, the character in the book was named “Simplicio”, the book, “Two New Sciences”.  The book was part dialogue, part demonstrable argument.  I remember working through the propositions with my class in college.  I would describe it as brilliance to the point of beauty.

Of the two motions of the Earth (orbit and rotation) it is my understanding that the former was proved by Bessel around 1830, and the latter by Foucaut around 1850.

Bessel’s proof was the stellar paralax measurement of a star’s distance from the Earth, whence we get the term parsec (short for parallax second), as in, “She’ll do the Kessel run in about 12 parsecs.)

Though I did hear once that Bessel’s proof was predated a few years by someone else, though I can’t remember who that was to have been.

Consecrated bread/cracker must be disposed of by eating it, burying it, or dissolving in water then disposing of the water. This water, or consecrated wine, can be consumed or poured into the ground. Catholic churches will have a special sink that drains not into sewers or such but directly into the ground. This is what the wine glasses and such are washed in so that not a tiny drop gets into a sewer system. (Grew up Catholic, and was an alter boy for a few years)

Piscina
“A piscina is a shallow basin placed near the altar of a church, used for washing the communion vessels. The sacrarium is the drain itself…
If the consecrated Hosts become unusable, the priest
disposes of the hosts by placing them in the sacrarium. This is
accomplished by breaking the hosts up into small pieces and washing them
into the basin — which returns the consecrated hosts to the ground”

To be fair, you’re probably on safer ground with their historically anti-science leanings as opposed to their oh-so-progressive stance on child rape.

But, hey! Your choice.

Yes Ugh indeed, nasty wafer covered in fungus being fed to true believers. I think people should think carefully before consuming food of such doubtful benefit. I did not notice that anyone did a test of the fungus for toxicity, that would seem more important than the red color.

Well, that’s a relief to know. I say this because I have some friends who attend an Anglo-Catholic style Episcopal Church. In their tradition, the ONLY way to deal with concecrated bread and wine is to eat it. So, when I read that the wafer was disposed of “properly,” I was trying to imagine some unfortunate priest or deacon having to eat a science project of fungus. Ew.

They are absolutely, definitely, positively pro-science….in comparison to Southern Baptists and the Muslim Brotherhood.  

I will say kudos to them in this particular case, but they are really not that pro-science. They don’t accept scientific evolution – they think God had his fingers in the works all along, his ultimate end goal being: BEHOLD:….people.  They will use the scientific method in some cases so long as it doesn’t interfere with important church doctrine.  Ultimately for them, science bows down at the feet of the Holy Spirit (if it can be said that spirits have feet).

The answer is “none.” Dancing is a sin according to some xians, so “perfect” angels wouldn’t be allowed to dance on pinheads.

OR

There’s no such thing as angels, so they still can’t dance on pinheads.

So having proven the answer is 0 using xian “logic” and real logic, the catholic church can give a mere half of the money they would have spent on this experiment to me. That’s win-win if you ask me.