A page on CNN's web site is headlined:
The story goes on to explain:
Sebastian Errazuriz has used art to take on an array of issues: New York's death rate, the Occupy movement, military suicide, children with disabilities, the brutal reign of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Now, the Brooklyn-based artist is taking aim at what he sees as religious extremism.
At a party this weekend celebrating New York Design Week, which begins today, the Chilean-born artist plans to hand out 100 "Christian Popsicles" made of "frozen holy wine transformed into the blood of Christ" and featuring a crucifix instead the tongue depressor that typically hosts the frozen treats, he said.
According to a related story:
"It's not that I purposely want to get in trouble. I just believe if you are not doing work that can make people stop, think and discuss, then it's better not to make any work at all," he said.
Raised in a Catholic household, Errazuriz is now a "practicing atheist," but he has many friends and family members who are religious, and he respects their beliefs. He has always been vexed by religion, however, particularly the practitioners who wish to force their beliefs on others.
"(I'm) more than happy to recommend that thinking for ourselves and questioning the realities we received from previous generations can be incredibly liberating," he said.
Today, he feels that America is growing more extreme in its dogma, which is "holding a growing influence over American politics." He is especially unnerved by demands that U.S. leaders "publicly profess their faith in their god and enforce laws that defend the ideology of the Bible over individual liberties," he said.
Errazuriz wants his "Christian Popsicles," which will be stained red by the wine after their consumption, to signify the relationship between fanaticism and historic religious violence.
If you're like me, your blood is probably far from freezing and closer to boiling at this point.
Also, far from discouraging religious violence, if I were at such a party and somebody started handing out such things, I'd be extremely tempted to punch the guy in the face, right on the spot. (NOTE TO ANYONE IN NEW YORK THIS WEEKEND: DO NOT ACTUALLY DO THAT. WHAT I'D BE PRIVATELY TEMPTED TO DO IS NOT A GUIDE TO WHAT YOU SHOULD ACTUALLY DO.)
But there is some good news here. Despite the horror the artist is attempting to perform, he fails. Here's why:
An image of Jesus Christ positioned traditionally on the cross is visible once the ice pop is consumed. As for the frozen wine, Errazuriz said, he concealed it in a cooler and took it into a church, where it was "inadvertently blessed by the priest while turning wine into the blood of Christ during the Eucharist."
Sorry. Items smuggled into church that a priest has no knowledge of are not "inadvertently blessed" by the priest and do not become the Body and Blood of Christ.
You can't smuggle a loaf of bread in under your coat and have it transubstantiated. If a mother has a packet of unsalted crackers in her purse to keep the kiddos quiet should they get hungry, it won't be consecrated. Even if these things would otherwise be valid matter.
A priest must have the intention of consecrating a particular item of valid matter in order for the consecration to take place.
According to the late Fr. Nicholas Halligan, OP, in his outstanding book, The Sacraments and Their Celebration (written as a training manual for priests and seminarians):
The material to be consecrated must be definitely intended by the minister, since by intention the formula determines the significance of the material. . . . The bread and wine to be consecrated should be placed on the corporal (or the altar cloth). If there is material to be consecrated or which is consecratable on the altar, but its presence is unknown to the celebrant, by that very fact it is not consecrated, since the intention of the minister must in some sufficient way designate or include the material that is to be consecrated (pp. 68-69, emphasis in original).
So smuggling wine into a church in a cooler, where the priest can't see it and has no intention of consecrating it, will not result in a consecration. Period.
Mr. Errazuriz may win today's award for most vile and offensive act you've heard of in a long time, but fortunately there is a safeguard preventing this kind of thing from happening at the whim of a crazed artist: God has set it up so that the intention of the priest is necessary for the consecration and you can't just wander into the room with hidden bread or wine and get material for a planned sacrilege.
So one more reason not to punch Mr. Errazuriz. He's a wanna-be sacrilege artist, but he's failing to commit the sacrilege he wants.
Let's pray for him.
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Wait, can wine actually freeze? Aren’t there different freezing temperatures based on alcohol content?
Well anyway, the sooner we drop Mr. Whatshisname lame-o “artist” from the blogroll headlines, the better! Buh-bye.
Yes, lets pray for him! At first I was like what horrible evil preist took part in this!!!! Then I kept reading lol! Thank God he protects us from this. Even still anyone who participates in this al all is evil, just the fact that he intended to commit sacrilege is enough for any good Catholic to walk or run far away from this man and anything he touches!
“There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church. ....As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do.”
— Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen †
If he is an atheist, why is he smuggling wine into a church to be consecrated? He can’t be an atheist if he believes the wine becomes the blood of Christ. According to him, there is no God!
What exactly are people supposed to “stop, think, and discuss” about? Other than the fact that he decided to act like a jerk?
Artist? Really…? And what are people to understand and ponder upon by seeing/eating these popsicles?
“to signify the relationship between fanaticism and historic religious violence”, he’s the one who is a fanatic, and this is a form of a religious violence.
enness, I think it’s more that there’s no real need for alarm: God protects the Sacraments, wherein no priest could legitimately consecrate something that it was not his intention to do so.
