Huzzah for the nod to substance theory. First person to joke about this whole crazy situation who actually seems to /get/ what Catholics believe is going on with the whole cracker=Christ thing.
I can see a whole line of toy action figures coming out of this: transubstantiators; they fold into foodstuffs.
Is the fact that the host still looks like a piece of bread really considered a second miracle by the Catholic church? I ran across that the other day, but honestly couldn’t tell whether it was real, or whether someone was being silly. Poe’s law definitely applies here.
I never knew this is what the theists actually believe,
so it becomes the body of christ in substance??
So lets say we open up the belie of a believer on a operating table and we extract the half digested cracker out…will the religious still insist that the half digested goo is now technically in “substance” the body of the 1/3 creator of the universe?
even if after analysing it we realise that is still made of flour, yeast salt and water??
Centuries hence, when this scrap of miraculous cartooning is pulled from the electronic rubble of our age, the talking lettuce (the bigger piece, right?) will become iconic, to be revered by the poor rabbity and lumpy mutant leftover hoomins who are the willingly gullible subjects of the brainy cats who rule.
Falterer, let’s get the marketing going; great idea. The talking lettuce is sweet; wonder how Jesus feels about being torn apart, digested, and excreted every day. Talk about split personalities.
The Wikipedia article on transsubstantiation has a nice summary of why Christians (except Protestants) believe it:
The Roman Catholic Church considers the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is about what is changed, not about how the change occurs, the best defence against what it sees as the mutually opposed interpretations, on the one hand, a merely figurative understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (it teaches that the change of the substance is real), and, on the other hand, an interpretation that would amount to cannibalistic eating of the flesh and corporal drinking of the blood of Christ (it teaches that the accidents that remain are real, not an illusion, and that Christ is “really, truly, and substantially present” in the Eucharist, not physically present, as he was physically present in the Palestine of two millennia ago).
Around here, we refer to it as renting the contents of the glass. All too soon you are in the back room, returning what you just paid for. Not so obvious a joke for stout drinkers, but pilseners and light ales were the most popular back in the day when I was a patron.
You don’t really get to keep bits of a god inside you for long. Then it’s back to put another note in the collection plate and swallow the bull and the god again.
I wish I could receive a dollar for every death threat that author receives. By now I would be reading this comic from beside the pool, up there in my golden zeppelin.
I was taught, although this was many years ago, that the Eucharist isn’t literally the body of Christ, but that it was more than a symbol, too. The transubstantiation doctrine kind of splits the difference betweent the two. A lot of Catholic doctrines are like that.
Look at Limbo. Christianity simotaneously held/holds the belief that only the truly virtuous go to Heaven and only the truly evil go to Hell. But most people fall in between. So the Church you spend time in Limbo as penanace and then go to Heaven. Going on pilgramages and good deeds took time off. Of course, so did giving money to the Church, at least according to some Popes, and that led, along with other corrupt practices, to the Reformation. Now they’re saying Limbo never existed.
Eh. I was always less interested in the esoteric side of theology than in its applied side. I never got worked up over literal/metaphorical debate either way. Although my opinion of anyone who believes in pre-destination can only be expressed in language not fit for this site. Think Al Swearengen from Deadwood.
As to the Catholic League, I’m sure they can find better things to worry about than some punk pulling a prank. Some of those idiots pine for the Inquisition. They’d be better off preparing for the Crusades.
So do you think that some Catholics might think that their Holy crackers can think? I think that if they do think, then they would find the whole transubstantiation thing embarrassing to think about.
You have a fine mind, author. I hope your day job lets you employ it to the benefit of mankind as well.
“…all things are animal, each electron is an animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has an appointed duty to perform and a soul to be saved.” –Mark Twain, “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes.”
Jo Jo, Yes, the statement was ambiguous. To be more clear; five hundred years ago, I thought women were merely equal (almost), but the more beer I drink the more I realize that they are the finest of Nature’s creations, exclusive of Ann Coulter, and all of her ilk, of course.
I think Middle Eastern women are exceptionally beautiful. No wonder the men are so insecure that they keep them hidden even in public.
On the other hand, female tigers are beautiful, too.
BTW, there has been another flap over Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I can’t get much information because I have a weak WIFI signal where I’m located. I’m sure Author must have had Jesus and Mo commenting on this film in the past. If anyone knows the dates, let me know so I can read them. If he hasn’t, it’s another page in the lunacy of belief. If anyone on this blog hasn’t seen the movie, you’re missing some real hoots.
Ticticboom, I think you have your limbos and your purgatories crossed.
Purgatory is where you go if you die in a state of sin but not mortal sin (for them you just go straight to hell, do not pass go and do not collect £200). In purgatory you suffer to redeem your venial sins before being allowed into heaven. The period of this suffering could be anything from a few minutes up to thousands of years.
