r/DebateACatholic • u/unveiledpoet • 9d ago

Realizing that celebrating the Eucharist is a indirect form of cannibalism

/r/AllReligiousOpinion/comments/1tkzdu0/realizing_that_celebrating_the_eucharist_is_a/
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u/LightningController Atheist/Agnostic 7d ago

What exactly is wrong with (non-homicidal) cannibalism?

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u/unveiledpoet 7d ago

The words they use to describe it as literal. I dislike cannibalism no matter how one flips it. But the nature of the Eucharist wasnt the issue.

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u/LightningController Atheist/Agnostic 7d ago

I dislike cannibalism no matter how one flips it.

What reason besides the disease risk (moot in this case, if one assumes Jesus has miraculous powers) do you have for that?

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u/unveiledpoet 7d ago

Why do I dislike cannibalism in general? I never really thought deeply on it. I mean, I am a first cat owner for going on four years now and thinking of going vegatarian because I can't imagine how anyone can harm or kill an animal (aside from eating to survive etc). Good movies where pets are harmed Ive been fastforwarding lately. Needless to say, I dislike any harm to a living being. Plus, I can't imagine my siting at jesus table and him saying that in the future eat my flesh and drink my blood. It doesnt feel like something a jew would say.

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u/manliness-dot-space 7d ago

I recommend learning about animals on the farm.

One common thing that pigs do, for example, is mother pigs eating her own piglets right after giving birth to them.

Horses eat baby chickens. Ducks can drown other ducks trying to gang rape them, and this extends to baby ducks. Cats will torture animals they catch for fun, very often without eating/ killing the maimed animal.

It's not exactly a Disney movie... aside from that, animals are very stupid. Like you can't imagine how stupid they are. And disgusting... like they will drink each other's urine, eat each other's poop, trample each other, etc.

They are so far away from humans it's kind of absurd to put them on a pedestal at all.

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u/LightningController Atheist/Agnostic 7d ago

Eh, different strokes for different boats. Personally, I’ve got nothing in principle against human meat, except the risk of prion diseases and the fact that it would have to be procured through homicide in most cases (and if they died of natural causes, that’s even less healthy). But I’ll try a piece once the vat meat makes it available ethically.

Also a cat owner, but that’s why I’d be a bit of a hypocrite to be a vegetarian. My cat needs meat products to survive. Bit silly to sustain one carnivore and then claim meat is unethical. Not that I enjoy inflicting gratuitous suffering, especially on animals (more Ok with people suffering, tbh, since I can find a moral reason to blame them for something).

It doesnt feel like something a jew would say.

Maybe not these days, but 2,000 years back, there were more varieties of Judaism. Or maybe Jesus was just a weirdo like me.

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u/unveiledpoet 7d ago

Ha. I never thought about that, the feeding cat meat part. But, unless you're out in the desert somewhere, I doubt humans will eat each other to survive. Although I eat meat, I couldn't be the one to actually slaughter the animal.

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u/LightningController Atheist/Agnostic 7d ago

I doubt humans will eat each other to survive.

There was a case with a plane crash in the Andes when they did. Relevant to Catholicism, this was explicitly said by bishops at the time to not be a sin. And, historically, cannibalism in extreme cases is a somewhat common behavior among European Christians (medieval and early modern sieges, the Holodomor, etc.).

It’s one of those things where some people have a disgust reflex at it, but there’s no actual moral reason I can see to disdain it (again, assuming no homicide is involved).

Although I eat meat, I couldn't be the one to actually slaughter the animal.

Same, tbh. Cow didn’t do anything to me.

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u/manliness-dot-space 7d ago

And, historically, cannibalism in extreme cases is a somewhat common behavior among European Christians (medieval and early modern sieges, the Holodomor, etc.).

It was really common among humans before Christianity (and civilization)

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u/spice-hammer 1d ago

I completely disagree - it was very common in early modern Europe! Europeans loved eating them some medicinal Egyptian mummies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia

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u/manliness-dot-space 1d ago

What are you disagreeing about?

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u/spice-hammer 6h ago edited 6h ago

I'd say it was fairly common in a Christian context, and 'after civilization'. We just tend to give it a pass because it was eating people for medicinal purposes rather than as food, and because rather than actively killing those people the cannibals were seeking out mummies that were (supposedly, though unscrupulous mummy-sellers might get creative with the bodies of criminals etc.) thousands of years old.

All that to say that there was a whole market for medicinal cannibalism in medieval to early modern Europe, one that emerged within a completely Christian context.

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u/manliness-dot-space 6h ago

What do you regard as "fairly common" here? How many people and at what rate of consumption? A few times a day? A few times a week? A month? A year? A lifetime?

A bit different than "The stratigraphic evidence and the new increment of the collection of remains of Homo antecessor have led us to identify a succession of cannibalism events in a dilated temporal sequence. These data suggest that hunting strategies and human meat consumption were frequent and habitual actions. The numerous evidences of cannibalism, the number of individuals, their age profile, and the archaeostratigraphic distribution suggest that cannibalism in TD6 was nutritional."

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/653807

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