There is hardly anything crueler that a priest can do than to leave people in doubt about the validity of their sacraments.  

It is extremely VEXING to learn of priests who are so thick… so arrogant… that they can’t or won’t be exacting about the VALIDITY of sacraments.   It isn’t hard.  You “Say The Black and Do The Red” and you use valid matter.

At the Pillar there is a note about how the Archdiocese of Kansas City has laid down the law about what wine can be used for Mass.  It seems that at “parishes” (plural) invalid matter for the Eucharist was used, invalid wine.  Therefore, for years, none of the Masses were valid.  None of the intentions for Masses were fulfilled.  Hence, redress from Rome must be sought to deal with the intentions, etc.

For STUPID!

Priests CANNOT CLAIM IGNORACE about these things because it is fundamental to their tool set.  If they are ignorant about the issue of valid matter for Mass it is culpable ignorance.    It is like running into a doctor who doesn’t know about blood types.

We read in Redemptionis Sacramentum:

wine that is used in the most sacred celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice must be natural, from the fruit of the grape, pure and incorrupt, not mixed with other substances…It is altogether forbidden to use wine of doubtful authenticity or provenance, for the Church requires certainty regarding the conditions necessary for the validity of the sacraments. Nor are other drinks of any kind to be admitted for any reason, as they do not constitute valid matter.

There can be some additives as preservatives.

It is of divine institution that the only valid substances for transubstantiation are, for the Host, bread made from wheat and, for the Precious Blood, wine made from grapes or raisins (desiccated grapes).

The grapes used must be ripe, which rules out “wine” such as verjus.

The wine for Mass can be red, white, dry, sweet, whatever.

Some prefer red because it resembles blood.  Some prefer white because it is easier to clean the linens afterward.

Sometimes questions come up about the use of wine which has very low alcohol content, called mustum, a wine which had the fermentation process halted by rapid freezing.  That is a valid substance because it is from grapes and the natural fermentation process began, making it wine.  It has an artificially low alcohol content, but mustum is considered valid wine.

However, there is the other end of spectrum to consider: wine which has an artificially high alcohol content.  Sometimes alcohol distilled from wine is added to wine in order to preserve it against spoiling or changing to vinegar.  This addition of wine alcohol produces “fortified wine”.  The usual types of “fortified wine” we encounter are port, sherry, madeira, marsala, and vermouth.

Unreconstructed Ossified ManualistFortified wines are valid matter so long as the wine-spirit added was distilled from grapes, that the quantity of alcohol added, together natural content from the fermentation, does not exceed 18% and that the additional alcohol is added during the process of fermentation.  You can read a good, brief article on altar wine in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Also, because we are Unreconstructed Ossified Manualists, we check our old theology manuals, such as Unreconstructed Ossified ManualistTanqueray’s Theologia Dogmatica.

We find in Tanqueray that wine for Mass has to be from ripe grapes, it can be of any color, not corrupted, and not frozen at the time of consecration.  Citing the Missale Romanum we are warned against wine that is turning bad.  As a matter of fact, it was (probably is still) illicit to say Mass with doubtful, soured wine.  And if the priest is not doubtful about it, and it is truly bad, he sins gravely by consecrating it.  “Si fuerit aliquantulum acre… conficiens graviter peccat“, says the Missal.  He would – knowingly – be attempting to consecrate something that is not wine and is therefore invalid matter.

That is not just bad, that is very bad.

By the way, the coffee mug which appears here is great for Mystic Monk Coffee!  It’s swell!

I would rule out vermouth, because herbs and so forth are added.

I would not use sherry because, if I am not mistaken, the addition of the spirits takes place after fermentation.

Marsala seems to be okay, so long as it is 18% or less.

Vin Santo, from desiccated grapes, is fine.  As the name implies, it is wine for the altar!

Port is valid, 18% or under.

All this information provides ample motive to stick with altar wines made by ecclesiastically approved vintners (unless you can’t for some reason).  However, a decent bottle of wine from a sound vintner, even if it is not from an ecclesiastically approved source, will be valid matter.   For example, if I were to open up that bottle of Tignanello that I don’t have, and I were to use it for Mass, it would be valid.  And it would be tasty.

