School Report, part 1

last year, when i took the crusades class, i decided that if i hadn't found African history i would be a medieval historian. its the religion thing (and by religion i mean Christianity, and especially catholicism). and i don't know why, but it makes me SO EXCITED to learn about it. The reformation class i am taking is really good. today we talked about transubstantiation, which i always thought was just the fact that bread and wine become body and blood. but its much more than that. let me see if i can say it without wrinkly frown lines...(warning! irreverent, silly, and maybe not quite right, also long dialog ahead)
it goes like this: Thomas Aquinas is chilling in the 12th centuryish, being the foremost philosopher of the catholic tradition, and some priestly dudes come up to him.
pd: Thomas Aquinas, we know that the bread and wine turn into body and blood. Jesus told us that, we have been preaching it since the second century, no problem. but, forgive us for our three year oldness, WHY does it happen? and how is it possible that to the untrained and unfaithful it still LOOKS and TASTES and FEELS like bread and not, um, human flesh?
TA: well, let me think. *puts on Tom waits, Gregorian chant style on his medieval radio, stokes the fire, stares at alter boys for inspiration, reads a manuscript or two and some Greek philosophy, gets drunk, and generally is a philosopher* GOT IT! Ok. Priest dudes, do you know Aristotle?
pd:isn't he that Greek guy who had the whole chain of being thing? with god at the top?
TA: yes, i think. he also had this idea of substance and accidents. Not car accidents, but something else. Umm, think about it this way. Look at this book *takes dusty tome off shelf* It looks like a book, right?
pd: yeah.
TA: and this other book, its also a book, right? *second, less dusty, slightly thicker book that actually has playboy tucked inside, but priest dudes don't know that*
pd: yes Thomas. (to each other: there must not be too much to this whole philosophy thing, if this is all he came up with)
TA: But they are different! What makes them both books if one is dusty red leather and the other is polished vellum?
pd: um...they just ARE both books?
TA: Exactly! There is something inherently BOOK about them despite their physical differences. There is an essence of BOOKNESS that is their SUBSTANCE. The surface discrepancies and characteristics, like covers, pages, dust, writing, are just ACCIDENTS of nature that we have come to associate with that inner bookness.
pd: and Aristotle said this? (damn that came out of left field...this philosophy thing must be harder than we thought, or else he is making this up...)
TA: you bet...you have no idea what a little goat meat and cheap wine will do to your brain. Anyway, to get back to the bread and wine thing. We know this is bread *holds out a loaf* because why?
pd: because it crumbles when it gets stale? it has a crust? the Muslims don't leaven it?
TA: all of those things are the ACCIDENTS that we associate with bread, and are separate from the inner breadness underneath. with me?
pd: um, yeah.
TA: what happens during the liturgy of the Eucharist?
pd 1: I Know this one, pick me! I say the magic words and god or the holy spirit turn the bread into the body of Christ
TA: very good! take a cookie. You say words, and god changes the bread to body. What god changes, though, is the SUBSTANCE, the underlying bread-ness of the bread. he changes that into body-ness. And he leaves the ACCIDENTS of bread, what we recognize as staleness, yeast, etc, god leaves them alone, so they stay the same even though underneath them its really human flesh. QED. now you are blocking my view of the alter boys..i mean alter. go play with your indulgences and corruption.

so anyway, i love that the catholic church felt the need to define and explain every aspect of faith. mostly because without that incredibly annoying, confusing, frustrating, and very off-putting characteristic of the church many fewer people would have had problems with it, and there might not have been a reformation. Maybe i am so excited by religion right now because i have no other classes that have actually started yet! GRRRR....i come here to take history classes, end up getting sidetracked by religion at every turn, and have to stand in line forever at the bank, on top of random spurts of loneliness that take me at odd moments and such intense euphoria that i am not sure i ever want to come home.