Why Can't Protestants Take Communion in a Catholic Church

Black Cordelias ^

[Faith65]

>>I have to ask: Are you making a judgement or characterization of all Catholics on the basis of a catholic who commits what his Church calls a mortal sin more than 50 times a year? Does he go to confession or receive the sacrament during his Christmas and Easter attendance? That would be more mortal sin.
I’m not so much ragging on him as I am questioning forming an opinion about Catholics and the Bible on a sample like that one. >>

Mad Dawg, are you trying to fight with me? I did not post to you. I simply conveyed to another on this board of my own personal experience around the many Catholics I know.

My husband does not go to confession and has not in the 26 years I have known him but does receive communion when he attends on the 2 Holidays. That is HIS deal....NOT MINE! No talking to him about it anyway and I am surrounded by Catholics in his HUGE family and they don’t read the Bible nor ever want to discuss....)most of our friends are Catholic too)....but it is not right to pass judgement.....
that is up to God.

[Mad Dawg]

The very record of historically, (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian and Hippolytus) which the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches love to quote as authority, proves that before 200 AD, the church viewed the bread and juice as symbols.

Juice? Grape must?

Ignatius of Antioch:

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).

Justin Martyr:

For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology 66 [A.D.

151]).

I don't see how texts like this can support the contention that Justin and Ignatius thought the sacrament was a symbol.

Transubstantiation is a false doctrine because Jesus instituted Lord’s Supper before his blood was shed and body broken! He spoke of His blood being shed, which was still yet future. This proves it was a symbol.

I guess it helps to know something about the doctrine one is attacking. Aquinas deals with this very question.

Again, we think of doctrine unfolding. So to us the comparatively late appearance of the term transubstantiation is not an argument against what we would consider its archaic truth.

I don't expect the average person to think much about the distinction between "real" and "spiritual", or whether there is such a distinction in any important way. I don't expect Mr. or Mrs. A. Person to discourse at length or coherently about what it means that an anchor could be made of different materials and in different shapes and still be an anchor, or that some chairs or wood, some plated in gold, and some no more than large bean bags (filled with "beans" made of Styrofoam).

A football coach gestures at his X's and O's and says, "This is the line backer. This is the running back," but nobody thinks he is asserting anything other than an arbitrary signification.

A groom holds a ring and says "This is the pledge of my vow." What does he mean? What was the ring when he bought it? What would it be if he bought it and then the bride jilted him? What is it 35 years later? What if it falls into and is minced up by the garbage disposal? Is it still a pledge?

In the development of doctrine we start with "This is my Body," "This is the cup of my Blood," and have spent the centuries between then and now doping out what that could mean and how to talk about it.

And think for just a minute of the presence of God, by power, essence, and presence (as Aquinas says.) Isn't God present in the nucleus of the atom or in the membranes of the alveoli? Isn't He present in every mother's womb? But we wouldn't say he is present in every mother's womb in the same way as He was present in Mary's womb, would we?

And while we are content to say that God is everywhere, many get a little uncomfortable when they realize that that means that He is here!

But to talk coherently about all these instances of presence, including sacramental presence, is going to require an increasing precision of diction. We start with "This is my Body," and we flail about, sometimes with hymnodic or poetic beauty in reflecting on that, but as long as we are thinking creatures we are sooner or later going to pick apart what that means.

But a poet can write iambic pentameter without knowing the term, and his poetry is not made new when some critic applies the term to the verses. The Church can teach that Christ is present in the sacrament, and that teaching is not a new thing when somebody starts talking about accidents and substance. The making of verses and the heart's response to them, and the making of a Sacrament and the Church's response to it precedes but is not altered by later thought and conversation.

[Mad Dawg]

No, I’m not trying to fight with you. I was noting that a generalization was being made about my co-religionists on the basis of a sample which didn’t strike me as representative. I try to avoid fights, as a rule.

[papertyger]

Are you daft?

What exactly do you think “show the works of the law written on their hearts,” means?

[Krodg]

Do you have a little addiction going on today?

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stfassisi to Iscool

Sunday, December 28, 2008 9:51:18 AM · 379 of 421
stfassisi to Iscool

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[Between the Lines]

Is there one or are there many Baptist thoughts about the relationship between being baptized and participating in communion?

I have never heard of any Baptist church that would permit someone not previously having been baptized to participate in communion. But because each individual Baptist church is autonomous, it wouldn't surprise me to find a few liberal Baptist churches that would.

[Mad Dawg]

JMT: I have to say I didn’t understand what you were making of the passage either. This is just a suggestion, but I was wondering if it would help if you would cobble up a paraphrase. Right now I think frustration is overwhelming our small store of reason.

[Mad Dawg]

I first heard of it maybe 10 years ago. But maybe it was a local thing, as you say.

[stfassisi]

Nope.

4 posts in response is nothing in comparison

You're too funny!

[servantboy777]

We do not allow woman to be ordained.

Catholic done right.

[kosta50]

But it's still somewhat awkward with me being of western European ancestry and most of the congregation being of eastern European background

The fact is that the Church is Byzantine in origin and has been form the beginning. Western Christianity is a layer that obliterated the original Church by adopting it to its cultural and linguistic forms. So, by attending eastern services, you are simply practicing a more ancient form of the catholic faith. Remember that the Traditional Latin Mass did not come into being for another 300 years after the Eastern liturgy was formalized.

[kosta50]

If Orthodox Christians wanted to get some Catholic converts, I suppose the Orthodox Church could start their own "western rite" churches that followed the Roman rituals but were under the authority of Constantinople, if they wanted to

LOL! Dear friend, the Orthodox don't "start" things to accommodate current tastes and wishes. That's why it is called a tradition. The divine liturgy is 1,700 years old, and practically unchanged.