If you have a doubt, Fathers, don’t use it.  Don’t screw around with validity of sacraments.

There is hardly anything crueler that a priest can do than to leave people in doubt about the validity of their sacraments.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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35 Comments

  1. Julia_Augusta says:

    I am truly baffled by the inability of a parish in the USA to get wine. We never had problems getting wine for Mass in the Philippines in the 1960s and 1970s, and this was before online wine shops and international delivery.

    Today wine is plentiful and cheap. Father doesn’t need to get an Etna Rosso, a Brunello di Montalcino or a Barbera d’Asti although those would be perfect wines for Mass (only the best for Jesus, after all). There are wines from Latin America, South Africa, the good old USA, Mexico even.

  2. The Astronomer says:

    We have a local NO parish priest who likes to say for the essential part of the form for Confession “…and I, by His authority, absolve you of your sins…”

    My traditionalist pastor, at a church some miles away, says this is most likely an invalid form, as it is not an accurate rendition of “ego te absolvo…”

    What say you, Father? Am I being too fussy or picky? Doubt about possibly receiving the Blessed Sacrament in the state of mortal sin is a terrible thing.

  3. Tradster says:

    If in Kansas City, where else? KC cannot be unique in this matter. Will the USCCB ensure that every Mass, everywhere, are immediately checked and validated?

    And God bless the KC archbishop for taking immediate, decisive, and totally Catholic action.

  4. Tradster says:

    An additional question: do the invalid Masses render the weddings performed during them invalid too?

    [No. Not automatically. Matrimony and Eucharist are different sacraments. Conditions for validity are different.]

  5. redneckpride4ever says:

    Would a situation like this be an appropriate use of canon 844:2?

  6. sevensixtwo187 says:

    Etna Rosso. What a fine choice! :-)

  7. B says:

    Is that the diocese where the National Catholic Reporter is located?

  8. Tantum Ergo says:

    OK, here’s the question that won’t go away. Some time ago, you said that if the wine was invalid matter, the host “may” be consecrated. Another liturgically well-informed priest I brought this question to said that the host (Host) would indeed be consecrated, even if the wine is invalid matter. This is a tremendously important question because we need to know if we’re kneeling before a piece of bread when the wine came from the Gallo section of the grocery store.
    Any guidance?

    [Depends on what the host is made of.]

  9. TonyO says:

    On the one hand, having shopped for wine at local stores hundreds of times, I feel that it should be easy as pie for a priest to get a proper wine. So getting a wrong one is very, very shocking and reprehensible for a priest (or several!) to get this essential part of his job wrong.

    On the other hand, the issue of additives has me puzzled: is it always clear whether there are additives, what they are, and how much? I certainly never noticed such nuances in shopping for a wine. I mean, it’s obvious that if you are getting “strawberry wine” (ugh!) you are getting something that has other-than-grape put in there. But minute-amount additives? what about using a barrel from scotch-making? Is it always obvious when a wine has had something done to it that makes it not matter for the sacrament?

  10. mo7 says:

    As long you’ve brought up the subject: a recent baptism was done by a permanent deacon who is also baby’s grandfather. The baptism went like this: I, your grandfather, baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
    Does the addition of ‘ your grandfather’ change validity?

    [No. But now it rather sounds like it’s about him.]

  11. AlanLins says:

    I wonder if the priests will be required to repay the mass stipend money they received?

  12. JGavin says:

    I am dumbfounded y the sheer stupidity of this. I knew this at an early age.
    It reminds me of the moron who was changing the words of Baptism.

  13. iPadre says:

    That doesn’t even count the priests who use “gluten free” hosts. They think they know better than the Church.

  14. Just go back to the old Mass and the traditional forms of the Sacraments. No more doubts about validity.

    Never move the landmarks of your forefathers.

