The Nature of the Mass and the need for Sacrifice

In the first place it is to be seen that the Natural Law requires us to sacrifice. Saint Thomas states in the first place that there are three main types of laws. There is first and foremost human laws (positive laws), there is the Natural Law, and lastly there is the Divine and Eternal laws. It is precisely the Natural Law that we will focus in for this specific article. The natural law is basically the “structure which God creates in man so that he inclines man to specific types of actions. He designs man to perform specific types of acts. He designs him in a specific way”¹

The Church states with Saint Thomas Aquinas that we are bound to follow the Natural Law. One of the aspects of the natural law is precisely that it commands all of the virtues. One of these virtues is precisely that of sacrifice. Saint Thomas further states that sacrifice is itself the highest act of religion. “Sacrifice is defined as an offering of some good thing back to God. This can include a merit or some sort of good work which we perform and offer back to God”²

Once we realize that sacrifice is necessary and that God obliges us to do it, the question that should come up is, how and what does God want us to sacrifice? It is after all only through Divine Revelation that we can know what sacrifices are pleasing to God. Fr. Chad Ripperger gives a very good analogy regarding the problems we would have regarding performing sacrifices, without the help of Divine Revelation. Without Divine Revelation we would not know what the nature of God is, and thus we would not be able to know what sort of sacrifices please him, as well as which sacrifices displease him. Fr Chad Ripperger states that without the help of Divine Revelation “this is tantamount to going to someone’s house for the first time and they don’t know you, but when you arrive, they presume to make all sorts of assumptions about you; for dinner we are going to have brain and squid intestines because they think that is what you like.”³ With these types of assumptions about God, we will surely offend God by offering false sacrifices, which he never liked or willed.

In the Old Testament God gave very precise and strict instructions on how sacrifices were to be done. This is true in regards to Exodus all the way through Deuteronomy. In the New Testament Jesus himself states “do this in commemoration of me”. (Lk 22:19)

A short history of sacrifice: The reality of the necessity of Divine Revelation

Cardinal Gibbons states “We find sacrifices existing not only among the Jews, who worshiped the true God, but also among pagan and idolatrous nations. No matter how confused, imperfect or erroneous was their knowledge of the Deity, the pagan nations retained sufficient vestiges of primitive tradition to admonish them of their obligation of appeasing the anger and involving the blessings of the Divinity by victims and sacrifices.”⁴

Throughout history man usually tends to have a desire to offer sacrifice to God. This is true of the Pagan world such as the Aztecs, the civilization of Carthage, and various tribes in the Middle East, yet they were not precisely what God wanted. God did not reveal himself to them. So many of these cultures for example practiced things such as human sacrifice, and various other types of sacrifice that failed in some way from what God really wanted. These sacrifices were displeasing to God. An example of such abominable practices of sacrifices is found in Jeremias:

Because they have forsaken me, and have profaned this place: and have sacrificed therein to strange gods, whom neither they nor their fathers knew, nor the kings of Juda: and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents. And they have built the high places of Baal, to burn their children with fire for a holocaust to Baal: which I did not command, nor speak of, neither did it once come into my mind. (Jeremiah 19:5)Sacrifices in Biblical Judaism

Throughout the Old Testament the chosen people of God are always offering sacrifice to Him. This is true as early as Cain and able. Able offered to the Lord the firstlings of his flock, while Cain offered of the fruits of the earth. Later “when Noe and his family are rescued from the deluge which had spread over the face of the earth, his first act on issuing from the ark, when the waters disappeared, is to offer holocausts to the Lord, in thanksgiving for his preservation (Gen 8). Abraham the great father of the Jewish himself offered victims to the Almighty at His request (Gen 15). We even read that Job was accustomed to offer holocaust and sacrifice to the Lord to propitiate His favor. God is very concrete and explicit in how he wants the Jewish to offer sacrifices in the book of Exodus.

It is precisely the Holy Sacrifice at Calvary which constitutes the perfect and eternal sacrifice which could ever be offered up. It is in this specific moment in which our redemption is brought about, and which the submit of Salvation History reaches its climax. It is this precise sacrifice that fulfilled all the Old Testament Sacrifices.

