St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome

Yes, I have been to many Catholic masses, and never knew Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior when I was Catholic, nor do I remember being invited to have/develop a personal relationship with Him during my sojourn there. It seems that being a good Catholic “externally” was sufficient.

As to the teaching that the “elements” turn into the literal flesh and blood of Jesus, I have to disagree.

Do you think Jesus was serving Himself literally at the last supper (passover before he was crucified) when he said “this is my body,” and “this is my blood,” or do you think He was speaking symbolically?

If you were baptized a Catholic you still are a Catholic and can come back at any time. All you need to do is sit down with a priest and get your questions about the Mass and Jesus Christ answered.

Of course, listening and hearing in your heart would be very important too.

I would be the first to welcome you back.

Jesus was not speaking symbolically at the Last Supper. He told the apostles to “Do this in remembrance of me.” That’s why a Mass is not a re-enactment of the one Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. We are celebrating in MEMORY of him as he commanded.

“Taking the bread, He broke it, blessed it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take this and eat; this is my body’”

“In like manner, He took wine, blessed it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take this and drink; this is my blood.’”

“Do this in remembrance of me.”

It all happened in reality then and it all happens in reality now in each Mass as the priest (a stamd-in for Christ because of his ordination) says those very same words.

Why do you disagree with trans_(transfer_substantiation(substance.) Are you saying that Christ, the Son of Man and Son of God cannot change bread and wine into his flesh and blood?

Have you ever studied in depth any Eucharistic miracles? Please check them out. The proof is there.

**nor do I remember being invited to have/develop a personal relationship with Him during my sojourn there.**

I am truly sorry about this. I wish you could hear my priest preach — you would not remain separated from the church of your birth for long. He constantly urges us all to form that personal relationship with Christ and not the modern day world.

Vultus Christi

God rejects no one. The Church rejects no one.

By

Father Mark

on April 19, 2010 12:25 PM |

"Yet in his great love, God challenges all of us to change and to become more perfect."

The Holy Father's address to young people in Malta will not, in all likelihood, get much coverage in the secular media. And yet, how much the world needs to hear that hatred and anger can be swept away by the power of Christ's love!

Changed Forever

Saint Paul, as a young man, had an experience that changed him for ever. As you know, he was once an enemy of the Church, and did all he could to destroy it. While he was travelling to Damascus, intending to hunt down any Christians he could find there, the Lord appeared to him in a vision. A blinding light shone around him and he heard a voice saying, "Why do you persecute me? ... I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:4-5). Paul was completely overcome by this encounter with the Lord, and his whole life was transformed. He became a disciple, and went on to be a great apostle and missionary. Here in Malta, you have particular reason to give thanks for Paul's missionary labours, which spread the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean.

An Overwhelming Experience of Love

Every personal encounter with Jesus is an overwhelming experience of love. Previously, as Paul himself admits, he had "persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it" (Gal 1:13). But the hatred and anger expressed in those words was completely swept away by the power of Christ's love. For the rest of his life, Paul had a burning desire to carry the news of that love to the ends of the earth.

God Knows Our Strengths and Our Faults

Maybe some of you will say to me, Saint Paul is often severe in his writings. How can I say that he was spreading a message of love? My answer is this. God loves every one of us with a depth and intensity that we can hardly begin to imagine. And he knows us intimately, he knows all our strengths and all our faults. Because he loves us so much, he wants to purify us of our faults and build up our virtues so that we can have life in abundance. When he challenges us because something in our lives is displeasing to him, he is not rejecting us, but he is asking us to change and become more perfect. That is what he asked of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. God rejects no one. And the Church rejects no one. Yet in his great love, God challenges all of us to change and to become more perfect.

Do Not Be Afraid

Saint John tells us that perfect love casts out fear (cf. 1 Jn 4:18). And so I say to all of you, "Do not be afraid!" How many times we hear those words in the Scriptures! They are addressed by the angel to Mary at the Annunciation, by Jesus to Peter when calling him to be a disciple, and by the angel to Paul on the eve of his shipwreck. To all of you who wish to follow Christ, as married couples, as parents, as priests, as religious, as lay faithful bringing the message of the Gospel to the world, I say, do not be afraid! You may well encounter opposition to the Gospel message. Today's culture, like every culture, promotes ideas and values that are sometimes at variance with those lived and preached by our Lord Jesus Christ. Often they are presented with great persuasive power, reinforced by the media and by social pressure from groups hostile to the Christian faith. It is easy, when we are young and impressionable, to be swayed by our peers to accept ideas and values that we know are not what the Lord truly wants for us. That is why I say to you: do not be afraid, but rejoice in his love for you; trust him, answer his call to discipleship, and find nourishment and spiritual healing in the sacraments of the Church.

when Catholics disagree on a matter of faith, we take it to a higher authority (the Catechism, the Bible, the Magisterium) until we resolve the conflict. Protestants simply form a new denomination.