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  16. Cornelius says:

    I’m confused by this: “Therefore, for years, none of the Masses were valid. None of the intentions for Masses were fulfilled. ”

    If the bread is valid matter (though the wine is not), don’t we still have Our Lord really and truly present in the Eucharist, making the Mass valid (albeit flawed by the invalid wine)?

    [The Sacrifice consists of the separation of the Body and Blood by means of the two-fold consecration. Furthermore, it is one of the gravest crimes in the Church’s law to consecrate one element without the other.]

  17. Not says:

    Just another issue that causes trepidation among Catholics. Recently I have experienced traditional Priests not accepting Baptisms from other traditional Priests who were around when the Church had no Novus Ordo, and never said Novus Ordo. A dearly departed Priest who was given Faculties to do Conformation’s in WWII and only said the Latin Mass and who Confirmed 2 of my Children and the local Cardinal had no issues with this. Now traditional Priest are questioning the validity. I put this at the feet of Our Holy Father. God give us a strong Holy Pope.

  18. Katherine says:

    TonyO wrote, “On the one hand, having shopped for wine at local stores hundreds of times, I feel that it should be easy as pie for a priest to get a proper wine.”

    –Almost as if they had to go out of their way to provide the wrong wine.

    Just guessing, but if we only stipulated standard wine from grapes with no extraordinary preservatives, I think that would cover over 90% of the red wine stocking shelves everywhere in the USA. Why even need to go to fortified wines and other specialty wines in the most abundant society on the face of the earth, over all of human existence, with accessibility, within days, to every material product, including wine?

    If I, a lowly wife and mother, can go on Google and know the Church’s requirements for altar wine in 5 minutes or less, the problem with these parishes/pastors is more than simple ignorance.

  19. sjoseph371 says:

    I find it hard to believe that any priest cannot find the correct wine for Mass. What are they doing, going to the package store to get Boones or Mad Dog 20/20? Until I read this article, I really didn’t know the intricacies of what constituted valid vs invalid wine, but I DID know that there was some sort of “special” wine for Mass and that there had to be some kind of vendor who specialized in this.
    A few clarifications / questions:
    1. “Gluten Free” hosts – I’ve been told that there are hosts that are safe for those with those allergies, they still have enough of a trace of gluten to be valid, but not enough to cause allergies in most cases. So while one may scoff at “gluten free” hosts, there are hosts out there that are genuinely valid that are gluten free “in spirit”.
    2. If for some reason the priest discovers that the sacramental wine he was going to use went bad and there wasn’t any good wine available but there wasn’t enough time to go out and get more, what happens, then? He can’t consecrate spoiled wine nor can he just consecrate the host, so then what? Can he still say “Mass” but let everyone know that it will just be a “prayer service” due to unfortunate unforseen circumstances? Can he still distribute the hosts that are in the tabernacle that were previously consecrated, akin to what happens on Good Friday?
    3. As for invalid Masses / sacraments, can we still pray to God that he “recognizes” them for those who participated / received them since those people were unaware of the errors? I don’t mean that we should expect God would do that, but pray for His mercy – something like “God is not bound by the sacraments, but man is”.

  20. Littlemore says:

    iPadre writes. .
    ?That doesn’t even count the priests who use “gluten free” hosts. They think they know better than the Church.?
    Am I right in thinking that the host should have a miniscule amount of gluten from wheat, in order to be valid?

  21. The Masked Chicken says:

    Many years ago, when I was a wee chick in graduate school, I used to attend the university Newman Center. Now, I was a devout Catholic, but an ignorant and trusting Catholic. The Communion host was a type of flat bread. Several years into attending the Center, I happened on the instruction sheet for community bread bakers that had been left out on a table. I noticed that the instruction sheet included the option to add (if I recall correctly) honey, eggs, and the like. At the time, I thought, in my ignorance, that the rule was that the host should be made of wheat, but my understanding of validity requirements was overshadowed by the blind trust that, surely, the priest must know what he were doing and didn’t the bishop know about this, anyways (since he celebrated Mass at the Center once or twice).