Many Protestants thus while acknowledging both the reality regarding the perfection of the Sacrifice at Calvary, and also acknowledging the reality that Christ abolished the Old Testament sacrifices of the Jews, end up at a false conclusion. They conclude that because the Sacrifice of Calvary is perfect and because it is thus the fulfillment of all the Old Testament sacrifices, that Christ himself abolished the need for any more sacrifices. This is clearly not true. We should thus ask ourselves, did God in rejecting the Jewish oblations (sacrifices) or even in fulfilling them, deem or intend to abolish all sacrifices altogether? Rather Christ rejected and even fulfilled the Old Testament sacrifices, namely because they were simply types or prefigurements for the perfect sacrifice of God Himself, which we commemorate in a real way in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

This then leads us to one of the main aspects of the Mass, namely that it is the same sacrifice as that of Calvary.

In the Sacrifice of the Mass, Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross is made present, its memory is celebrated, and its saving power is applied. (De Fide)

We therefore confess that the Sacrifice of the Mass is and ought to be considered one and the same Sacrifice as that of the Cross, for the victim is one and the same, namely, Christ Our Lord, who offered Himself, once only, a bloody Sacrifice on the altar of the Cross. The bloody and unbloody victim are not two, but one victim only, whose sacrifice is daily renewed in the Eucharist, in obedience to the command of Our Lord; Do this for a commemoration of me⁵ The same Catechism further states that just as Christ was the one offering himself up at Calvary, the same Christ offers Himself up at each Mass through the priest who acts in persona Christi:

The Priest is also one and the same, Christ the Lord; for the minister who offers Sacrifice, consecrate the holy mysteries, not in their person, but in that of Christ, as the words of Consecration itself show, for the priest does not say: This is the body of Christ, but, This is My Body, and thus acting in the Person of Christ the Lord, he changes the substance of the bread and wine into the true substance of His Body and Blood⁶

For this reason it is completely false to believe as many Protestants do, that we somehow "re-sacrifice" Christ at each Mass. Rather we simply offer up the same sacrifice at Calvary, which is re-presented in a real and literal way during the Mass. The Sacrifice at Calvary was so perfect, that it is Eternal and with no end. The Mass as the perfect prayer

Another aspect of the Mass is that just as it is the perfect sacrifice (since it is the same sacrifice as that of Calvary, which is perfect), the Mass is also the perfect prayer of the Church. This is why Pope Saint Pius X stated so explicitly:

The Holy Mass is a prayer itself, even the highest prayer that exists. It is the Sacrifice dedicated by our Redeemer at the Cross, and repeated every day on the Altar. If you wish to hear Mass as it should be heard, you must follow with eye, heart and mouth all that happens at the Altar. Further, you must pray with the Priest the holy words said by him in the Name of Christ and which Christ says by him. You have to associate your heart with the holy feelings which are contained in these words and in this manner you ought to follow all that happens on the Altar. When acting in this way you have prayed Holy Mass.”

“Don’t pray at Holy Mass, but pray the Holy Mass" This is why it is very reasonable that the “active participation” in the liturgy which the Council Fathers of Vatican II had in mind, did not necessarily involve what has come to be “the clericalization of the laity” in which in order to actively participate in the liturgy, you are almost obliged to do some type of Church ministry. This includes being an Extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, a lecturer, and various other things. Rather an active participation is nothing other than following along and uniting your prayers with that of the Priest who is celebrating the Mass. It involves uniting your prayers with the priest at the scene of Calvary which is what is being literally and really being made present. The Mass should thus be one of constant meditation and of interior participation in the Mass and not so much exterior activity. There is a due reverent silence that is given at Mass.

Fr. Chad Ripperger states “Because Mass is itself the same sacrifice at Calvary which is made presented to us in the Mass, it is the font of all graces. Redemption and the obliteration of sin was the result of the Holy Sacrifice at Calvary. The same thing happens during each Mass that we attend, it is as if Christ’s blood was being shed again and being offered up, but this time in an un-bloody way, yet the same graces are granted.”⁷

It is precisely because the Mass is the same sacrifice as that of Calvary, that it has many effects that come whenever a Mass is celebrated and whenever we ourselves attend it.

The Mass itself gives us the opportunity for Holy Communion. “each sacrament according to the Church has specific effects that are proper to that sacrament. This is what is known as sacramental graces. Each sacrament gives us specific graces which allows us to achieve the finality in which that sacrament is directed towards”⁸In the case of the Mass we receive Holy Communion. Just as we get nurtured and remain healthy when we receive natural food, Holy Communion we feed on the supernatural food that is Christ’s body, we are thus less vulnerable to fall into Mortal and Venial Sin.

