Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/654

 EUCHARIST

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EUCHARIST

be readily determined from the Council of Constance (1414-1418). In its eiglith session, approved in 1418 by Martin V, this synod condemned the following arti- cles of WycHf: (1) "Substantia panis materialis et similiter substantia vini materialis remanent in Sacra- mento altaris", i. e. the material substance of bread and likewise the material svibstance of wine remain in the Sacrament of the Altar; (2) "Accidentia panis non manent sine suljjecto", i. e. the accidents of the bread do not remain without a subject. The first of tlicse articles contains an open denial of Transubstan- tiation. The second, so far as the text is concerned, might be considered as merely a different wording of the first, were it not that the history of the council sliows that Wyclif Iiad directly opposed the Scholastic doctrine of "accidents witliout a subject" as absurd anti even heretical (cf. De Augustmis, De re sacramen- tariii, Rome, 1S89, II, 573 sqq.). Hence it was the intention of the council to condemn the second article, not merely as a conclusion of the first, but as a dis- tinct and independent proposition; wherefore we may gather the Church's teaching on the subject from the contradictory proposition: " Accidentia panis manent sine subjecto", i. e. the accidents of bread do remain without a suliject. Such, at least, was the opinion of contemporary theologians regarding the matter; and the Roman Catechism, referring to the above-men- tioned canon of the Council of Trent, tersely explains: "The accidents of bread and wine inhere in no sub- stance, but continue existing by themselves." This being the case, some theologians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who inclined to Cartesianism, as E. Maignan, Drouin, and Vitasse, displayed but little theological penetration when they asserted that the Eucharistic appearances were optical illusions, phantasmagoria, and make-believe accidents, ascrib- ing to Divine omnipotence an immediate influence upon the five senses, wherel^y a mere suliject ive im- pression of what seemed to be the accidents of bread and wine was created. Since Descartes (d. 1650) places the essence of corporeal substance in its actual extension and recognizes only modal accidents meta- pliysically united to their substance, it is clear, ac- cording to his theory, that together with the conver- sion of the substance of bread and wine, the accidents must also be converted and thereby made to disap- pear. If the eye nevertheless seems to behold bread and wine, this is to be attributed to an optical illusion alone. But it is clear at first blush, that no doubt can be entertained as to the physical reality, or in fact, as to the identity of the accidents before and after Tran- substantiation. This physical, and not merely opti- cal, continuance of the Eucharistic accidents was re- peatedly insisted upon by the Fathers, and with such excessive vigour that the notion of Transubstantiation seemed to be in danger. Especially against the Mono- physites, who liased on the Eucharistic conversion an a pari argument in behalf of the supposed conversion of the Humanity of Christ into His Divinity, did the Katliers retort by concluding from the continuance of the unconverted Eucharistic accidents to the uncon- verted Human Nature of Christ. Both philosophical and theological arguments were also advanced against the Cartesians, as, for instance, the infallible testi- mony of the senses, the necessity of the commune ter- tium to complete the idea of Transubstantiation [see above, (.'i)], the idea of the Sacrament of the .Vltar as the visible sign of Christ's invisible Body, the physical signification of Communion as a real partaking of food and drink, the striking expression "lireaking of bread" {jraclio panis), which supposes the divisible reality of the accidents, etc. For all these reasons, theologians consider the physical reality of the accidents as an in- controvertible truth, which cannot without temerity be called in question.

As regards the philosophical possibility of the acci- dents existing without their substance, the older

school drew a fine distinction between modal and ab- solute accidents. By the modal accidents were under- stood such as could not, being mere modes, be sepa- rated from their substance without involving a meta- physical contradiction, e. g. the form and motion of a body. Those accidents were designated absolute, whose objective reality was adequately distinct from the reality of their substance, in such a way that no intrinsic repugnance was involved in their separability, as, e. g., the quantity of a body, .\ristotle himself taught (Metaphys., \T, 3rd ed. of Bekker, p. 1029, a. 13), that quantity was not a corporeal substance, but only a phenomenon of substance. Modern philoso- phy, on the other hand, has endeavoured since the time of John Locke, to reject altogether from the realm of ideas the concept of substance as something imaginary, and to rest satisfied with qualities alone as the excitants of sensation, a view of the material world which the so-called psychology of association and actuality is trying to carry out in its various de- tails. The Catholic Church does not feel called upon to follow up the ephemeral vagaries of these new phi- losophical systems, but bases her doctrine on the ever- lasting philosophy of sound reason, which rightly distinguishes between the thing in itself and its char- acteristic qualities (colour, form, size, etc.). Though the " thing in itself " may ever remain imperceptible to the senses and therefore be designated in the language of Kant as a noumenon, or in the language of Spencer, the Unknowable, yet we cannot escape the necessity of seeking beneath the appearances the thing which appears, beneath the colour that which is coloured, beneath the form that which has form, i. e. the sub- stratum or subject which sustains the phenomena. The older philosophy designated the appearances by the name of accidents, the subject of the appearances, by that of substance. It matters little what the terms are, provided the tilings signified by them are rightly understood. What is particularly important regard- ing material substances and their accidental qualities, is the necessity of proceeding cautiously in this discus- sion, since in the domain of natural philosophy the greatest uncertainty reigns even at the present day concerning the nature of matter, one system pulling down what another has reared, as is proved in the latest theories of atomism and energy, of ions and electrons.

The old theology tried wuth St. Thomas Aquinas (III, Q. Ix.xvii) to prove the possibility of absolute ac- cidents on the principles of the Aristotelean-Scholastic hylomorphism, i. e. the system which teaches that the essential constitution of bodies consists in the sub- stantial union of inatcria prima and forma substantialis. Some theologians of to-day would seek to come to an understanding with modern science, which bases all natural processes upon the very fruitful tlieory of en- ergy, by trying with Leibniz to explain the Eucharis- tic accidentia sine subjecto according to the dynamism of natural philosophy. Assuming, according to this system, a real distinction between force and its mani- festations, between energy and its effects, it may be seen that under the influence of the First Cause the energy (substance) necessary for the essence of bread is withdrawn by virtue of conversion, while the effects of energy (accidents) in a miraculous manner continue. For the rest it may be said, that it is far from the Church's intention to restrict the Catholic's investiga- tion regarding the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament to any particular view of natural philosophy or even to require him to establish its truth on the principles of medieval physics; all that the Church demands is, that those theories of material substances be rejected which not only contradict the teaching of the Church, but also are repugnant to experience and sound rea- son, as Pantheism, Hylozoism, Monism, Absolute Idealism, Cartesianism, etc.

(b) The second problem arises from the Totality of