    Fast forward many years and a lot of study about Catholicism later and you can imagine my chagrin in confession: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…I made 4139 sacrilegious communions and missed Mass 4150 times (at some “Masses” I might not have received Communion?). Of course, once I explained that I had attended “that” Newman Center, he completely understood (the Center, under a new bishop, has been shut down since I left).

    Why, oh why aren’t Catholics required to take a proficiency exam? We require adults to get a license to fish, for goodness sakes. Shouldn’t we require Catholics to pass a test about their faith before they become fishers of men? Vincible ignorance should be a rare defense for messing up the Faith. If everyone knew the requirements for valid matter at Mass, this would cut down on the shenanigans, but I digress.

    Anyways, now we have a new source upon which to exercise our scruples. How do I know the composition of the wine in each of the thousand of Masses at supposedly orthodox churches I have attended? Were any of them invalid? This issue is the fruit (or wine?) of Vatican II. There are so many choices in the NO Mass that this tends to infect all aspects of it including the choice of wine for Communion. Everything seems so flexible, but who would ever think to use invalid wine in the Latin Mass? Bring back the Latin Mass and a time when the wine wasn’t the occasion for whines. I’ll bet Pope Francis will rue the day he forbade the TLM after he has to wade through the mountain of paperwork involving the invalid NO Masses that may be sent his way because of winegate.

    Now, of course, I have the perfect solution to the problem. Let me ask: have you ever heard of an invalid Mass in a Medieval monastery? No? Why not? Well, it’s because they made their own wine! That leads to the valid solution to the problem (pun intended).

    Not to get too Monty Pythonish, but every priest should have winemaking taught as part of their seminary training and each church should have the “Holy Fermentarium”, where priests make their own wine for Communion. There could even be a special blessing on the grapes and yeast. That way, there would never be any question about the validity of the wine.

    See, was that so hard? I will be available to solve other Church problems after lunch (wine will not be served) :)

    The Chicken

  22. The Masked Chicken says:

    Oh, 4139 Masses because I was a daily Mass attendee for over 10 years. I realize I hadn’t missed 4150 Masses, just that the ones I did attend were, probably, invalid.

    The Chicken

  23. For most priests, I aver, it is no problem obtaining valid wine by way of companies that specialize in preparing wine for Mass. Perhaps in some places, it is difficult.

    Where it can be a challenge is when a priest is travelling, as airport security rules can make it tricky to bring wine along. Only a small quantity can be brought onto the plane in a carry-on; and while it can be packed in checked baggage, I am loath to place something so breakable in checked baggage — assuming I actually check baggage.

    So it always seemed best to obtain some wine at the destination; and in that situation, obtaining sacramental wine may be tricky, if the priest is not visiting a parish, but perhaps planning to offer Mass privately wherever he is vacationing.

    I usually buy some wine at a store, making sure it’s serious wine, produced by, in our genial host’s words, a “sound vintner.” My understanding is that standard table wines, at least in this country — such as that bottle of Pinot Noir or Chardonnay — are simply wine, and therefore, licit and valid. Not so those bottles of “blueberry mist” or “watermelon cooler.”

    My experience is that in the U.S., wines with added flavors usually say so. Otherwise, they will say, “contains sulfites,” which does not affect validity.

  24. Son of Saint Alphonsus says:

    Fathers:

    If for some reason you can’t obtain wine from a sacramental wine distributor, talk to someone at a local winery. Tell them the requirements and they will go out of their way to help/accommodate you. I’ve had to do this and they told me which of their wines would be valid matter, and more importantly, which would not. And a local winery’s wines will be available in regional/local stores so you should have little difficulty buying a bottle or two. Tell the winery what town you’re in and they will point you to a retailer.

    And you’re helping the local economy!

  25. Cornelius says:

    The Masked Chicken, wait, wait . . . you confessed assisting at all those invalid Masses? You considered yourself culpable for that? I don’t get that. “Full knowledge” is one of the requirements for an act to be sinful and you surely did not have full knowledge of the required composition of altar bread. It would even be a stretch to argue that you should have known.