I’m highly tempted to guffaw at this guy—rather than punch him—given his self-righteous attempt at sacrilege art turned out to be way dopier than he intended or expected: as such, the joke is on him, and God got the last laugh, anyway. But his “art” is still nonetheless blasphemous, which makes me feel very sorry for him. So I’ll pray for him instead.
Whew! Good thing this edgy, avant-garde toughguy artiste has the courage and guts to take on Catholics. Maybe some day he’ll try dressing up like Mohammed and running around the streets of Dearborn, MI or Minneapolis, or areas in NYC…..just to get people “discussing”. What a punk, stone-cold-coward!
@ StephC
Yes wine can freeze. Mixtures of liquids also have their own phase diagram.
Ethanol is completely miscible with water and the mixture (just like solutions) has a freezing point (which is lower than the freezing point of water).
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Aren’t there different freezing temperatures based on alcohol content?
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Pure Ethanol freezes at -114 °C (-173 °F), but wine contains between 11 and 16 % volume of Ethanol.
For a typical 12.5% Ethanol wine the freezing point is about -6 °C.
Tipical freezers can get down to -10 °C and more expansive even to -20 °C… so you ought to be able to make wine popsicles…
Of course the higher the alcohol content the lower the freezing temperature.
Jimmy -
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Since I’ve begun listening to your podcasts (highly recommended), I begun hearing your distinctive voice as I read your blogs. Not literally, of course, but you know what I mean.
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This particular story was interesting to read w/ this story in that manner. I even laughed (sorry) as you wrote about what we would WANT to do but should NOT do to this poor soul.
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In the end - of course - God who can see all and know all - will handle whatever justice is due.
I knew from the tag line that there could be no such thing as “inadvertently” blessed wine. In light of that, this is actually pretty funny. It seems to me that this young man has no beef with the Church, it is just way for him to get some attention coming his way. It is the fashion today to attack Catholics and well, he probably does not have talent to bring people to his art. All he has done is show his total ignorance. What a dolt. Good for a laugh though.
maryfehrle-I’m with you on that one! It would be expected that he(a self described atheist) ‘play along’ and make ‘bogus’ ‘consecrated’ pops….but the fact that he ‘needed’ to get them consecrated…well…this is just one big quotation mark! As for us, it only more exclaims how precious it is that we don’t have to sneak in to communion, but rather are called…My RSVP is YES ,YES, YES…
If this so-called artist needs to get noticed by attacking God & being extreme, he has no talent. He’s a liar too, since he believes by doing this he’s “respecting the Catholic faith of his family members.” I demand an explanation from him: since priests and nuns don’t fly planes into skyscrapers, what exactly does he mean by “religious extremism?” Does terror from Islamic zealots who threaten conversion to the point of a sword matter to him at all? Does he care about beheadings that go on in the name of Allah? He’s illogical. He’s a Catholic-hater, that’s all.
I read this article being open minded bc at first glance the ‘art work’ looks a ‘fortune’ in a fortune cookie, or like the popsicles sticks that have a joke printed on them I thought. Nothing new or inspirational here. Why would an Atheist go into a church thinking that a hidden bottle of wine would become blessed? Only answer is the artist was coming home to his Catholic roots, but did not understand a priest can not ‘inadvertenly’ bless something…Second, how can wine freeze..(.by the coldness of our hearts?) Third, dogma is not to surpress but to liberate so we have a point of reference for our lives.
It actually seemed kind of theologically profound that our partaking in what appears to be wine is a partaking in the blood of Christ spilled on the cross. Maybe it will get people thinking in other ways, “you know this Jesus fellow shed his blood to give me life and bring refreshment to my soul. Perhaps I should think more about this…”
Since it’s not consecrated then it’s not a sacrilege, we can pray that those partaking in these will actually begin think for themselves.
Aside: How DO you sneak coolers of wine into mass? “Oh don’t mind me and this cooler, I’m just going to a picnic!” or “Snacks for the kiddos…”
One time a new priest (recently out of seminary) went through the entire consecration not realizing that the wine had not been been brought to the altar.
When he was at the point of giving us communion, he explained to us that we would not be receiving the blood of Christ that day because the wine had not been consecrated and he explained why that was so.
I was quite the new Catholic at the time and I really appreciated that teaching moment.
He doesn’t respect others beliefs. If he truly respected their beliefs he would not have done anything like this. It amazes me how people can bash another person’s beliefs and still say that they respect those beliefs. Talk about hogwash and baloney.
Sebastian’s proposal -to “stop-think-discuss”- is an essential part of being human but its not what he is proposing that’s offensive, it’s the incomplete understanding of what he is saying that’s wrong. Yes, he’s got the first one right i.e. “stop” but the second one means that complete knowledge is required before one can move to the third position. He’s failed this so badly (as many have noted) that there cannot be any third step. I am reminded of a criticism that was directed at those in the sixties who used to sit around and “stare at their navels” and arrive at some awareness(?) but Mr.Errazuriz appears unable to even locate the belly button.
