Communion and cannibalism

Progressive theologian Randal Rauser offers an outlandish and unsuccessful defense of transubstantiation against the cannibalism charge:

https://randalrauser.com/2019/04/is-catholic-communion-cannibalism-my-thoughts/

It seems to me that the best way forward for the Catholic is to bite the bullet on this one. Yes, it is cannibalism. However, we must make an important distinction. While it is true that this act technically meets the definition of cannibalism, it is not cannibalistic in the substantial sense, and that’s the sense that matters.

So what’s the difference I am drawing between technical and substantial? That difference is rooted in the standard social function of the term “cannibal”. Consider, by analogy, the term “vegetarian”. To be a vegetarian is to abstain from the consumption of all animal matter (i.e. meat) in one’s diet.

While that is the standard definition of vegetarian, I would argue that it can also be viewed as the technical application of the term. By contrast, the substantial application of the term vegetarian is somewhat more narrow and pertains to abstaining from the consumption of all animal matter in one’s diet that once constituted part of an animal. There are at least two reasons for this dietary restriction: consuming that animal matter is complicit in the infliction of unjust suffering upon animals and it also exacts a disproportionate environmental cost. These concerns are the real motivation for censuring the consumption of animal matter.

And so, what if a person could consume meat wholly apart from any animal suffering or disproportionate environmental cost? I am thinking specifically of animal matter which has been cultivated in a laboratory such that this meat never formed part of the body of a sentient, living organism. Instead, it was cultivated from cells in a petri dish. (I’m assuming the cellular base was originally collected in a wholly ethical way consistent with vegetarian concern to avoid animal suffering.) While the consumption of this meat would technically violate the vegetarian identity, I would submit that it would be consistent with the substantial motivations behind (most) vegetarianism: i.e. the avoidance of animal suffering and disproportionate environmental cost of meat production.

From that perspective, the person who eats only lab meat may technically be violating the definition of vegetarianism, but they nonetheless meet the substantial definition and its underlying moral concerns. And thus, while this person may not be a technical vegetarian, they retain substantially a vegetarian.

i) That's fatally equivocal. What motivates a vegetarian isn't constitutive of what differentiates meat from vegetable matter. In his thought-experiment, the person who consumes artificial meat is still a meat-eater. What he's consuming is objectively meat. His psychological motivations for vegetarianism don't alter the content of what he consumes. The process by which the meat is produced doesn't change the constitution of the product. 

Rather, he's a meat-eater whose diet is consistent with vegetarian scruples inasmuch as he is sidestepping ethical objections to meat-eating. That doesn't make him a vegetarian. Rather, it demonstrates that, in principle, meat-eating can satisfy vegetarian ethical criteria. So even if Rauser's comparison was relevantly analogous, it would still fail to prove his point. 

ii) Moreover, cannibalism would still be morally abhorrent even if a human body was cultivated in a lab from scratch. 

The same point can be made with respect to cannibalism and the Eucharist. Non-cannibalism eschews the cannibalistic act because that act involves inflicting suffering upon human persons and devaluing human personhood and the body by way of consumption of that body. But those strictures assume that the matter which is consumed once formed part of a living human person’s body.

This is not true of the Eucharist. Thus, while these elements may technically become one with the body and blood of Christ, they were never part of the body of the living human person Jesus. In that sense, the consecration of Eucharistic elements in the Mass is analogous to the growing of new meat in a laboratory. And the consumption of the Eucharist avoids the social censure of cannibalism in the same way that the consumption of lab-grown meat avoids the social censure of carnivory.

To conclude, just as the person who restricts themselves to lab-grown meat may meet the substantial definition of being a vegetarian, so the person who restricts themselves to Eucharistic elements may meet the substantial definition of being a non-cannibal. And so, the cannibal charge may be good for a cheap shot in a meme, but as a significant objection to Catholicism, it lacks a substantial bite.

That's another fatal equivocation. Although the unconsecrated communion elements don't originate in the living body of Jesus, they become identical with the living body of Jesus (according to transubstantiation). The result of the process is identical with the living body of Jesus. 

To take a different comparison, if I'm born blind, but science is able to clone a pair of eyes using my own genetic material, those are as much my eyes as if I was born sighted. Those are as much my eyes as my hands or ears or tongue. They're indistinguishable from the eyes I'd have if I was born sighted. 

Or take in-vitro fertilization. If the ovum is fertilized outside the womb, it remains substantially a human baby–no less that if it was fertilized through normal procreation.