When we go to Mass we receive the same effects as that of Calvary. That means that we receive redemption, but we also grow in virtue. When we are attending Mass, we have the freedom for praying and petitioning God for the various virtues which we lack in. The prayers of Mass also help cleanse us from all venial sin.

Mass itself also provides an orientation for the rest of the day. It helps organize the rest of the day, reminding us what saint Ignatius of Loyola would call “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” which is Latin for “For the Greater Glory of God”. The reason why the Mass helps orientate our day towards God Himself is precisely that the Mass is Christ/God centered (or at least it should be). For it is God who we are offering sacrifice to. This is why I love the action that is done in several parishes, such as those which offer the Tridentine Mass or “Extraordinary Form” of the Mass. They practice what is known as Ad Orientem worship. The priest faces the East. The priest faces the altar, the same direction as the congregation. This is a sign that the whole ecclesiastical community (The Church) is offering the same sacrifice to the same and Almighty God. It is one of syncretism and orientation towards the True God who is being offered sacrifice.

One main reason why modern society rejects a notion of sacrifice is describe by the fact that the reality of suffering is almost forgotten. "technology has made our lives so simple and easy, and thus hard to ignore the difficult things. Similarly people say “well if we are to offer a good thing back to God, then why should I offer something such as my suffering. The fact of the matter is that by offering it, it is a call to the virtue of sacrifice. It is not so much that the person suffers aimlessly. One of the virtues of Christ dying on the Holy Sacrifice at Calvary, is that it adds merits to our sufferings, which without it, our sufferings are vain."⁸ Sacrifice is itself as Saint Thomas Aquinas calls “the highest act of religion”. This is why the modern rejection of sacrifice is a sad reality. If we do not offer proper and due sacrifice to God, then we have nothing to show for ourselves. In our own particular judgement would priests be able to present God the various Masses they celebrated and offered up? Or would laypersons be able to present to God the various means which we could have offered up as sacrifice? This could include the various Masses we attended, or it could simply be the daily struggles and sufferings we encountered. Whatever the case may be, the reality is that God Himself desires sacrifice, and the perfect of these is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is this sacrifice alone, that is perfect, just as the Crucifixion at Calvary was perfect.

1)Fr. Chad Ripperger "Talk given on Sacrifice in the Mass" 2) ibid 3)ibid 4)James Cardinal Gibbons "The Faith of Our Fathers, Tan Books 1876, pg. 266" 5)The Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent pg. 275 6)ibid 7)Fr. Chad Ripperger "Talk given on "Frequent Mass and Confession" 8)ibid 9)Ripperger "op cit. Sacrifice in the Mass"

I’m no theologian, but unless I miss my guess you seem to be suggesting that God experiences aeveternity—simply time extended, whereby the past is truly past and God undergoes some kind of change in state:

No, although I see how you could have thought that from what I said. We know as a basic principle that God is immutable. But in Scripture this immutability is never defined in terms of static time. It always has God acting or having His being in relation to time, with what is constant about Him being His nature and attributes, not His relationship to the coming into being of events in sequence:

Psalms 102:24-27 I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations. (25) Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. (26) They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: (27) But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.

So to say He is "completely changeless" is to say He does not truly act. Time is how we experience change. There is a moment in our time before God speaks from heaven, as He does in the Gospels, and a time after. Nothing in the purposes or character or knowledge or holiness or perfection of God changed, but He did introduce Hiimself as actively participating in our temporal existence. He spoke from Heaven in time. His speech, as all speech is, was controlled changed, a modulation of sound waves caused by His direct action among us as a Person. His love for us occurs in time, is expressed in time. And in our time, there is a moment called Now, which both God and we understand as distinct from all other moments, which is constantly advancing through the sequence of events that describe our reality.

All this comes to the difference between intrinsic versus extrinsic change. We accept that intrinsically, God cannot change, else we admit of imperfection, or limitation under the control of created things. But extrinsic change, of the kind implied by a God who acts in time, and is personal, capable of relationship with other persons, unlike the pseudo-deities of pantheism or deism, is not only possible but necessary to our understanding of God as the God of redemptive history.

