Eucharistic accidents
| Latin | Accidentia eucharistica; species panis et vini |
|---|---|
| Treatise | Summa theologiae III, question 77 |
| Controlling authority | Trent Session XIII; Catechism 1373–1377 |
| Doctrinal standing | Remaining appearances after conversion of substance are dogma; accidents without a subject and dimensive quantity as their subject are Thomistic |
| School | Thomism |
| Branch | Sacramental theology |
Eucharistic accidents are the remaining appearances of bread and wine after consecration, which Catholic dogma affirms as remaining while the substance is converted, and which Thomism analyzes as accidents conserved by God without their connatural subject.
Dogma of remaining appearances
The Council of Trent, Session XIII, teaches that the whole substance of bread and wine is converted into the substance of Christ's Body and Blood, the appearances remaining. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1373–1377, repeats the real presence, the fittingness of the term transubstantiation, and the remaining appearances. That is dogma. The Church did not define Aristotle. She defined a conversion of what the gifts are, while what they look, taste, and chemically behave as remains.[1][2]
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Real Presence records that the accidents or species continue without their connatural substance, as does the Roman Catechism. Here accident is a technical metaphysical term rather than the ordinary word for an unintended event. Eucharistic adoration likewise does not imply that empirical examination will disclose visible flesh beneath the sacramental appearances.[3][4]
Accidents without a subject
Summa theologiae III, question 77, article 1, asks whether the accidents remain without a subject. They are not in the remaining bread, for that substance is gone. They are not in Christ's Body as in a natural subject, for a glorified body is not altered by the qualities of bread. They are not in the surrounding air. Aquinas concludes that God, first cause of substance and accident, conserves the accidents in being when the connatural substance is withdrawn.[5]
Article 2 then holds that dimensive quantity is the subject of the other remaining accidents. Quantity can be the subject of quality in this miraculous order because God makes the accidents exist in the being they had. That is the famous Thomistic solution. It is theology, not a defined laboratory report, and not a fourth Lateran definition.
Operations of the remaining species
Question 77 continues: the species can affect external bodies, can be corrupted, can give rise to ashes or nourishment, and can be broken, because they retain the being and action they had in bread and wine. Breaking is of the quantity, not of Christ's impassible Body. Presence remains so long as the species remain numerically the same as the consecrated gifts.
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on accident notes that reason cannot prove such separability; it can only show that it is not a contradiction for omnipotence. Cartesian denials of real accidents force a multiplication of sense-illusions. Thomism keeps the species real. The dogma needs real remaining appearances, not a hallucination.
School servant of a defined mystery
A Catholic must confess the conversion of substance and the remaining appearances. He is not required to recite dimensive quantity as a creed. Other Catholic explanations of the mode must still confess the defined conversion. They may not evacuate it into a purely symbolic remaining of bread.
The Eucharistic mystery is defined. The school analysis serves that definition. Salvation does not hang on mastering the subject of accidents, and remaining appearances are not an optional medieval mood. The first claim would invent a magisterium. The second would betray one.
References
- Back to citation Council of Trent, Session XIII, Decree on the Eucharist — Tridentine definition of the real presence, the fittingness of transubstantiation, and the remaining appearances of bread and wine.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1373–1377 — Authoritative teaching of the real presence, transubstantiation, and the remaining appearances of bread and wine.
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — Public-domain treatment of transubstantiation and of the remaining accidents or species of bread and wine.
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Accident — Public-domain metaphysics of accident, including the Eucharistic remaining of accidents without their connatural substance.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, question 77 — Primary analysis of the remaining Eucharistic accidents without a subject, with dimensive quantity as the subject of the other remaining accidents.