Limbo on the other hand is where unbaptised babies go. As they still have original sin staining their souls obviously they can’t ever be let into heaven, but even the catholic church wouldn’t be quite so hard as to send babies who have never harmed anyone to hell. Thus limbo. It’s a place without the rapture of the presence of god that distinguishes heaven but also without the hellfire and brimstone of the other place. Dull kind of existence really, especially as these babies are stuck there for the rest of eternity, but what an incentive for good catholic parents to get their offspring baptised. This is also by the way why any catholic (not just priests) can perform a baptism in case of emergency, should a baby be about to suffer neo-natal death. Spring that sprog from limbo and into everlasting paradise just by splashing a bit of water and saying the right magic words. In fact if I remember my RI lessons well enough, you can even skip the water in a dire emergency.
This is the way it all stood in 1967 when I left my catholic primary school. I believe that limbo has since been abolished but I’m not sure about purgatory.
Bogusman: the Church may not have been so hard, but the early American Puritans were. The quite mad (schizophrenic, we think) best-selling poet, Michael Wigglesworth, assigned babies, who were innocent of evil deeds but not allowed to bring their stained souls into heaven, to “the easiest room in Hell.” A deal they can’t refuse.
You’re probably right. I paid more attention to the more practical stuff, especially in the OT. There’s actually a lot of practical advice in there, some of it presaging Machiavelli. A nation full of intelligent people, highly educated for their time (Hell, for today, judging by the cretins liberal arts programs churn out) surrounded by enemies who want nothing more than to pillage, rape, and slaughter the lot of them can be highly creative.
That’s a large part of the reason they’re still there. Still stuck in the same situation, but you can’t have everything. The Israelis could learn a lesson from their forebears. The most effective tactic throughout history is reciprocity. It was the basis for the rise of the Roman Republic, although when the Empire forgot that lesson their days were doomed, even if it took centuries of decay.
Transubstatiation is certainly a mainly Catholic doctrine. As I understand it most Protestants think the bread and wine are special in some way but without believing they are factually blood and body (not to mention the RCC says Jesus is fully present in the bread and wine, not JUST body and blood but soul and divinity as well – so it probably is not so silly to talk to the wafer):
This site explains catholic orthodoxy on this matter:
In spite of the fact that there is a complete and total change of substance of the bread and wine at the words of consecration, the appearances or perceptible characteristics, (the accidents) remain the same. What we see and touch and feel, etc., our senses would tell us, is bread and wine. But the reality beneath those appearances, our faith tells us, is the person of Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The outward visible characteristics of bread and wine truly continue to exist, so our senses do not deceive us. However, by the power of God those outward characteristics are sustained in existence without the substance in which they formerly existed – to serve as an external sign for the sacrament of the Eucharist. Pope Leo XIII spoke of this in his encyclical “Mirae Caritatis:”
“This miracle is the greatest of its kind . . . for here all the laws of nature are suspended; the whole substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood; and the species of bread and wine are sustained by the power of God without the support of any underlying substance.”
St. Thomas Aquinas gives three reasons why it is fitting that God intervenes in this miraculous way (III, 75, 5).
Because it is not customary but horrible for men to eat human flesh and drink human blood; hence Christ’s flesh and blood are given to us under the species of those things more commonly consumed by men.
Lest this sacrament might be derided by unbelievers, were we to eat the flesh and blood of Jesus under his own proper species.
That while we receive Our Lord’s Body and Blood invisibly, this may redound to the merit of faith.
We are dealing here with something that cannot be verified or even examined by natural science. The nature of the change brought about in the Eucharist, as taught by the Church, lies beyond what chemistry, physics or biology are able to establish. We have it on the clear words of Our Lord, and we can only assent to it through the supernatural light of faith.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
January 17, 2006
Celine & Big J go way back – see the link for Celine and Her album ‘La Voix du Bon Dieu’ (the voice of god)
[…] – Jesus and Mo: stout Jesus and Mo: stout Dieser Eintrag wurde von Daniel Fallenstein am Do, 17. Jul 2008 um 12:36 geschrieben, abgelegt […]
Is that a Harry Potter spell?
Huzzah for the nod to substance theory. First person to joke about this whole crazy situation who actually seems to /get/ what Catholics believe is going on with the whole cracker=Christ thing.
I can see a whole line of toy action figures coming out of this: transubstantiators; they fold into foodstuffs.
Is the fact that the host still looks like a piece of bread really considered a second miracle by the Catholic church? I ran across that the other day, but honestly couldn’t tell whether it was real, or whether someone was being silly. Poe’s law definitely applies here.
This is the best overview of “Crackergate” I’ve come across. I didn’t think you could top the wafer and lettuce:)
I can see why the pickled egg would be embarrassed!
Made all the funnier because it’s all done without the tell-tale bubbles around their heads.