But before we ask whether this means God is time-bound, we need to first ask whether this history in which we live is itself "time bound." Time is an artificial construct we use to describe our relationship to events of change. Time therefore appears to be unreal, in that it is not a created substance in itself, but is a device of the mind to comprehend change. To say God is outside time because He created time is to misunderstand what time is. In the priority of all things, the first fact is that God exists. One of the outcomes of God existing is His introduction of extrinsic change by creation of our universe. Exterior to our universe and the story of it's progress, God exists. He is the great "I Am," the one Whose ways are as far above us as the heavens are above the earth, unsearchable, and unknowable except as he reveals them.

This divine state, this infinite "aboveness," is nether about time nor timelessness. It's rather like asking whether God uses inches or centimeters to measure space. Those are our constructs, handy for the tiny tasks of tiny minds, but wholly inadequate to describe God.

Which is why there is prudence in limiting oneself to the revealed record, rather than impose on it artificial constructs born in the imagination of fallen human beings. If God has revealed that something has occurred at a specific point in past time, why undo that? When Jesus tells us to "Do this in remembrance of me," why can we not simply accept what God has said and leave it at that? I will tell you why. We are sinners, and we are hell-bent on treating God as if He left out something important. This is our rebellious nature at work. This is the root of Adam and Eve's disobedience.

But in fact all we are told of the purpose of the sacred meal is that it is done to remember His offering of Himself on our behalf, not to reach around time and try to literally be there again. Indeed, the writer of Hebrews specifically enjoins us, under the power of the Holy Spirit, to think of the event as done.

Hebrews 10:9-12 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. (10) By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (11) And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: (12) But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

So again, God does not ask us to choose between static or dynamic time, or some magic sci-fi conduit between the temporal and the atemporal. He simply tells us the deed is done, the propitiation of our sin accomplished, past tense, in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, and that we may rely upon it for the forgiveness of our sins. In other words, whatever speculations we may have about time, God has given us specific instruction to think of the offering of Christ on our behalf as a past event, upon which may be built our present and future redemption.

This is reiterated in the instruction to the disciples for the Lord's Supper, in which remembering is the central activity, not the material consumption of material flesh and blood disguised as bread and wine. Remembering is a time-bound activity. We only remember what is past. Thus we are enjoined by the very words of Jesus Himself to treat His sacrifice as a past event, which He sealed even further by uttering "It is finished" from the cross, because if this event is timeless, it is never finished, and the words of Christ are untrue.

But God forbid that the words of Christ should ever be construed as untrue. Nor those of the Holy Spirit inspired writers of Holy Scripture. We cannot allow the shiny trinkets of vain human philosophy, however much they may appeal to our imagination, to distract us from our written marching orders. Christ died for our sins, so that if we but believe in Him, apart from any ritual or theoretical constructs of man, we will be saved. But whoever trusts in the devices of man, or human imagination, will find the results very disappointing on the day off God's judgment.

However, all this aside, I don’t think any of this represents the true reason so many of you find this doctrine so viscerally repulsive. I will address that in the next post.

I saw your subsequent post, and believe it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of our view of the atonement. You suggest we view it all as wrath, and not as love. I don't know where that comes from. There is an abundance of evidence in Protestant writing, preaching, hymnody, etc., that the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf is viewed as both the expression of God's wrath, and the revelation of the most amazing love that could ever be, from the heart of God direct to us.

I still remember when I first seriously contemplated what Jesus did for me, hanging there on the cross, seeing me in all my wretched filth, giving Himself for the very sins that were destroying my life, dying for me, personally, individually, known to him by name from before the foundation of the world, as the unworthy object of His undying love. It moved me to tears, and still does. It is what I remember about Him when I partake of the bread and the fruit of the vine, at that moment joined together in spirit with all other Christians of all ages, by the same Spirit of God who indwells everyone who believes, all because of the amazing grace of the eternal God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us.

Peace, SR

atholics who talk about being at the foot of Calvary at Mass, who gaze at the crucifix, are smitten with the love Jesus had for us,

Spare me the propaganda. I was raised devout RC, and even after I became manifestly born again thru tearful repentance and faith in the risen Lord Jesus to save me as a damned + destitute sinner, i remained as a weekly (and holy days) RC participant for 6 years after, serving for some time as a CCD teacher and lector.

