Vatican Announces Desire for More Restrained Sign of Peace at Mass

Catholics for 2,000 years, since Christ instituted it himself, have been partaking in the blood and body of their Lord and Savior at each and every Mass.

Again you are resorting to supporting error based upon who many believe it, which is due to cultic devotion to self proclaimed infallible teachers, versus what Scripture reveals, which manifestly is not that of a church in which priests dispense transubstantiated bread and wine to accomplish redemption, providing spiritual and eternal life, around which eating all else revolves. That remains and invisible church in the NT.

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil..." (Exodus 23:2)

High Anglicans, the part of the Anglican Church that retained most of the customs and liturgy of the Catholic Church after Henry the 8th made his own religion called the Anglican Church, of course believe in the Real Presence. Any REAL christian does.

Anglican Eucharistic theology is neither uniform nor technically precise, and while some Anglicans can hold doctrines close to Catholic transubstantiation, yet according to Rome there are no valid Eucharists in Protestant churches as it requires priests who were ordained as priests via apostolic succession.

Which of course eliminates the NT church as having Catholic Eucharists as absolutely zero NT pastors were ever distinctively ordained as men called "priests," never being called that or shown or described as dispensing bread and wine, or otherwise distinctively as offering sacrifices, which the primary function of priests. Thus Rome imposed this title on pastors as she developed her neo pagan idea of the Lord's supper.

For "priest" "comes" from "presbyteros" by imputed theological function, resulting in it being defended by an etymological fallacy.

As R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) states while also trying to defend the use of priest - states:

"The Greek word for this office is ‘ιερευς (hiereus), which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos. First century Christians [such as the inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest took on its definition." http://grigaitis.net/weekly/2007/2007-04-27.html

Catholic writer Greg Dues in “Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide” states,
"Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions."
"When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist."

Yet it is understood that “the Latin word presbyter has no lingual or morphological relationship with the Latin word sacerdos, but only an inherited semantical relationship.” As a result of this change, “presbyter soon lost its primitive meaning of "ancient" and was applied only to the minister of worship and of the sacrifice. “(http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/index.php?topic=744379.0;wap2z http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12406a.htm)

Likewise Raymond Brown (Sulpician Father and a prominent Biblical scholar): "So far as i know, it was only ca. 200 that the term “priest” started to be applied to the bishop and only still later was it applied to the presbyter. This observation explains why some Protestant churches which insist on using New Testament language alone refuse to call their ministers priests. When in the post-New Testament period the language of priesthood did begin to be applied to the bishops and presbyters, it brought with it a certain Old Testament background of sacrificing Levitical priesthood.

The introduction of that language was logically tied in to the development of the language for the eucharist as a sacrifice. (...I think there were sacrificial aspects in the early understanding of the eucharist, but I have no indication that the eucharist was called a sacrifice before the beginning of the second century.) When the eucharist began to be thought of as a sacrifice, the person assigned to preside at the eucharist (bishop and later presbyter) would soon be called a priest, since priests were involved with sacrifice." — Raymond Brown, Q 95 Questions and Answers on the Bible, p. 125, with Imprimatur.

Hmmm. Dost thou protest too much? Whether you like it or not, your comment strongly suggested that the handshaking and the hand-clapping that goes on within a Church during the Mass is a good thing, and that people who attend Mass to see and adore God that do not buy into that behavior would do as well to wait in their car. Now tell me why that doesn’t suggest that you believe that those modernistic rubrics foisted upon Catholics by the Vatican II supporting bishops does not imply that you are not one of their cheerleaders?

And if you haven’t met any “practicing” Catholic today who denies the Real Presence and views the Holy Eucharist as merely a symbol, then you must neither discuss this issue with other Catholics nor read the multitude of opinion polls on the topic. If you are reticent about discussing this issue with other Catholics, I can understand that; but if so, go online and read some of the many polls that have been conducted on this question for years. You can do the research yourself, but when you do you’ll find that the numbers vary between 17% and 30% of Catholics who still believe that it is the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ. Before Vatican II the percentage of believers in the Real Presence was in the high nineties. So as for those “symbol believers”, perhaps they might be as well off as listening in their car.

Yes, I am a Catholic who still believes in the true teachings of the traditional Catholic Church, and while your ad homonym (“holier than thou”) sounds pretty Protestant to me, it does not change either the truth or my belief. I have no idea as to your knowledge of the Catholic Church but when you offer a snarky, two sentence comment criticizing someone who states that he attends the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the purpose of visiting with God and not his neighbors, expect that some traditional Catholic (like me) might reach some very reasonable conclusion as to your beliefs. Hopefully I was wrong.

Finally, if you read my comment as a “declaration of self-superiority”, I apologize; that was not my intent. I was simply attempting to point out that the modernist bishops and priests of the Catholic Church have abandoned their flocks and have allowed the faithful to embrace the Protestant and humanist belief that our existence is about us and not God. What I have stated is Catholic doctrine and dogma, nothing more. And if you sense that I feel very strongly about the wrongness of this disgraceful push by the modernist bishops, you are correct. It is because of these actions that many souls will be lost for eternity. Perhaps I’m hoping that by saying something on a site like this might stem the tide.

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