Holy Moley! (Theological Chemistry)

I grew up Protestant. Bible Belt Protestant. Megachurch Protestant.

Pictured: The church I grew up in for a majority of my time in Texas.

I also spent some time in a baptist church (and that's where I was baptized).

I still recognize like two-thirds of the people here even though it's been years since I've lived there.

I have a complicated relationship with this upbringing. I'll probably get into that at some other point when I finally make good on my promise to visit the megachurch in Times Square. But that's not what we are doing today.

When I moved to the more Catholic New York, I found that there were many parts of more traditional Christianity that were left out of the churches I was raised in. I'm okay with this: I quite like the focus on one's personal relationship with the divine rather than the emphasis on the institution of the church itself. But there were holes in my understanding nonetheless.

One of these holes is the use of holy water. We didn't really do that. But, as part of a Lutheran congregation now, I have seen its use firsthand.

One day, while chatting with a friend, I found out that they had special holy water that was sanctified by the Pope himself. After inquiring on how that was possible, I learned an interesting rule of holy water. Apparently, adding one drop of holy water to a bunch of regular water turns that entire amount into the consecrated substance.

Pictured: A house of prayer turned into a den of thieves.

Using this logic, pope holy water has become quite the business. You can buy your own pope-ified water for roughly $30!

Pictured: I can't just pick on one storefront. There are quite a few!

But this basis of begetting big batches of blessed besprinkle belies a bit of a blemish. At what point does the holiness dilute? The official position seems to be none, but that doesn't satisfy the chemist in me. Especially since I would expect the market to dictate that water directly blessed by the pope is far more valuable than a bottle from down the line.

So, let's find a way to quantify the holiness of holy water!

Pictured: All aboard! This alliteration array ain't abating!

I've tackled theoretical chemistry before with the proposal of Dewyium, but this is theologic chemistry! To start, let's talk about how chemists measure how much stuff is in a solution: molar concentration.

We'll start by defining what exactly a mole is. A mole is a clever way of knowing how many particles (atoms, molecules, ions, etc.) of a substance are present in a given sample. Specifically, one mole is equivalent to 6.02x10^23 (602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) elementary entities. (This number is called the Avogadro Constant by the way).

Where this gets cool is that you can use moles to convert between the number of particles to units of mass (grams). For example, if you have a particle that weighs 12 daltons (like a normal carbon atom), then 12 grams of that particle is equivalent to one mole of the substance. So you know both the mass and the number of atoms in that sample. Neat, right?

If you need a refresher on what daltons are, you should seriously check out the idea of Dewyium. But all you need to know for these purposes are that 1 dalton will mean a molar weight of 1 gram.

But perhaps what you have is not a pure sample of just the one type of particle. What do you do then? Well, if you know the proportions of the chemical in question to the overall sample, you can just divide as you need. This has been formalized by molar concentration where the primary unit of measurement is moles per liter (how many moles of a substance are present per one theoretical liter of solution).

Confused yet? Don't worry. It gets easier with an example.

A "1 molar solution" or "1M solution" is a substance that can be made by mixing one mole of the substance in question into a liter of water (or some other solute). Going back to our carbon example, if you mixed 12 grams of carbon into a liter of water, you would have 1 liter of a 1M solution of carbon.

Pictured: Okay, you got me. Elemental carbon isn't water soluble. But that's not the point!

But this is a measure of concentration, not volume. So if you took 6 grams of carbon and dissolved that into a half a liter of water, you'd still end up with a 1M solution (you'd just have 500ml of a 1M solution). In the same vein, if you took 24 grams of carbon and dissolved that into 1 liter of water, you'd have 1 liter of a 2M solution.

Making sense? Good. Again, it helps when you think of it as a unit of concentration, not volume. Those are two separate attributes.

Back to the holy water. Chemically, holy water is no different than its profane form. One molecule of water (H2O) has a molecular mass of 18 daltons and therefore has a molar mass of 18 grams. To put that in a different way, 18 grams of water is one mole of water.

All holy water can therefore be "holy", but we can use molar concentration to distinguish between how diluted the overall batch of holy water is.

Let's say the pope blesses one mole of water and that gets mixed into one liter of regular water. You now have roughly 1 liter of 1M pope water. Let's then say that liter gets diluted further into 99 additional liters of regular water. Now, you have 100 liters of holy water, but the concentration has dropped down to 0.01M of holiness. So still holy water, but more dilute.

Pictured: An illustration with different quantities.

Also, note that one gram of water is about a milliliter (so that's how I convert from mass to volume).

Because 1L of water is 55.55 mol, there is a theoretical maximum concentration of 55.55M. But, also fitting in with the official stance, you will never be able to truly get down to a 0M solution. All water that has had pope water put into it is still pope water. So this doesn't just work chemically, it works with the current theological stance of the church!

To all storefronts that sell this stuff, feel free to use this to better describe your wares. Heck, you can probably sell 55.55M (pure) pope water at a premium. Just mull Matthew 21:12-13 a minute and maybe make modifications to your marketing.