What RCs overall manifest they see in the cross is a mere religious artifact that promotes perfunctory professions, with little to no testimony of the God working in their life and of grace in the soul, and thus I found very few to fellowship with about such while in Rome.

We wish we could stand there to kiss Our Lord’s sacred feet...We wish we offer Him consolations in that dark hour,

Please, you are believing your own PR. Catholics coming in about last in evidences of commitment, only surpassed by likewise dead liberal mainline Prot churches. It is evangelicals who hold Scripture to be supreme as the accurate and wholly inspired word of God that haved manifested the most evidence the work of grace in the soul, from worship to service.

It would *break my heart* if I thought Jesus did all this for me and the accident of time and space wouldn’t let me be there on Golgotha to offer my Lord whatever simple consolations I could.

By reading and imagination, can relive any event in Scripture, but that does not mean it is occurring, and the issue is that of Christ actually offering himself continually with the Mass being a ongoing atonement, "a sacrifice of propitiation, by which God is appeased and rendered propitious," as by it He "offers himself a most acceptable Victim to the eternal Father, as he did upon the Cross," the victim "now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross."

That is a greater fantasy than they way you characterize RCs.

Catholics will try anything and twist and pin every which way to justify the teaching that the mass is participating in the eternal sacrifice of Jesus ongoing eternally in h

More precisely, they are not doing s Scripture teaches, that of showing/declaring the Lord's death till He comes (which terminus the "eternal now" hermeneutic makes meaningless) by taking part in the communal meal (ideally not just a wafer) in an unselfish manner, showing caring love for those whom Christ bought with His sinless shed blood, in mindfulness of that act;

but instead the focus is upon the elements consumed, imagining they have really become the Lord's body and blood, and consumed to gain spiritual life - which interpretation of Jn. 6:53 is foreign to Scripture - and supposing that the Mass is the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of the cross, with Christ offering Himself in the Mass now for a sacrifice that is acceptable to God, satisfying the justice of God for the sins committed against Him. (https://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/euchb1a.htm)

Thus a Catholic can assert that the priest "reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. The priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him presenton our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man, not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows His head in humble obedience to the priest's command." command Christ to become them, so "the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command," O'Brien, The Faith of Millions, 255-256; http://www.amazon.com/review/R38Y9EJCVD3E8/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0879738308)

Of course, while teaching that the Mass is the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of the cross, with Christ continually offering Himself as expiation of sins, RCs yet also say that Christ can die no more but He offers Himself as an atonement in commemoration of His death on the cross, and applies to believers the merits and satisfaction of it. All of which Catholic are expected to understand.

But which thus denies the "once for all" atonement of the cross, show before, after which Christ stand down, and denies bloodless, deathless sacrifice of the Mass as being the is the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of the cross, and of it being a proper atonement for sin.

Catholics coming in about last in evidences of commitment, only surpassed by likewise dead liberal mainline Prot churches.

Oh, but you have nothing to do with those dead liberal mainline Churches do you? No no--your church has conveniently separated from them once, twice, three, four times over.

How nice it must be! Just carve out a tiny little niche of self-selected Christianity, built only of people who chose this particular theology, this particular pastor, and this particular worship style, and that's YOUR church, right? That Methodist guy on the street who can't be bothered on Sundays anymore--he has nothing to do with you. But the Catholic who votes for Pelosi and is contracepting--he is still mine, right?

Heck, if I could self-select my own Church from the most committed, the most devout, I could leave your puny little evangelical commitment in the dust:

http://benedictinesofmary.org/content/monastic-schedule

See that schedule? That's a DAILY schedule. Do you remember, from your Catholic days, what all those terms mean...if you were ever taught? Matins/Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline--every single one of those terms involves communal prayer and singing the Psalms. Every day starting at 5 AM. These ladies don't have families except each other, don't have jobs except whatever tasks they are assigned in the monastery. Their whole life is prayer. Individually and communally, orally and mentally.

But I *can't* self-select from the most devout. It's not MY church. It's Christ's Church. The Christ who prayed that "we might all be one" and who promised that the weeds would grow among the wheat. So yes, I'm a member of Christ's Church, and so is the Pelosi voter, and so is the poor soul who self-excommunicates and damns himself with the mortal sin of heresy--and may we all be saved from the fire come the harvest.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is exactly what you once taught it was. We've always believed it, still believe it, and will always believe it. And you are doing yourself no favors by absenting yourself from it.

