Growing up going the meetings for the first 18 years of my life, I remember well the “emblems” being passed around near the conclusion of Sunday morning meeting. A half or quarter-slice of white bread and a small cup of Welch’s grape juice were placed on a plate that sat on a small table, usually in the middle of the room, covered by a small cloth. When the time came they would be passed around the room, as the professing members would solemnly pinch off a small piece of the bread and then sip from the cup. I remember the excitement I would feel when, because of where I happened to be sitting, I would get to pass the plate to the next person beside me. Having no other frame of reference, this ritual seemed perfectly normal and reverent.

It was not until later that I realized that the early Christians used actual wine, and it was much later that I learned that the use of non-fermented grape juice came directly out of the American temperance movement of the mid-18th Century. In 1869 Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch, a Methodist, developed a way to boil Concord grass that effectively killed the yeast which stopped the fermentation process. Soon many Protestant denominations adopted this non-alcoholic grape juice as their sacramental “wine” during their remembrance of the Lord’s Supper. According to some reports, 2×2 Fellowships outside of the United States do actually still use wine in meetings. In a pathetic attempt to rationalize this discord between the 2×2 Fellowship and early Christians, Jaenen makes the following astonishingly misleading statement:

“In A.D. 1285 William Durandus, bishop of Mende, authorized the innovation of substituting grape juice for wine in his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum.”

Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, or “Rationale for the Divine Offices,” was the most influential and widely circulated commentary on both the material and spiritual dimensions of the Catholic Mass throughout medieval Europe. After its publication in 1285 AD it became one of the most important and extensively disseminated explanations of the liturgical and symbolic aspects of the Mass in medieval European Christianity.

An honest reading of Rationale Divinorum Officiorum makes it quite clear that the Catholic Church teaches that the “cup of blessing, which we bless”, must have wine. The only “wiggle room” had to do with the type of wine or the actual amount of alcohol in the wine. Durandus makes it clear that, although wine must be used, the quality of the wine or alcohol content could vary:

“Even though we must look, with the greatest zeal, for the best wine for the sacrifice, the poor quality of the wine does not stain the purity of the sacrament; this is why, even if we offer new wine, which is called mustum….in a case of necessity, a cluster of grapes can be pressed and then be confected, but one cannot receive communion from the same unpressed cluster of grapes.” (Book IV, 42, p. 367)

The mustum he referred it most certainly not, as Jaenen dishonestly claims, mere “grape juice”. Museum is partially fermented wine that has a lower alcohol content. FACT CHECK THIS. it was only approved for priests who struggle with alcohol use disorder or some other related medical disorder. In 1994 the issue was finally clarified by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “by ‘mustum’ it is understood fresh juice from grapes or juice preserved by suspending its fermentation” but its nature could not be changed. Note that fermentation is “suspended”, not removed. Mustum still contains 0.01 - 0.5% alcohol. This is only used in special circumstances and the priest has to receive permission to use this during mass. In no way, as Jaenen dishonestly SAYS, was “grape juice” ever considered appropriate for the congregation as a whole.

he still says Transubstantiation occurs When, in truth, the consecration creates the sacrament, and after the consecration, there are no longer bread and wine on the altar, we can ask: what, now, precisely is the bread and wine of the sacramental sign of the Body and Blood? For it could be said that the bread that was there, or the wine that really existed, is neither the sacramental sign of the Body or the Blood, because that bread has been transformed into the Body and the wine into the Blood. p 374

CCT 14 Rationale IV, William Durand, Thibodeau: On the Mass and Each Action Pertaining to It (Corpus Christianorum in Translation) 9782503548791, 2503548792

as translated by Timothy M. Thibodeau, 2013, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium ISBN 978-2-503-54879-1

https://dokumen.pub/cct-14-rationale-iv-william-durand-thibodeau-on-the-mass-and-each-action-pertaining-to-it-corpus-christianorum-in-translation-9782503548791-2503548792.html

Didache - dated *** represents a highly significant, early liturgy of the Church that anchors the Eucharistic cup in the lineage of David as the “the holy vine of David Your servant”

The sacraments are what we call efficacious signs, meaning they bring about what they represent and represent what they bring about.

For example, the accidents of bread and wine are also symbolic of the bread and wine offered by the priest of Melchizedek after Abraham's great battle in Genesis

How ironic that 2×2s are following the traditions of men with their grape juice. At the very least, with Jaenen’s fetish-level obsession with following everything the early Christians did, how does he reconcile the fact that the early Christians did not have the scientific knowledge how to halt the fermentation process