Abeste profani.

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To this day in the Orthodox liturgy, there comes a point in the process where the uninitiated are dismissed [All ye catechumens, depart! Depart, ye catechumens! All ye that are catechumens, depart! Let no catechumens remain! But let us who are of the faithful, again and again, in peace pray to the Lord.] and the point where the text calls for securing the doors [Guard the doors. Wisdom. Let us be attentive.]

The western church mostly dropped this - sending the young off to "Sunday school" is a new invention, not a survival.

We are told this derived in part from the status of the Eucharist as mystery, keeping swine out of the way of the pearls, and in part from the persecutions of the church - admitting only initiates cut down the probability of government spies and would-bew informers.

Today, the mysteries, the principles and the practices of Christianity are open to the public, texts and videos on line for all to see. Relatively few churches worry who is coming up for Communion. Many churches go out of their way to draw in strangers.

The upshot? Nobody cares. the rumors about what went on in those sectret Christian meetings were no wilder than the stupidities that show up on PPR from people who have easy access to the facts.

Which is better? Neither would help us here. But as for me, in church it would be rather preferable if the uninvolved were still asked to leave.

Anyone who thinks they can find Christ in a Cracker is really in need of counseling.

ruveyn

You are flagging. First off, you are often much closer to relevant - this kneejerk is wayoff target. Then again, you often manage to iss the trite. "Christ in a Cracker" is barely a step up from Vexillifer, And finally, though your record is one if deliberately ignoring the facts because you know it teases, you surely know:

A. Christ is not by any theology IN the cracker

B. In the Eastern churches - there was quite a fight over this - the bread is emphatically NOT a cracker and even in the west in many churches it is not a cracker by most available definitions.

You can do better than this. If I were going to poke you [as I confess I am occasionally motivated to do] I should hope to adhere to a higher standard.

"Procul Hinc Abeste Profani" = "From Hence Depart ye Profane Ones"

It's a quote from a work on alchemy by Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605), "Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Æternæ" ("Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom", c.1595), and seems to derive moreso from the Rosicrucian Order than from mainstream Christianity.

The tension between spirituality and experiment in Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae brought about its condemnation by the Sorbonne in 1625.

That will likely be somebody's new sig line very soon...

I am very aware that abeste profani is of nonChristian source, but thanks anyway. It may keep others from confusion. I used it largely because is well known and sounds good as well ands being expressive.

Most mystery religions - though some more than others - take precautions against infiltration by the uninitiated. Western Christianity is unusual in that most of the mysteries do not transform into aggressive openness.

Now I am going to have to look up the "tension between spirituality and experiment" to find out what you mean by it.

Quickly checking, I find piles of sites of various background boilerplating this line. One thing you learn in academia - if everybody quotes a formula without rephrasing it, there is a high probability not one of them know what it means.

I did find this rather different formulatin:

On 1 February 1625 Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum was condemned by the Sorbonne for its mixture of Christianity and magic."

That actually makes some sense - but one would need to find the actual words used by the Sorbonne.

How does Khunrath compare to say Boehme or Paracelsus?

When the priest takes time off from buggering altar boys and he says the correct hocus pocus and the Cracker becomes the Substance of Christ.

ruveyn

Ignoring the drops of spittle, yes. Hocus pocus is assumed by most in the etymology trade to be a vulgar mishearing or twisting of Hoc est corpus, then applied the the uses a noninitiate might be expected to make of the phrase. And as you say, the Host IS Christ - it does not as you originally [but not with much originality] misstated.

On your obstinate [you seem, frankly, to be more consistently obstinate than consistently skeptic or materialist] repetition of cracker: so far as I know [if any are in a position to correct me please expand my database] no religious organization that acknowledges the Real Presence in any of its formulations uses anything near a cracker, though of course there is no theological reason I know of why they should not.

Sio far as I know, the only restrictions are that by some it mut NOT be leavened, by others it MUST be leavened, and some might insist on wheat rather than maize, rice, rye, millet or barley as starch source. No idea where people would stand on spelt.

The Bread that Jesus broke at the Last Supper (which was a Passover Seder, by the way) was genuine shmorah kosher orthodox matzah. Jews have been using it for thousands of years. You can buy some at you local supermarket guaranteed kosher l'pesach by the local M'shgeach. You might say Jews have been celebrating holy communion since Jesus decided to hang around for a while on Golgatha Hill.

ruveyn

Technically, no. One could say that Christians rather have been doing a mutilated and retasked seder - but it is like allosaur and humming bird - kind of pointless to say that even an ostrich "is" a dinosaur, and absurd to say Deinonychus "is" a bird. The connections and origins are obvious, but even in the early church they were two things.

You will find congregations that use matzoth - if not regularly, as one alternative. Quite common in some of the small scale independents we have flitted through. For the larger communities, I think cost and efficiency - the crunch and crumb factor - dictate choice of host.

I am not at all clear on why [unless it was the drive to differentiate the Christian rite] the Orthodox decided to insist on LEAVENED bread, which [with all due respect to the Patriarch] is just wrong, though the bread stamps that come out of it are great.