Oh, but you have nothing to do with those dead liberal mainline Churches do you?

Nor should you:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. (2 Corinthians 6:14-18)

No, such "only of people" elitism is Roman and cultic, while evangelical types can visit multitudes of churches which hold to commonly held fundamental truth which the modern evangelical movement originally arose to defend, against the liberal revisionism, including that which Rome has taught and teaches right in sanctioned notes of her own NAB Bible.

That Methodist guy on the street who can't be bothered on Sundays anymore--he has nothing to do with you. But the Catholic who votes for Pelosi and is contracepting--he is still mine, right?

That Methodist who does not sanctify the Lord's day and sanctions sodomite ministers etc., has no part with Christ, thus why should and how can I in spiritual fellowship?

But the Catholic who votes for Pelosi and is contracepting--he is still mine, right?

She is indeed, since you remain in and must follow a church that counts and treats such as members in life and death, which RCs tell us we are to submit to her, and not follow our contrary interpretations.

And as V2 evidences , Rome interprets herself, and what one does and effects testifies to what they really believe. (Ja. 2:18; Mt. 7:20)

Surely you are not engaging in dissent based upon your own interpretation in protesting against what Rome manifests as her interpretation of herself would you? So if Teddy K is given an apostolic blessing and honored with and in a church funeral, which even Chavez and Mayor Menino most recently received, then how can you not treat other like RCs as members?

Heck, if I could self-select my own Church from the most committed, the most devout, I could leave your puny little evangelical commitment in the dust:

This much is true,

For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. (Ecclesiastes 9:4)

See that schedule? That's a DAILY schedule

To which only a minute % of RCs attend, so these are the Real RCs? Let alone the unScriptural nature of the Mass.

It's not MY church. It's Christ's Church.

That is a mere assertion, but in reality it is abundantly manifest to be a severe deformation of the NT church .

The Christ who prayed that "we might all be one" and who promised that the weeds would grow among the wheat. So yes, I'm a member of Christ's Church, and so is the Pelosi voter, and so is the poor soul who self-excommunicates and damns himself with the mortal sin of heresy

At least you admit the apostate nature of your idea of a church, as in reality the one true church is the body of Christ which only consists of those who are born again of the Spirit of Christ who places them into it. (1Cor. 12:13)

Who also mandates,

"not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator [includes supporting such], or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat." (1 Corinthians 5:11)

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is exactly what you once taught it was. We've always believed it, still believe it, and will always believe it.

Another bare and fallacious assertion, as in reality, rather than being the "source and summit of the Christian life," in which "redemption is accomplished," by its separate class of priests offering Christ as atonement as he did upon the Cross, and by which believers obtain spiritual life in themselves,

instead, the Lord's supper is only manifestly described once in the life of the church with any detail, in which the church is the body of Christ which shows, declares, His death by taking part in the communal meal (ideally not just a wafer) in an unselfish manner, showing caring love for those whom Christ bought with His sinless shed blood, in mindfulness of that act. (1Cor. 11:17-34 )

Moreover, there simply is no separate sacerdotal class of believers distinctively titled "priests" in the NT, as the Holy Spirit never uses that distinctive word for "priest" for pastors.

Nor NT pastors ever shown dispensing food as part of their primary ordained duty, much less human flesh and blood, as instead their ordained duty was that of prayer, preaching the word. (cf. Acts 6:4)

Nor is spiritual life ever obtained by literally consuming anything physical: and in fact the metaphorical view is the only one which is consistent with the rest of the writings of John, and the rest of Scripture, and the use of figurative eating and drinking.

And in which even potable water is called the blood of men, and thus is poured out as an offering to the Lord as is done with blood in Leviticus. And people are called "bread for Israel," while land "eats" them, and enemies come to eat David, and the word of God is also eaten, etc. (2 Samuel 23:15-17; Num. 13:32; 14:9; Jer. 15:16 ; Ps. 27:2; Ezek. 3:1; Rev. 10:8-9)

The vast majority of Christians who walked upon this earth for 2000 years have accepted on simple faith that "this is my body" and "this is my blood" and "do this in memory of me" mean literally what they say.