    Or were you being facetious about confessing this and I’m taking you too seriously? Sorry to be so inquiring but you did “put it out there”.

  26. MarianneF says:

    Can anyone recommend a single serve wine that the laity can store for Masses in the home? In other words, it would be good to stock up on small bottles of wine for individual Mass, for future home Masses. That way, entire bottles don’t go to waste. Thank you!

  27. Fr. Reader says:

    @Fr Martin Fox
    I travel often, and I bring wine with me, and often check my luggage, and never ever had any problem with it.

  28. mercy2013 says:

    I have been looking into this situation as we are preparing an altar and supplies for possible Masses in the catacombs of our living room… a lay person cannot order approved sacramental wine from a company that distributes to churches, and even if they could, they are typically bottles in too large of containers. My guess is that it has something to do with liquor licensing. Therefore, I wanted to find real wine with minimal additives that comes in very small bottles because I didn’t want the rest of the bottle to go bad. Here’s what I found. There is a trend now for “natural” wines in the regular consumer market. For example, there is one called “Fitvine.” Now, this wine does not taste that great to pair with a nice steak dinner, but it comes in 8 ounce plastic bottles, and according to the company, had a shelf life of 4-6 years, is produced without pesticides and only contains “grapes, all natural yeast and minimal sulfites.” There is another company out there that is similar, but I can’t remember the name. Anyway, I’m likely to buy a case of these little plastic wine bottles to have a round… just in case!

  29. sjoseph371 says:

    MarianneF “That way, entire bottles don’t go to waste.” . . . . we have a saying in my house when someone recommends one of those vacuum seal tops for opened bottles of wine “That’s cute you think a bottle would last that long to warrant their use!”

  30. MarianneF says:

    @mercy2013- exactly what I am looking for for the same reasons. Thanks for the info.

  31. The Masked Chicken says:

    Dear Cornelius,

    As for confession, it was a tough discernment, because I knew from an early age that the host had to be made of only wheat, so I did not lack the requisite knowledge of that fact. I may have lacked the understanding of how serious the defect was, but I knew something was wrong. That created a situation of an uncertain conscience as to whether or not it was morally permissible to receive Communion and one should not act on an uncertain conscience until the uncertainty is resolved by further study. I simply relied on my trust of the priests to know what they were doing, rather than doing my own homework to check out my suspicions. A lot of people at the Newman Center did (and these were college educated students, faculty, and other laity) and the result was scandal in that the priests use of in valid matter cause us to worship a piece of bread.

    That being said, there was a defect in my knowledge, to be sure, in that I didn’t know that for certain variants on the host were *not* allowed (I was not a liturgical specialist and you gotta love the ‘70’s and ‘80’s Hootenanny and Clown Masses for creating additional doubt), but my own nagging doubt should have given me pause. I was so trusting back then and these were priests, after all, who were supposed to be highly trained, so I pushed the doubt aside.

    Nevertheless, although the culpability might have been mitigated, it was, probably, not zero, so, even if the sin was probably not mortal on my part, I decided to confess it, anyways. The Confessor, of course, said that the sin lay more with the priests than me. Still, the whole experience left a bitter taste (no pun intended) and made me less trusting of the training and orthodoxy of priests, in general. That should not have to be the case, but sadly, such is the state of affairs in the Church, today.

    As for winegate, I have to give a lecture, today, on the organic chemistry of alcohols for pre-nursing students, so I just reviewed the biochemistry of winemaking. Interesting stuff. If anyone wants a free reference book on the biochemistry, I will post a link.

    Basically, licit wine is made using grapes and yeast, although sulfites are often added. The alcohol is produced by a combination of anaerobic (without oxygen) and aerobic pathways, such as glycolysis and pyruvate fermentation to ethanal and then to ethanol.

    If this were all there were to it, then, in theory, one could just add ethanol to grape juice and be done with it, but the yeast, also, produces other by-products, such as ethylene glycol, various amines, and a whole host of other secondary substances from lipid and protein metabolism. Wine is a lot more complex, biochemically, than grape juice.