He’s an atheist, yet he has to believe that the wine is actually transformed into the Blood of Christ if he’s going to try to pull this extreme of a stunt (all his misunderstandings about transubstantiation aside). This is effectively shooting yourself in the foot, if you will.
if he thought much, he’d remember that Mao, Stalin, Hitler all headed unChristian groups responsible for the deaths of millions and millions, in this last century alone.
“He has always been vexed by religion, however, particularly the practitioners who wish to force their beliefs on others.”
Well, thank goodness, then, for un-practitioners who wish to force unbelief on others.
“Practicing” atheist? I’m gonna need some help figuring that one out.
Curiously enough, I posted similar facts to Jimmy’s vis a vis intent and transubstantiation to the comments of the ‘belief blog’ at CNN. They were, of course, ridiculed.
A follow up comment was not published, for some reason. In it I stated something to the effect that “One thing is certain in the artist’s actions are proof of the old saying (with no pun intended) that there is sucker born every minute, because as there was no transubstantiation or even blessing done due to lack of intent (at least), he has managed to convince those who think they are doing something blasphemous that they really are, when in fact they are consuming nothing more than a wine-sicle”
Also certain is that CNN bought his story hook, line and sinker, because there is in fact, no story here.
What! This really happened? It’s not an article from The Onion?
He really needs some prayers.
@Miriam -
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Teaching moment here again: While the wine was not consecrated and therefore the priest rightly did not offer it, you did receive the blood of Christ present in the consecrated host. Check out the Catechism #1377 which reminds us, in part, that “Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species”.
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It is easy to think of Christ’s body in the consecrated hosts and His blood in the consecrated wine but He is truly present - body, blood, soul and divinity in each of the particulars of the sacrament.
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This is an important mystery of this amazing sacrament. Not being present with you, if the priest misspoke about this truth, I am sure it was due to his probable embarrassment at one of his first masses (and probably the last time it happened!).
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Jesus is in both the hosts and the wine upon valid consecration, completely and totally. BUT - as Jimmy tells us not in popsicles! Tho’ the idea of a wine popsicle seems like a nice idea for an adult summer picnic.
Is this one of those great american artists who is given my tax money for the support of the arts?
The atheist’s thought processes are so bizarre, it’s hard to know where to begin with him. He professes to be an atheist raised in a Catholic household, yet smuggling wine popsicles into a Catholic church will somehow get them transubstantiated into the most precious blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ?
Atheists’ thought processes and attempts at logic are generally about as bizarre as this one. A few years back, a poll taken of self-professed Irish atheists revealed that 24% of them firmly believed in the Real Presence.
When it comes to attempts to commit sacrilege, whether by profaning the sacred species or otherwise, I believe the best thing one can do is to pray that the person(s) in question be given whole torrents of grace and enlightenment, so that they may come to knowledge of the Truth, may be converted and saved. And, if they will refuse grace, that they be publicly exposed, discredited, and, most importantly, disabled from further such activity so that they cannot lead others into sin. I would leave it up to divine providence as to how to bring this about, the most important thing for us is to pray and offer that these things be prevented from coming to pass.
holics who happened to become atheist are mostly interested in maligning the Church. In this case it is simple foolishness that he thought of getting something consecrated without the knowledge of priest. His intention is to misguide some gullible people. These atheists are narrowminded anti-human and uncivilized persons compared to decent and tolerant atheists
I think we can still punch him….. but I call it punching with prayer ;)
1. How do you “practice” atheism?
2. He obviously needs more “practice” if he doesn’t believe in God but believes the wine could be transformed into the blood of Jesus Christ.
Oy vey! Lol
The devil never rest! Why must he seek fame by defaming his maker?
the headline is misleading….we dont have to worry about such peple. God will deal with them Himself.
Intersting how atheists NEVER explore their non beliefs. It’s as if they have nothing to explore. Do they find their beleif hollow? Devoid of exploration on an intellectual or emotional level? Is having no bleief in anything devoid of meaning?
Nevermind. I think I answered my own question there.
With nothing to explore and no meaning, the atheists (read: those who believe there is no God, yet are obsessed with Christianity) have to explore Christianity. They just do it soooo badly.
Kaneda, MarkM, MaryFehrle, richT, Catherine et al.: ““Practicing” atheist? I’m gonna need some help figuring that one out.” Furthermore, “With nothing to explore and no meaning, the atheists (read: those who believe there is no God, yet are obsessed with Christianity) have to explore Christianity. They just do it soooo badly.”
Gives new meaning to “forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,” doesn’t it? Let’s keep praying for them and praying for this fine fellow. It’ll do their souls—and ours—good. Abject, delusional cluelessness such as this farce isn’t worth punching anyone over (the man’s disgusting blasphemy aside, God does have a spectacular sense of humor, and that’s something we can be grateful for).
The atheist who left the Church left it because he had no knowledge of what the Church actually teaches.
No harm was done. The priest saying the Mass has to have the intent of changing the wine in to Christ’s blood. The same would hold true if someone took a loaf of bread to Mass - it would not become Christ’s body.
I find it interesting that someone who doesn’t believe in God would even try a stunt like this. It contradicts his atheistic beliefs.
I’m sick of this stuff happening. If something like this happens where I live, you can believe that I’m going to make noise that will make it clear that I disapprove.
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