Last I checked, Christian truth is determined by God, not by majority vote of fallen humanity. But even so, the notion of "literal" presence as "explained" by transubstantiation is alien to the first few centuries, and nothing identifiable as transubstantiation appeared until Radbertus circa 9th Century. Here's the problem with that. Until an issue like this gets hashed out by vigorous, Scripturally grounded debate, as happened with Athanasius (contra mundum, no less), ambiguities exist in the meaning of the early writers. They did not have the conceptual template of the later generations, least of all Aquinas' use of Aristotle to describe the removal of the substance of the bread and wine. When an early writer speaks of the bread as the body of Christ, are they doing so with substance swapping in mind? Or are they simply asserting that what the symbol represents, what lies in back of it in history, is real, or is somehow made manifest through the elements of the sacred meal, with no effect on the actual substance of the bread or the wine?

If you follow these arguments on FR for any length of time, you come to realize that for every patristic writer who seems to speak in literal terms, there is another who speaks in more symbolic terms, and sometimes the same writer will use both frames of reference. This is an important clue that their model (or models) for thinking about the Eucharist are not obedient to modern models, nor consistent with transubstantiation, even when taken as merely explanatory (though Trent compels the use of that "explanation" on pain of anathema for failure to do so).

Which is why the court of first and ultimate resort must be the divine teaching of Scripture. The early patristic testimony is helpful but not decisive. Augustine further confounds the matter by being decidedly against key principles of transubstantiation, favoring the symbolic sense. So we are not talking about some tiny backwater of the ancient world, but a central figure in the early formation of the Christian model of truth. Thus Protestants see many of their own beliefs represented as threads that at first dominate the early writings, but over time must compete with other threads evolving toward a more literal sense. So rejection of a hyper-literal, anti-linguistic realism does have very early roots, and unlike transubstantiation is not grounded in human theories of time, or categories of substance versus accidence, but most primitively in the plain words of Christ, when He Himself explained the puzzle could only be solved in spiritual terms, not fleshly. See John 6:63. I'm sure you've seen it before.

And if you try to counter this by charging that using metaphorical analysis is "vain human philosophy," I will respond that you are (doubtless unintentionally) saying the entire teaching ministry of Christ is vain philosophy, because when did He not teach in public using parables? And what are parables but extended metaphors? And how may we understand a metaphor without recognizing it as such? Indeed, metaphor is so basic to human thought and language I doubt we could say much of anything without it.

Again, I'm reasonably certain you know the drill. We both know Jesus is not a door or a vine, etc. Yet He taught that He was. And He was telling the truth. The metaphor conveyed truth. The human mind has no trouble with this way of accessing truth. We spot the cross-mapping between two distinct domains, and immediately pick up on the transferred attributes, the teaching about one thing using another thing. Thus, to reject at least the possibility of metaphor in these teachings on Christ's body and blood is to reject a central feature of human communication as God Himself designed it to work. It is anti-linguistic, and a severe case of special pleading, because the rules applied here are not applied equally in less controversial matters where metaphor does no harm to later-developed doctrinal speculations. Double standards are no friend of good doctrine..

One of my favorite examples is this metaphor from Shakespeare, where Romeo says of Juliet, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day." Here the metaphor is indirect. The fact that a comparison is being made is set forth explicitly in the word "compare." The teaching value is that we can learn about Juliet, whom we don't know, by comparing here to a pleasant summer day, which we do know. That's the whole point of metaphor, learning about something of which we have no direct experience, by comparison with something we have experienced.

But direct metaphors are just as useful as a teaching device and just as easy to spot. If I show you a paper map of Texas, and say to you, "This is Texas," you would have no trouble whatsoever recognizing that the paper I'm holding isn't really Texas. That's because you're wired for metaphor, just like everybody else. It's how God made you. You see "is," the verb of being, linking two very different types of objects, and you immediately spot the direct metaphor. You realize the paper stands for the geometry of the boundary of Texas, and you can therefore learn something about Texas by studying the paper. And that's just garden variety metaphor, found everywhere and all the time in human communication. It's not vain philosophy. It's a hard, empirical fact about how our minds work, how we learn about things with which we have no direct experience.

