Does the host take on physical changes when it is consecrated?

There is no material test (weight, chemical composition or properties) that could detect a difference before and after consecration.

What about Eucharistic Miracles?

SV

I assumed he was asking about the general case.

does the host change material when it is consecrated?

Not in the physical world with the exception of the times God lets us see it for what it really is in order to restore faith.

Except in the case of Eucharistic miracles, there is absolutely no difference detectable by any of the normal human senses, alone or amplified by any possible instrumentation.

Still, there is a "material" change in the sense that what was once bread and wine ceases to be bread and wine. It's not an empirically detectable change, but it's a real change.

As Fr. as said, there is no change that is detectable by any of the human sense or any instrumentation available to us.

So, it ceases to be bread and wine but continues to appear in the form of bread of wine. In other words, if you are not present at Mass during the Consecration, there is no way to know by our human senses or any instruments that we have available to us to be able to detect if that host has been consecrated.

It IS a real change.

Lisa

That's why I have been phrasing my answers to Will carefully. There is what the popular mind thinks of as "physical" and "material," and then there is what a philosopher means by them.

No disagreement here. I was just worried that putting all the stress on the point that there's no discernible change might, for some readers, invite the conclusion that there's no real change.

So God can make material changes to things with out being able to detect them...

Thank you for the carefulness. I am attempting the same technique.

In other words, when the criteria for a substance to accurately be called bread is met, God can maintain those criteria while also making the substance into something else entirely, resulting in the word "bread" being an inaccurate label of this new substance?

Yes and no. Or, actually, no and yes. After transubstantiation, the criteria you mention are not maintained. And hence the word bread is inaccurate when applied to the result of the change. (Though of course, speaking loosely, it can be correct to refer to the consecrated host as 'bread,' precisely because the accidents of bread remain present. But strictly speaking, there is no bread present.)

Look into primary form (essence) and secondary form (accident). In the case of transubstantiation bread and wine remain under the accident of bread and wine.

I think that is what I am looking for. Um, where might be a good place to look? Aristotle?




But, there is still wheat in their somewhere, right?

I guess I should say, carbon...

Start here.

It seems that if I just read Aquinas again I would save everybody here a lot of time

I will look into it.

Both the matter and form of bread and wine are gone in transubstantiation, replace with the matter and form of Christ. So it would not be proper to say wheat or carbon or anything of that sort is there. The accidents remain of course. The other accidents inhere in the accident of quantity, which God maintains by a miracle (since God causes all existence, nothing prevents Him from directly causing the existence of an accident without a substance).

When the accidents disappear (whether through eating the Host, or through mold, or what not) the real presence ceases. What exactly happens in open to question (that is some hold that there is a return of natural matter with the new form, e.g. of mold,)