I just wrote about some interesting Eucharistic oddments, as this sacrament is fascinating to me and one of my favorite devotions. Yet somehow (despite subscribing to some of the blogs that discussed it) I completely missed "Crackergate" until now.

Background: The whole thing started when a Florida student took a consecrated host home instead of consuming it at Mass. Perhaps he acted out of ignorance (but also defiance, as he was there was something of a showdown in which parish officials asked him to return the host before he went home).

Enter biologist PZ Myers. He is rather evangelical about his beliefs, which include equating "atheism," "science," and "truth." I won't link to his blog "Pharyngula," not wanting to encourage his juvenile attention-seeking, but he gleefully documented all his actions there. (If you really want to read it, let Google help you.)

I said Myers "entered," but "barged in hollering 'Look at me, look at me!'" is more descriptive. He requested his followers readers send him consecrated hosts, which he pledged to treat to profane as foully — and publicly — as possible. They complied, and he published a photograph of a host in the trash can, with a rusty nail driven through it, along with pages from the Qu'ran and Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion.

The blog "The Big Stick" wrote eloquently about Myers' attention-seeking actions.

Myeres does not understand people's love of the Eucharist, so instead he insults them. He is guilty of a number of rhetorical sins, most prominently argument by sneer. Myers has described those upset by Eucharistic sacrilege to be "demented [unprintable]s" in the throes of "mass lunacy" and "astonishing ... insanity." (As you can see, he also plies the trade of perpetuating the stigma on mental illness.)

Myers says his e-mail bag is overflowing with death threats toward him and his family, and he proves it by publishing some of them. The nastiness of the hate mail he has received is enough to make me queasy. I think it is proof that you can have faith without forming your conscience to it, as I asserted in this post.

Elsewhere in his blog, Myers mentions secular humanism as "a good alternative" to Catholicism. If Myers really is a secular humanist, than his conscience seems not to be formed by his beliefs either. "Good will" and "tolerance," tenets of secular humanism's ideal of building a better world, are sorely lacking in Myers' actions.

Myers does not understand his opponents' outrage. Mark Shea remarked, "One gets the impression that both he and his followers, having nothing but contempt for Catholics, have no real grasp of the interior contours of Catholic faith and belief and therefore no grasp whatever of the hierarchy of values at work in Catholic life." Some out-of-context quotes (you would think Myers, who loudly deplores "quote-mining," would know better) led me to believe that Shea also does not understand Myers' motivation, but the whole of his writing shows that he does.

Some of the Catholic responders to Myers, though, do not understand his motivation. Myers does not intend to insult the person of Jesus Christ. How can he, when he views belief in God being as nonsensical as believing in the Tooth Fairy? He wants to demonstrate that "it's only a cracker." He doesn't even believe in such a thing as sacrilege, so he can hardly commit it. His sin is not of sacrilege, but just of being a jerk.

Every Catholic making a First Communion learns that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ, that he is really present (a concept descriptively called the Real Presence), and that the host and wine invisibly change into his literal Body and Blood through something called "transubstantiation."

To the curious and practical minded, that leaves a lot of questions still to be answered. And, never fear, when you have a strange theological question, the Church has always thought of it first. Here are answers to some of those questions you may have been too embarrassed to ask:

1. Is it okay if I take only the host or only the cup? Or do I need both to get the "whole Jesus"?

The consecrated host is called the "Body of Christ" and the cup is called the "Blood of Christ," but that refers to their superficial resemblance; the solid bread is analogous to Christ's solid Body and the liquid wine is analogous to Christ's liquid Blood. The fact that one is solid and one is liquid reminds us that we receive both Body and Blood. The answer to the question, however, is that the host and the cup each contain the fullness of Christ's Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Thus, you can receive either one and get the "whole Jesus."

The belief that one must receive both forms to get the "whole Jesus" is a heresy called Utraquism. To paraphrase the Catholic Encyclopedia, we do not believe that Christ limits his real presence, or holds back part of the spiritual nutrition of the Eucharist, based only on the physical appearance of the sacred species. Since transubstantiation means that the bread and wine are completely transformed, it does not make sense that there should be a limitation on what they turn into.