    There is no such thing as wine. One must speak of wines, due to the variety of yeasts and biochemistries involved. The only thing necessary for licitness is that nothing is added that would change the substance from wine produced naturally to something like wine plus…

    I, still, think that priests should learn to make wine. Maybe, it would give them a better appreciation for the correct substance.

    The Chicken

  32. teomatteo says:

    Chicken, thanks for posting. You bring up a point. Now priest do not need CE credits every three years (like i do to cont to practice within my professsion) but priests who do bone headed things makes the idea attractive.

  33. TonyO says:

    Chicken says:

    I happened on the instruction sheet for community bread bakers that had been left out on a table. I noticed that the instruction sheet included the option to add (if I recall correctly) honey, eggs, and the like. At the time, I thought, in my ignorance, that the rule was that the host should be made of wheat, but my understanding of validity requirements was overshadowed by the blind trust that, surely, the priest must know what he were doing and didn’t the bishop know about this, anyways (since he celebrated Mass at the Center once or twice).

    I am shocked, Chicken, that the Confessor did not ask you the following:
    (1) Did you know for a fact, or have a reasonable certainty, that the people making these hosts were actually using THIS recipe? (The mere fact that a recipe was lying around does not mean it was used for hosts in use there).
    (2) The recipe calls for options: did you have reasonable certainty that the people carrying out the recipe, for these hosts, chose to add optional ingredients?
    (3) (the most critical): In your understanding (at the time) that the hosts must be made with wheat, did you understand that the point “made with wheat” meant “and nothing else”? (I sure did not know that, and I had a relatively decent Catholic grade school education, more or less.) Many breads “made with wheat” have added ingredients, of course – all I knew at the time was that you shouldn’t add YEAST (and that would not make it invalid matter anyway, re: Eastern Rites).

    The point is this: it seems to me that Confessor should have sought to ascertain whether you had sufficient reasonable basis (at that time) to conclude that the risk the hosts were invalid matter was more than a negligible degree. Even if (in the eventuality) some hosts were found to be invalid (not necessarily all of them over the period, by any means) does not automatically imply that YOU had sufficient reason to think the risk of that being so was more than negligible. And, in particular, your comment surely, the priest must know what he were doing and didn’t the bishop know about this was a reasonable assumption, and thereby presents a strong basis to judge it unlikely that you made a careless estimation of the risk, much less that you made a positively foolish estimation of the risk.

    (Unless, of course, that you knew about OTHER ways in which the priest was playing false with sacraments. )

    We make judgments all the time about which things arise to a level of concern to take action on them, and we generally decide many, many things are too insignificant an issue to bother with: you have to, or you couldn’t get anything done. These are matters of prudence, using discretion to discern which matters have enough weight of evidence to merit taking action, even if the action is that of gathering more facts / evidence.) Knowing (now) about a matter that you SHOULD have taken action…had you had more evidence at the time, cannot imply that you SHOULD have gathered more evidence and failure to do so was a moral fault.

    Being found wrong, after the fact, in a prudential judgment simply is not evidence of moral fault. And discernment of whether a body of incomplete evidence arises to “actionable” evidence is, per se, a prudential judgment.

  34. OssaSola says:

    Hmmm. My husband and I were in the chapel at Cana when he asked me to marry him. Some fellow travelers bought us some “Cana wine” in a souvenir shop and it was used at our wedding Mass. I’m hoping Father checked it! So, while the marriage is valid, maybe the Mass was not…

  35. hwriggles4 says:

    I remember my altar boy days well. My older brother and I served nearly every Saturday.

    In the early 1980s my parish began doing communion under both species. The wine was poured into say “glass cups” that the Eucharistic Ministers used. (When I was a Eucharistic Minister at a Catholic college we did the same thing – yeah, it was the 1980s and most of us didn’t know any better). It wasn’t until years later that I realized glass wasn’t supposed to be used for consecrated wine.

    Nowadays I will usually just receive the host even when both species are offered at Mass.

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