Actually, when Catholics disagree on a matter of faith, they, for the most part, feel comfortable warming the pews anyway and continue to call themselves Catholics. Surveys show that a majority of professing American Catholics disagree with one or more essential Catholic doctrines. In essence, there are millions of personal Catholic denominations within the Catholic Church. YOPIOC, if you will. Go ahead and tell me these people aren't really Catholics. Fine. But don't turn around and spout the "billion Catholics" line.

This is where most Protestant theology leaves the reservation. You say that Our Lord is not yet holding His Wedding Feast... then, what was He doing on that Cross? You are blind to what is right in front of your face.

Our Lord was Priest, Sacrifice and Bridegroom in offering of His Own Body as the sacrificial Lamb of the New Covenant. The problem is you don't understand covenant language. Covenant-making is family making in the same way as a marriage or an adoption and the Bible is full of this language from beginning to end. That is the whole purpose of the Cross! Our Lord didn't just take our sins and suffer our punishment... that's the smaller part of it. That language is ritualistic and harkens back to the sacrifices required of the Israelites to extricate themselves from their idol worship. It is an atonement... but not the bigger picture. We are meant to look more deeply than seeing a vengeful god venting his righteous anger and we are meant to have more than simple gratitude that it wasn't vented on us.

Our Lord was lifted up on that Cross as the sacrificial offering of the New Covenant that restored us to communion with God. There is no future covenant, no future sacrifice that will make this union any stronger. St Paul tells us that we will judge the angels. That's right... but why? It's because we are more than sinners redeemed, more than the condemned exonerated... we are sons and daughters restored to the Family of God. We are part of the Royal Family of Heaven and, through the Marriage of the Lamb to His Church (as spoken of throughout Scripture... and very eloquently and directly in Ephesians), we are One Flesh with Christ and participants in the Life of the Holy Trinity.

The Once for All Sacrifice of the Cross is the Offering of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb that stands as the centerpiece of history and the eternal and ever-present reality of Heaven. We participate in this eternal mystery in each Mass when the Church joins Herself to Her Savior in a marital embrace. The Revelation of John is that this reality is all around us now as we celebrate our communion with the saints in Heaven.

You posted: I am truly sorry about this.

Thanks, but all to often it is still the same in Catholic churches today. Most Catholics I know (not all) do not demonstrate a “personal” faith in Christ, but think they are saved by the external actions of the church/priest, while their hearts lives do not reflect submission to biblical principles or Christian love/servive.

Thankfully, there are some exceptions, and most of these, in my experience, are those who expand their “religious” activity outside the bounds of Roman Catholicism into fellowship with “other” Christian believers.

You’re funny. You think you are making your own point... but you are making mine even better than I did.

What kind of faith is unexamined and never questioned? Using your own yardstick, you could say that every individual on the planet is his own denomination. Of course that’s ridiculous and tortures the language. The fact is that even when Catholics question the Faith, they are still in the pews listening, learning and participating. We are not outside the Church making a church of our own.

I was one who questioned my faith to the point of nearly leaving the Church. What brought me back was a careful reading of the Bible, history, the early Church Fathers, apologetics and actually participating in the Mass rather than being a disinterested spectator. It really was a question of authority... just as it is for much of the rest of Christianity. Certainly even a cursory view of history is all that is needed to see that we need the authority Christ gave His Church. When we stray from it, we set up our own authorities with private interpretations... and that has led to the fractalization of the Protestant world. Rather than the unity we preserve with God’s Grace and the prayers of Our Lord, the Protestant world demonstrates disunity and division.

Ask yourself this... what is the purpose of the Epistles? They are not simply letters of support and encouragement... although they have those elements. If you read them closely, you will see that they teach on matters of the faith and reproach the churches for straying from the traditions given them by the Apostles. By what authority does one church tell another church it is wrong? I’ll tell you... by the authority of One Church which brings all into conformity. My Protestant friends tell me there are meant to be separate churches as shown in the Epistles. However, they miss the fact that the purpose of the Epistles was to maintain the unity of Faith as One Church.

Yes, I am still a “catholic” in the meaning of “universal,” but I am not a Roman Catholic, nor do I want to be, after having experienced the “faith,” both inside and outside of the RCC.

I’m glad God, by His grace, led me to a place where I could meet the Jesus of the Bible, who changed my life (by giving me life).

By the way, I find it interesting how you “claim” me as a Catholic because you think I was baptized Catholic. If you think baptism saves you apart from faith, I encourage you to reexamine the scriptures for yourself, but doubt you will get beyond Roman Catholic dogma.

