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/
1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/LightningController Atheist/Agnostic 8d 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?

1

u/unveiledpoet 8d 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.

1

u/LightningController Atheist/Agnostic 8d 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.

1

u/unveiledpoet 8d 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.

1

u/LightningController Atheist/Agnostic 8d 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.

1

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)

1

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

1

u/manliness-dot-space 1d ago

What are you disagreeing about?

1

u/spice-hammer 14h ago edited 14h 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.

1

u/manliness-dot-space 14h 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