I never knew this is what the theists actually believe,
so it becomes the body of christ in substance??
So lets say we open up the belie of a believer on a operating table and we extract the half digested cracker out…will the religious still insist that the half digested goo is now technically in “substance” the body of the 1/3 creator of the universe?
even if after analysing it we realise that is still made of flour, yeast salt and water??
lol
Centuries hence, when this scrap of miraculous cartooning is pulled from the electronic rubble of our age, the talking lettuce (the bigger piece, right?) will become iconic, to be revered by the poor rabbity and lumpy mutant leftover hoomins who are the willingly gullible subjects of the brainy cats who rule.
Falterer, let’s get the marketing going; great idea. The talking lettuce is sweet; wonder how Jesus feels about being torn apart, digested, and excreted every day. Talk about split personalities.
The Wikipedia article on transsubstantiation has a nice summary of why Christians (except Protestants) believe it:
The Roman Catholic Church considers the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is about what is changed, not about how the change occurs, the best defence against what it sees as the mutually opposed interpretations, on the one hand, a merely figurative understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (it teaches that the change of the substance is real), and, on the other hand, an interpretation that would amount to cannibalistic eating of the flesh and corporal drinking of the blood of Christ (it teaches that the accidents that remain are real, not an illusion, and that Christ is “really, truly, and substantially present” in the Eucharist, not physically present, as he was physically present in the Palestine of two millennia ago).
Ah. This is why so many bars and taverns don’t sell to-go: They don’t want to be charged with abetting a kidnapping.
Around here, we refer to it as renting the contents of the glass. All too soon you are in the back room, returning what you just paid for. Not so obvious a joke for stout drinkers, but pilseners and light ales were the most popular back in the day when I was a patron.
You don’t really get to keep bits of a god inside you for long. Then it’s back to put another note in the collection plate and swallow the bull and the god again.
I don’t think it’s the lettuce talking.
Maybe the author can clarify? 🙂
By the way, I haven’t posted much if it all, but this is one of the best satirical comics on the net hands down.
I think it’s the host, not the lettuce that moans.
Ah well – if people have ‘souls’, why shouldn’t crackers?
Lettuce cannot think. Sorry, I thought people knew that.
I wish I could receive a dollar for every death threat that author receives. By now I would be reading this comic from beside the pool, up there in my golden zeppelin.
I was taught, although this was many years ago, that the Eucharist isn’t literally the body of Christ, but that it was more than a symbol, too. The transubstantiation doctrine kind of splits the difference betweent the two. A lot of Catholic doctrines are like that.
Look at Limbo. Christianity simotaneously held/holds the belief that only the truly virtuous go to Heaven and only the truly evil go to Hell. But most people fall in between. So the Church you spend time in Limbo as penanace and then go to Heaven. Going on pilgramages and good deeds took time off. Of course, so did giving money to the Church, at least according to some Popes, and that led, along with other corrupt practices, to the Reformation. Now they’re saying Limbo never existed.
Eh. I was always less interested in the esoteric side of theology than in its applied side. I never got worked up over literal/metaphorical debate either way. Although my opinion of anyone who believes in pre-destination can only be expressed in language not fit for this site. Think Al Swearengen from Deadwood.
As to the Catholic League, I’m sure they can find better things to worry about than some punk pulling a prank. Some of those idiots pine for the Inquisition. They’d be better off preparing for the Crusades.
BTW, Mo declared alcohol haram.
Which didn’t stop him from drinking, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
So do you think that some Catholics might think that their Holy crackers can think? I think that if they do think, then they would find the whole transubstantiation thing embarrassing to think about.
You have a fine mind, author. I hope your day job lets you employ it to the benefit of mankind as well.
Damn it, author! Stop monopolizing the good jokes about the issue! 😀
“…all things are animal, each electron is an animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has an appointed duty to perform and a soul to be saved.” –Mark Twain, “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes.”
Author: you never heard your salad scream? Now, as for the croutons….
This is a total crack up. Good laugh!
Andrés Diplotti, how are you getting smiley faces on this blog? I’ve tried but doesn’t work.
Poor Richard, the microbe collection sounds like a leviathan–it that shall rule that, from which it is made.
Author, lettuce may not think, but my beer often does my thinking for me. Made me change my mind about women.
So who are you dating now, Hobbes – and will it cause a schism??
Jo Jo, Yes, the statement was ambiguous. To be more clear; five hundred years ago, I thought women were merely equal (almost), but the more beer I drink the more I realize that they are the finest of Nature’s creations, exclusive of Ann Coulter, and all of her ilk, of course.
I think Middle Eastern women are exceptionally beautiful. No wonder the men are so insecure that they keep them hidden even in public.
On the other hand, female tigers are beautiful, too.