2. Why is the Eucharist not the same as cannibalism?

Given that Christ is human and that he is really present in the Eucharist, it does sound a bit like cannibalism. And that concern may be what drove away some of his disciples at the end of the Bread of Life discourse in John 6. But when we consume the Eucharist, we eat Jesus in a sacramental way, not in the mundane way that would be eating a person's physical flesh.

Consider what it means to eat meat. You don't take the animal's substance into you; you don't contain "cow-ness" or "pig-ness" afterward. You contain only the physical molecules that made up its flesh. The same happens in cannibalism. Cannibals do not contain the personhood or "human-ness" of their victims, only their meat.

In the Eucharist, on the other hand, the faithful receive the personhood of Jesus. They contain his soul and divinity in a real, mystical way.

Cannibalism is an offense against the dignity of the human person. Because he offered it to us, because in fact it exists solely for us, eating and drinking the Eucharist can never offend the dignity of Christ.

3. What if I throw up after Communion?

Eww. But it's an important question; after all, the Eucharist is often given to sick people, and even people who feel healthy may vomit unexpectedly at times. The main principle is that the real presence of Jesus remains as long as the sacred species retains the physical characteristics of bread and wine. The Eucharist can theoretically be contaminated not only by being vomited from a recipient, but also by becoming dirty, by being poisoned, or by suffering other potential sacrileges. And Christ surely does not expect us to consume a contaminated Eucharist.

In these cases, a priest will, in a dignified and respectful way, remove the appearance of bread or wine; then the contaminated stuff won't be the Eucharist anymore. The content of the cup, the former wine, is diluted with pure water until it no longer resembles wine. A poisoned host is disposed of the same way. A vomited Eucharist, on the other hand, is "gathered up and disposed of in some decent place." No further elaboration is given, but I have heard of it being buried in the ground (surely more dignified than being flushed down the toilet).

More information on these and other Eucharistic mishaps can be found in the papal bull De Defectibus ("On Defects").

Bonus question: Why do you keep saying "host" and "cup"? Why not use the less confusing words "bread" and "wine" in this post?

Because after the consecration, there is no bread or wine anymore. It's gone except for looks — "accidents" in philosophical parlance. It's all Jesus. So it would be inaccurate to call the Eucharist "bread" or "wine" (despite the words used in many modern Eucharistic hymns). And the words "host" and "cup" are more succinct than "appearance of bread" and "appearance of wine," terms which are often used for the Eucharist.

Science writer Brian Clegg recently wrote in his blog^* that religious thinking is often "magical" thinking. He gave several examples from the Judeo-Christian tradition, including this one from the Church of England:

I would suggest that those in the Church of England who don’t want women bishops are motivated by magic. Their argument is that it has always been that way, that Jesus only chose male apostles, and that bishops sort of stand in for Jesus, so have to be male, as he was.

Clegg is a science writer, and quite a good one, but his expertise does not extend to Christian theology. His example above confuses magical thinking with sacramental thinking.

Magical thinking is "nonscientific causal reasoning" that follows certain rules, a bit analogous to scientific laws. Like scientific laws, magical thinking does not identify these rules as arising from any particular source; they just are. Superstitions arise from magical thinking.

Christianity — particularly Catholic Christianity and those Protestant traditions most akin to Catholicism — is deeply imbued with sacramental thinking. In a sacrament, there is an outward, visible symbol of a supernatural reality. In the case of ordination, the supernatural reality is that deacons, priests, and bishops are marked with a supernatural character that gives them the ability to "stand in" for Christ. The outward symbol includes the necessity that the ordained be similar to Christ in the most fundamental way: they must be male. (I think it's interesting that the Church of England is hung-up on female bishops, since it already allows female deacons and priests — doesn't it make sense that God would require male gender for either all ordinations or for none?)

Unlike magical thinking, the associations found in sacramental theology are attributed to a specific and personal source — God. Male gender is not necessary because of our limited perceptions and understanding, nor because of some great cosmic "should"; it is necessary because God made it so.

* Do not, by any means, miss the first comment to Clegg's post! It will make your day.