There is a western Orthodox "rite" that comes from medieval Scotland before that country was forcibly Latinized, and is currently being practiced under the Antiochan Orthodox jurisdiction. But the churches are few and far in between, and congregations are small.

If you go to church only where congregations are big then stay with your Novus Ordo Mass. The Catholic Church waited way too long to try to resuscitate the traditional Mass. Even though this Mass is made to appear bigger than life on these forums, it is really a periphery of the Catholic world. Numbers speak more then hearts desire.

For instance a cursory search of TLM churches in Florida reveals about 15! In Jackosnville, FL, with about 800,000 people, there are 87 Catholic churches, and only ONE offers Traditional Latin Mass at 8 AM! On a Sunday? Yet, believe it or not, the church is full, perhaps 200-300 people.

Yet, assuming one quarter of the population being Catholic, there must be at least 200,000 Catholics in Jacksonville and if statistics hold true about 22% of Catholics attend Mass every Sunday, that means some 44,000 Catholics are in church every Sunday, of which about 300 (or less than 1 percent) attend the Traditional Latin Mass!

[onedoug]

Because they’re Protestant?...

[kosta50]

I think the whole reason why the Orthodox church doesn't take a stance on how the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ is because the schism occurred before the Catholics weighed in on the matter and tried to explain what happens physically

No, the Latin Church did not "discover" yet "how" the bread changes. That required adoption of the pagan Aristotelian philosophy first and the development of the scholastic mindset, which came way after the schism. The Orthodox Church teaches what the eastern Liturgy has proclaimed for the last 1,700 years at least, namely that the Holy Spirit changes the Gifts mysteriously and that's where our "understanding" ends.

[kosta50]

in fact the only ones rejecting [veneration of Mary] are the bulk of protestant churches (and not even all of them, since Lutherans and Anglicians tend to support the traditional POV). As an Orthodox Christian would you agree on that point?

You are right. The rejection comes from the Baptists and Presbyterians, and various flavors of Lutherans and Anglicans. You do have essentially "catholic-like" groups embedded in Anglican and Lutheran communities but there are Lutherans and Anglicans where women are "bishops" and "priests," so even if they do venerate Mary what good is that?

[kosta50]

Finally regarding the Agape feast, I think the reason for that was the early communion ceremonies were simply extended versions of Passover dinners, since the early Christians came from a Jewish background

Sure, the Passover (Seder) meal is one of those "types" prefiguring Christ in the Old Testament. The Orthodox Church does not read the OT literally but in terms of types that prefigure or announce Christ. Obviously things that don't announce Christ are not considered as "types," so large amounts of the OT are actually ignored in practice, unless someone can "figure out" how smashing babies against rocks "prefigures" Christ!

The Christians simply combined the Mystical (Last) Supper with the Passover meal. So, the elements of what later became the sacrament of the communion was part of the agape meal or feast. There is no apparent sacrament in the way Paul describes it in 1 Cor 11.

[kosta50]

Eventually they decided to make the passover meal a separate thing from the communion event, and soon did away with the passover meal all together

Roman records from the turn of the century (about 67 years after Christ died) indicate that Christians gathered in the morning for what appears to be eucharistic prayers and worship and then in the afternoon again for the agape meal.  When this started is unknown. Certainly when Paul wrote to the Corinthians (about 50-52 AD) the two were still part of the one and the same event, and the breaking of the bread does not seem to be part of any liturgical sacrament, but the occasion seems to be marred by people getting drunk and food-binging, getting sick and passing out.

[Mad Dawg]

I think the whole reason why the Orthodox church doesn't take a stance on how the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ is because the schism occurred before the Catholics weighed in on the matter and tried to explain what happens physically.

I think it's interesting and problematic to speak of transubstantiation being about "what happens physically." I wouldn't describe the change as a physical change (except in some of the more spectacular miracles). Nothing changes physically.

At least as I use the word, that would be about what measurable and analyzable changes happen to the "elements". But as I understand the doctrine it is pretty much a declaration that nothing perceptible to sense, even to senses augmented and refined by instrumentation, happens.

So then the question is, "What is changed?" And the answer is "The what-it-is is changed," as distinct from what-it-looks-like or what-it-is-made of or things of that kind.

And I don't think that reduces the sheer mystery of the thing. It just is an effort to say precisely something about the mystery, to assert the mystery less vaguely.

[kosta50]

Ok what were they doing acts 2:46 when they were meeting and daily breaking bread? Was this not taking as you say communion?

No, they were doing a ceremony in memory of Christ. Communion is much more than breaking bread and sipping wine. There was no liturgy or established prayers or typikons for consecration. All this come later, much later.

In your opinion when did they start having a formal meeting and had communion?

We don't know. Somewhere between the Corinthians (c. 50 AD) and the end of the the century. Roman records show that in the early 2nd century they were separate, and they persisted as separate all the way up to the 4th century (because St. Augustine speaks disapprovingly of the agape meal as something separate from the communion).

Since the communion I see in the bible is a time of refection on what Christ has done using the bread and wine like the last supper as a celebration and a time of refection

That's not what the Church says communion is. The Church says the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, literally speaking, by the Holy Spirit at the consecration in the divine service performed by the priest. Nothing like that was taking place when the Corinthians were written.  

[papertyger]

I find it hilarious that people who have no problem whatsoever with the doctrine of the incarnation balk at the idea of transubstantiation...as if one were any less preposterous than the other.

If one is willing to embrace the doctrine of the transcendent creator becoming a man, on what basis can one deny the creator becoming ANYTHING in his creation?

The mentality is like Darwinism turned upside down; once accepted there is literally nothing its devotees think it can't accomplish, including that which is physically impossible!