BTW, there has been another flap over Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I can’t get much information because I have a weak WIFI signal where I’m located. I’m sure Author must have had Jesus and Mo commenting on this film in the past. If anyone knows the dates, let me know so I can read them. If he hasn’t, it’s another page in the lunacy of belief. If anyone on this blog hasn’t seen the movie, you’re missing some real hoots.
Ticticboom, I think you have your limbos and your purgatories crossed.
Purgatory is where you go if you die in a state of sin but not mortal sin (for them you just go straight to hell, do not pass go and do not collect £200). In purgatory you suffer to redeem your venial sins before being allowed into heaven. The period of this suffering could be anything from a few minutes up to thousands of years.
Limbo on the other hand is where unbaptised babies go. As they still have original sin staining their souls obviously they can’t ever be let into heaven, but even the catholic church wouldn’t be quite so hard as to send babies who have never harmed anyone to hell. Thus limbo. It’s a place without the rapture of the presence of god that distinguishes heaven but also without the hellfire and brimstone of the other place. Dull kind of existence really, especially as these babies are stuck there for the rest of eternity, but what an incentive for good catholic parents to get their offspring baptised. This is also by the way why any catholic (not just priests) can perform a baptism in case of emergency, should a baby be about to suffer neo-natal death. Spring that sprog from limbo and into everlasting paradise just by splashing a bit of water and saying the right magic words. In fact if I remember my RI lessons well enough, you can even skip the water in a dire emergency.
This is the way it all stood in 1967 when I left my catholic primary school. I believe that limbo has since been abolished but I’m not sure about purgatory.
Bogusman: the Church may not have been so hard, but the early American Puritans were. The quite mad (schizophrenic, we think) best-selling poet, Michael Wigglesworth, assigned babies, who were innocent of evil deeds but not allowed to bring their stained souls into heaven, to “the easiest room in Hell.” A deal they can’t refuse.
Looks like, in the 21st century, they would have all gotten off their knuckles by now.
@Bogusman:
You’re probably right. I paid more attention to the more practical stuff, especially in the OT. There’s actually a lot of practical advice in there, some of it presaging Machiavelli. A nation full of intelligent people, highly educated for their time (Hell, for today, judging by the cretins liberal arts programs churn out) surrounded by enemies who want nothing more than to pillage, rape, and slaughter the lot of them can be highly creative.
That’s a large part of the reason they’re still there. Still stuck in the same situation, but you can’t have everything. The Israelis could learn a lesson from their forebears. The most effective tactic throughout history is reciprocity. It was the basis for the rise of the Roman Republic, although when the Empire forgot that lesson their days were doomed, even if it took centuries of decay.
Not all Christians believe in transubstantiation.
Transubstatiation is certainly a mainly Catholic doctrine. As I understand it most Protestants think the bread and wine are special in some way but without believing they are factually blood and body (not to mention the RCC says Jesus is fully present in the bread and wine, not JUST body and blood but soul and divinity as well – so it probably is not so silly to talk to the wafer):
This site explains catholic orthodoxy on this matter:
http://www.rosary-center.org/ll49n3.htm
Some extracts:
In spite of the fact that there is a complete and total change of substance of the bread and wine at the words of consecration, the appearances or perceptible characteristics, (the accidents) remain the same. What we see and touch and feel, etc., our senses would tell us, is bread and wine. But the reality beneath those appearances, our faith tells us, is the person of Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The outward visible characteristics of bread and wine truly continue to exist, so our senses do not deceive us. However, by the power of God those outward characteristics are sustained in existence without the substance in which they formerly existed – to serve as an external sign for the sacrament of the Eucharist. Pope Leo XIII spoke of this in his encyclical “Mirae Caritatis:”
“This miracle is the greatest of its kind . . . for here all the laws of nature are suspended; the whole substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood; and the species of bread and wine are sustained by the power of God without the support of any underlying substance.”
St. Thomas Aquinas gives three reasons why it is fitting that God intervenes in this miraculous way (III, 75, 5).
Because it is not customary but horrible for men to eat human flesh and drink human blood; hence Christ’s flesh and blood are given to us under the species of those things more commonly consumed by men.
Lest this sacrament might be derided by unbelievers, were we to eat the flesh and blood of Jesus under his own proper species.
That while we receive Our Lord’s Body and Blood invisibly, this may redound to the merit of faith.
We are dealing here with something that cannot be verified or even examined by natural science. The nature of the change brought about in the Eucharist, as taught by the Church, lies beyond what chemistry, physics or biology are able to establish. We have it on the clear words of Our Lord, and we can only assent to it through the supernatural light of faith.
Fittingly the phrase “hocus pocus”is often said to be derived from the words from the Latin mass “hoc est corpus meum” (this is my body)
I’ll bet Jesus gets excited when Celine leaves His body.
I will always love you……was Whitney, wasn’t it