Lord’s Supper and Harry Potter
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:date: 2024-05-17T16:35:58
:category: literature
:tags: harryPotter, blogComment, fromReddit, theology

(my comment on the reddit thread `The Pope loves magic,
actually`_ by callmesalticidae_)

Foremost, I don’t want to make it into a Catholic/Protestant
thing. I know Catholics who agree with me in saying that the
whole transubstantiation controversy is basically a disaster
caused by the Scholastic attempt to squeeze everything into a
rational framework.  Scholasticism was in many aspects an Alpha
version of the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, and it
hit the similar problems.

Here they tried to fit the round peg of the God’s mystery to the
square hole of the Aristotelian logical framework of reason,
and it really never worked well. Then of course, because the
Catholic Church never makes a mistake, instead of admitting the
idea was a bit foolish they doubled down on it and made it into
`the shibboleth of the true faith`_, which made the whole thing
even worse. Then the Reformation came and who were just two sides
in a discussion were now enemies, and so Reformers add `their own
junk`_.

I do like the formulation of the seventeenth century bishop of
Czech brethren Jan Ámos Komenský (Comenius) from his confession_
of faith that Jesus told us to meet with him in the bread and
wine and not to study it or trying to understand it.

Concerning Harry Potter and transfiguration. I really don’t know
where it came from that the Christian faith could be somehow put
in jeopardy by the discovery that changing of water into wine
(which is the best I can understand could transfiguration do) is
possible by magic. Firstly, it is the Wedding at Cana not the
Last Supper, and for the second, I don’t think even the most
strict extreme Roman Catholic would ever argue that even the
Consecrated Host would be by scientific method distinguishable
from any other regular bread (not that he would do any scientific
investigation of the Sacred Host for reverence to it).  Spiritual
change of bread and wine into The Glorious Presence of the Lord
Jesus is something which I don’t think even Professor McGonagall
claim to do (who is in my headcanon a strict Presbyterian and a
relative of Helen Burns from “Jane Eyre”).

So, yes, after arguing about it for myself, I don’t think
Transfiguration has any effect on anything, be it the Protestant
Lord’s Supper or the Catholic Eucharist.

.. _`The Pope loves magic, actually`:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/1ctqbkn/the_pope_loves_magic_actually/

.. _callmesalticidae:
    https://www.reddit.com/user/callmesalticidae


.. _`the shibboleth of the true faith`:
    https://youtu.be/fqkaBEWPH18

.. _`their own junk`:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg_Catechism#Lord's_Day_30

.. _confession:
    https://kaplice.evangnet.cz/HTMS/kb.html