The reality is, if the Roman system had not evolved away from Scriptural usage, this would be uncontroversial. No one would have trouble with Jesus' "Bread of Life" discourse. He is using bread to teach about Himself. Bread satisfies the hunger of the stomach. Jesus satisfies the hunger of the heart. Our bodies will pass away, as will all the hungers thereof. But our spirit is eternal. It is our spirit that feeds on Christ as our nutrition. We do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Like Jesus, our favorite food is to do the will of our Heavenly Father. Which is why Jesus must redirect the confusion of his listeners, who were not learning from the metaphor, because they didn't really believe in Him. He tells them this isn't about the flesh, but the spirit, that His words are spirit. Sit and digest that for a moment. In the end, Peter understood: There is nowhere else to go; only Jesus has the words of eternal life.

And this rendering is consistent with Jesus' teaching style, following closely the pattern of His other metaphorical teachings. Consider for example His teaching on the new birth to Nicodemas. Remember in that passage Nicodemas also has trouble mixing up spiritual and fleshly categories. He thinks Jesus is saying something about going back into his mother's womb and coming back out again, which, taken literally, makes no sense whatsoever. Jesus has to disabuse him of his hyper-literalism and remind him to distinguish between the corporeal and the spiritual, exactly as He does in John 6.

John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Come to Jesus, and you wil never hunger. Believe on Him, and you will never be thirsty. His words are spirit. And they are life. If you believe.

My time is up for now. There is more to say, but perhaps later.

Peace,

SR

The doctrine of the invisible Church was a plain invention of the Reformers—because history was not on their side and they knew it.

Not so: as in fact Scripture refers to the invisible church when speaking of the church as the body of Christ since not all the members are visible, and into which souls are added before they become part of an organic body. And rather than history being on the side of Rome, it is what Rome says history (Scripture and Tradition) says that it the basis for the veracity of Rome. Thus, faced with contrary evidence, no less than Bellarmine resorts to asserting,

It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation,” (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.

Moreover, even RC scholarship provides evidence contrary to the church of Rome being that of the NT, but most Roman Catholics are ignorant of what recent research has evidenced, such as on the early papacy.

► Jesuit Father Klaus Schatz on Priesthood, Canon, and the Development of Doctrine in his work, “Papal Primacy”:

..if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the authority of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably “no” (page 1)

.. if we ask in addition whether the primitive church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer. (page 2)

"If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no." (page 3, top). More

► Catholic historian and political conservative Paul Johnson in his 1976 work “History of Christianity” states:

By the third century, lists of bishops, each of whom had consecrated his successor, and which went back to the original founding of the see by one or the other of the apostles, had been collected or manufactured by most of the great cities of the empire and were reproduced by Eusebius…– “A History of Christianity,” pgs 53 ff.)

► American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar Raymond Brown says, “The claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily in reference to the Puauline tyupe of apostleship, not that of the Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.) More

If you follow these arguments on FR for any length of time, you come to realize that for every patristic writer who seems to speak in literal terms, there is another who speaks in more symbolic terms, and sometimes the same writer will use both frames of reference.

Absolutely! That's exactly what I've found as well.

But you still cannot wring a skeptical position out of them!

Calling something a "symbol" doesn't necessarily mean it is only a symbol. My children are a symbol of my love for my wife and also a real product of that love. So reread carefully all those Patristic quotations that describe the Eucharist as a symbol. See if they also give some indication of belief in the Real Presence or a change in substance--many do.

I remember someone here cited what they thought was the knock-down quotation "proving" the Eucharist was only a symbol--wish I could remember what Father they were citing. Anyway, I did some digging, and not a few paragraphs away from that quote, that Church Father said explicitly that the Eucharistic elements retain their appearances but change their substances.

So it is a mistake to rely on the "symbol" quotations to reinforce a skeptical position. What we actually need is something akin to the black rubric of the Book of Common Prayer:

It is hereby declared, That thereby no adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored; (for that were Idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians;) and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one.

Now THAT is unambiguous.

Make a little gradient of Patristic Eucharistic belief. On the plus side are all those passages where it is taken literally. On the zero mark are all those where it is uncertain or called a symbol without further explanation. On the minus side are all those passages where a literal interpretation is denied, as in the Black Rubric.

Presence Denied-----SYMBOLIC/UNCLEAR------Presence Affirmed
----------------------------------------0+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dollars to doughnuts every single passage you find in the Patristic sources will be zero or higher--that not a single one will be negative.

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