Good question. I think it's because the properties of these things remain but only the substance is changed. The flour is still present as flour with the smell, touch, and taste of flour (albeit, as bread) and whatever else used to make the bread is still present. But the substance of all these things combined as unleavened bread is changed, hence transubstantiation.
"In other words, whatever the senses perceive-even with the aid of those instruments men are forever inventing to increase the reach of the senses- is always of this same sort, a quality, a property, an attribute; no sense perceives the something which has all these qualities, which is the thing itself. This something is what the philosophers call substance; the rest are accidents which it possesses. Our senses perceive accidents; only the mind knows the substance. This is true of bread, it is true of every created thing. Left to itself, the mind assumes that the substance is that which, in all its past experience, has been found to have that particular group of accidents. But in these two instances, the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the mind is not left to itself. By the revelation of Christ it knows that the substance has been changed, in the one case into the substance of his body, in the other into the substance of his blood.
The senses can no more perceive the new substance resulting from the consecration than they could have perceived the substance there before. We cannot repeat too often that senses can perceive only accidents, and consecration changes only the substance. The accidents remain in their totality-for example, that which was wine and is now Christ's blood still has the smell of wine, the intoxicating power of wine. One is occasionally startled to find some scientist claiming to have put all the resources of his laboratory into testing the consecrated bread; he announces triumphantly that there is no change whatever, no difference between this and any other bread. We could have told him that, without the aid of any instrument. For all that instruments can do is to make contact with the accidents, and it is part of the doctrine of transubstantiation that the accidents undergo no change whatever. If our scientist had announced that he had found a change, that would be really startling and upsetting. "
"..The poem is called "A Roman Miracle", and in forty lines it tells the story of a Protestant woman who married a Catholic. One day her husband brought his priest into dinner in order to effect her conversion. After the priest gave his councel, they all agree to meet again, and he promised to confect the sacrament in her presence if she would prepare the bread. He returned, did as he said, and prepared to eat. Ath the last moment she warned him that "Half an ounce of arsenic was mixed right in the batter, / But since you have its nature changed, it cannot really matter." The priest, of course, ran away, eating nothing, and the contrite husband turned to his wife saying: "To gulp such mummery and tripe, I 'm not for sure, quite able; / I'll go with you and we'll renounce this Roman Catholic fable."
....On Catholic principles, the priest was quite right, of course, to refuse to eat, for the simple reason that only the bread, not the poison, could be transubstantiated. Anything mixed with the bread would have remained unaltered (assuming the mixture would ot have been unconfectable matter in the first place), and the bread would have retained the appearance and properties of bread. The arsenic would have remained poison. Transubstantiation would not have made the arsenic disappear....."
Catholocism and Fundamentalism - Karl Keating pg252-253
"In other words, whatever the senses perceive-even with the aid of those instruments men are forever inventing to increase the reach of the senses- is always of this same sort, a quality, a property, an attribute; no sense perceives the something which has all these qualities, which is the thing itself. This something is what the philosophers call substance; the rest are accidents which it possesses. Our senses perceive accidents; only the mind knows the substance. This is true of bread, it is true of every created thing. Left to itself, the mind assumes that the substance is that which, in all its past experience, has been found to have that particular group of accidents. But in these two instances, the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the mind is not left to itself. By the revelation of Christ it knows that the substance has been changed, in the one case into the substance of his body, in the other into the substance of his blood.
The senses can no more perceive the new substance resulting from the consecration than they could have perceived the substance there before. We cannot repeat too often that senses can perceive only accidents, and consecration changes only the substance. The accidents remain in their totality-for example, that which was wine and is now Christ's blood still has the smell of wine, the intoxicating power of wine. One is occasionally startled to find some scientist claiming to have put all the resources of his laboratory into testing the consecrated bread; he announces triumphantly that there is no change whatever, no difference between this and any other bread. We could have told him that, without the aid of any instrument. For all that instruments can do is to make contact with the accidents, and it is part of the doctrine of transubstantiation that the accidents undergo no change whatever. If our scientist had announced that he had found a change, that would be really startling and upsetting. "
"..The poem is called "A Roman Miracle", and in forty lines it tells the story of a Protestant woman who married a Catholic. One day her husband brought his priest into dinner in order to effect her conversion. After the priest gave his councel, they all agree to meet again, and he promised to confect the sacrament in her presence if she would prepare the bread. He returned, did as he said, and prepared to eat. Ath the last moment she warned him that "Half an ounce of arsenic was mixed right in the batter, / But since you have its nature changed, it cannot really matter." The priest, of course, ran away, eating nothing, and the contrite husband turned to his wife saying: "To gulp such mummery and tripe, I 'm not for sure, quite able; / I'll go with you and we'll renounce this Roman Catholic fable."
....On Catholic principles, the priest was quite right, of course, to refuse to eat, for the simple reason that only the bread, not the poison, could be transubstantiated. Anything mixed with the bread would have remained unaltered (assuming the mixture would ot have been unconfectable matter in the first place), and the bread would have retained the appearance and properties of bread. The arsenic would have remained poison. Transubstantiation would not have made the arsenic disappear....."
Catholocism and Fundamentalism - Karl Keating pg252-253
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