{"id":15454,"date":"2016-04-25T19:21:58","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T23:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/?p=15454"},"modified":"2016-04-25T19:21:58","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T23:21:58","slug":"powerful-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2016\/04\/powerful-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Powerful Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There has been a lot of virtual ink spilt over this one footnote in the Apostolic Exhortation <em>Amoris Laetitia<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I would also point out that the Eucharist \u201cis not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This little footnote has become like a Rorschach test for Catholics who see what they want to see in it.<\/p>\n<p>Still while the concept of the Eucharist as medicine is nothing new, it did get me thinking about all those medicine commercials with a list of side effects half the length of the commercial. So I came up with this:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/EucharistFacts.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Previously posted by <a href=\"https:\/\/canonlawblog.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/13\/yes-the-eucharist-is-powerful-medicine-which-means\/\">Ed Peters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some seem upset that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/canonlawblog.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/10\/the-law-before-amoris-is-the-law-after\/\">I agreed with Pope Francis<\/a>\u00a0that the Eucharist is \u201cpowerful medicine\u201d for sinners, a figure of speech the pope used in\u00a0<em>Amoris laetitiae<\/em>\u00a0fn. 351 (see also his\u00a0<em>Evangelii gaudium<\/em>\u00a047). May I suggest that those objecting to the pope\u2019s phrasing, and my agreement with it,\u00a0need to familiarize themselves better with the Church\u2019s rich understanding of the Eucharist. Doing so will, I think, enable them not only to see what is profoundly right about the pope\u2019s choice of words, but help them to articulate what is profoundly missing from it.<\/p>\n<p>The bounteous effects of the Eucharist, specifically in regard to forgiveness of and preservation from sin, are laid out in the\u00a0<em>Catechism of the Catholic Church<\/em>\u00a01393-1395, 1436, and 1846. These passages amply support the pope\u2019s phrasing in fn 351. But missing from the pope\u2019s commentary here is an acknowledgement that, as is true of a \u201cpowerful medicine\u201d, taking the Eucharist improperly can be\u00a0<em>harmful,<\/em> even spiritually deadly, to the recipient.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don\u2019t expect a footnote to contain every nuance of Church teaching or else a footnote would become another document with it\u2019s own footnotes and on and one. So my prescription is to drink a glass of water and just read Church documents with the mind of the Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been a lot of virtual ink spilt over this one footnote in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. I would also point out that the Eucharist \u201cis not a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-sacraments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15456,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454\/revisions\/15456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}