Thanks for substantiating your belief in transubstantiation (pun intended). Of course, you are free to believe what you want about what Jesus means by His teaching, but count me out. If you can’t tell the difference between the texture of meat (flesh) and bread, what can I say? Or does the change take place after you swallow? If it isn’t literal flesh, as you claim, then I guess its symbolic. I know I’m wasting my time here...so I will stop.

BTW, “Salvation,” did you want to respond to substantive posts (62 and 64) rejecting your assertions of Peter’s position according to Catholic mythology, or are you just going to ignore them as they are based on the Bible and history, not “after the fact” fantasy.

If you think baptism saves you apart from faith, I encourage you to reexamine the scriptures for yourself...

Ok... John 3:22 [ John's Last Testimony ] After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He was spending time with them and baptizing. Hmmm... Jesus was baptizing. Was He wasting His time?

John 3:26 And they came to John and said to him, " Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him." Clearly, He does this a lot! Maybe not as much as John...

John 4:1 [ Jesus Goes to Galilee ] Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John... Ok... He baptized more than John. But that's it, right?

Matthew 28:19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit... Oh. We're supposed to continue baptizing...

Don't get me wrong, I saw where you noted "apart from faith"... I merely point out to you that Scripture records Jesus doing more baptizing than anything else! You'll have to forgive us RCCers if we think there's something to that.

Next, I'm sure you will harp on infant baptism... I'll leave that to the 1,001 other discussions... you can read the answers to your heart's content. The bottom line is that Jesus told us to be baptized and to baptize. Why? Because baptism is the restoration of our family place in the Family of God. It is not the end unto itself, it is the beginning of our life in Grace.

Don't worry. You were baptized into the Family of God... God is working on you and will bring you home.

I figured I was carrying on a sidebar with you only at this time.

Ah, I see. I’m sure you will get to them eventually. Thanks for the conversation, though neither the article you posted, nor your subsequent arguments have done anything to establish the primacy of Peter or Rome in Jesus’ church.

Have a good evening.

John 4:1 ¶When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John,
2 (Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples,)

Yes, Jesus baptizes, but not with water (as did/do His disciples in His name), He baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

And he always does this AFTER salvation, but sometimes before WATER baptism — hence the contention that the Bible doesn’t teach salvation by baptism, but baptism as an outward symbol and public testimony of the inward work that has already taken place.

Thanks for answering for BenKenobi, and getting back to the Catholic talking points.

You actually make some good points here about the finished work of Christ on the cross and His once for all sacrifice.

Thank you.

But then you lapse back into the Mass and the mystery...

Oh well.

...neither the article you posted, nor your subsequent arguments have done anything to establish the primacy of Peter or Rome in Jesus’ church.

I can help. What do we know of Jesus's Kingship? We know that He is the Son of David and King forever of an everlasting dynasty. Therefore, we can look back to the administration of the Davidic kingdom for some answers...

Isaiah 22:19 "I will depose you from your office, and I will pull you down from your station. 20 "Then it will come about in that day, that I will summon My servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, 21 and I will clothe him with your tunic and tie your sash securely about him. I will entrust him with your authority, and he will become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.

22 "Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, when he opens no one will shut, when he shuts no one will open. 23 "I will drive him like a peg in a firm place, and he will become a throne of glory to his father's house.

This scene shows us the symbolism of the keys and their authority. Certainly, you can see why Christ chose the language He did... to convey the meaning contained here. The key of the house of David was entrusted to the Prime Minister... and that is the role of the Pope in the Church. He is one minister among peers but given a special role and office for the administration of the Kingdom. To whom was this special authority given by Christ in Scripture?

Matthew 16:18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Yes, Jesus baptizes, but not with water (as did/do His disciples in His name), He baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
And he always does this AFTER salvation, but sometimes before WATER baptism — hence the contention that the Bible doesn’t teach salvation by baptism, but baptism as an outward symbol and public testimony of the inward work that has already taken place.

I'm showing you Biblical citations... would you mind showing the same courtesy? I'd like to see your references.

There is none so blind as one who will not see.

God bless you. Good night.

I'll point out one more thing before bed...

Many places in Scripture Christ says that He is the vine or He is the door or another metaphor to describe Who He is and our relationship with Him. There is only one place that He says this thing is Me... and that is the bread and wine offered for our salvation. Considering our God created all that is by the power of His Word... I'll take it on faith that Our Lord can change the reality of the Eucharist by the power of His. And I'll also take it on faith that when we repeat His Words down through history as He commanded, the mystery continues as He promised.

Why is it ‘lapse’ back? Do you not believe he is bodily present?