THE CATHOLIC MASS AND REASON
Religion and many other entities in society, claim to be rational and encourage
people to take their rationality for granted. Actually that is very wrong and
manipulative and anti-rational. Reason necessarily means you do not tell others
you are rational - you show it to them. You lay out all the evidence by pen and
paper if you have to. Reason belongs to everybody not just those who claim to be
rational. Reason is about transparency in matters pertaining to evidence or
proof and about avoiding contradiction and mistaking what is not proof as proof.
Reason desires correction which is why it hides nothing from anybody.
If you have to have others taking your rationality for granted, that is only
right if there is no time or no opportunity to let them judge you for
themselves. But this will be seen as a necessary evil and hopefully provisional.
The Catholic Church does not have a policy of showing that its claims about
bread and wine seeming unchanged but still becoming the body and blood of Jesus
Christ are rational. It even claims that Jesus's sacrifice on the cross becomes
present at Mass - so being at the Mass is the same as being at the crucifixion.
However it does claim that these things can be believed by a rational person.
The persons who understand the arguments are few and far between. And most that
do understand them have the rationality and the integrity to reject them.
The Church likes Aristotle's theory about substance and accidents - that what a
thing is, is not the same as the characteristics that we pick up through our
senses. It uses this theory to maintain that the bread and wine of communion can
seem unchanged but still be the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
If the argument is correct, then it follows that to worship the Eucharist
properly, you need to understand the argument. Anything else would result in you
intending to treat bread and wine as Jesus. If they are Jesus that is not
enough. We are talking about your intention. Idolatry is in the heart ultimately
so it possible to idolatrously worship even God.
Hardly anybody really knows the argument. Even fewer think it makes sense.
Reason itself says that though it is true that there is more to something than
how you sense it, that it does not follow that it might be something other than
what its physical characteristics say it is. It does not follow that a drop of
lemonade might actually be arsenic.
To mistake the fact that there is more to a wafer than what it seems as evidence
that it could be Jesus Christ is really stirring up our tendency to feel that
objects are living things. We may feel that we have a personal relationship with
our cars and tablets and laptops.
The Church says that the communion bread and wine though they act like ordinary
bread and wine are not but are actually the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This
amounts to saying that a sweet could be a human being for God could change what
makes the sweet a sweet into a brand new person who never existed before. The
absurdity in this is that this person would have no senses and would have no
brain and therefore could not be a person at all! The Catholics are worshipping
bread and wine and if Jesus told them to do that then he made the slip-up that
proved he was a false prophet for the Bible says only one error made by a person
through whom God seems to be speaking proves that he is not speaking through him
at all which is pure commonsense for a perfect and almighty God cannot make a
mistake. It follows too that if Jesus is a communion wafer then that wafer has
more value than all the babies in the world. So it would be better for them to
be incinerated alive than for the wafer to be desecrated. This is gross
fanaticism. The true humanist hates the Mass or the Eucharist for it is full of
superstition that seeks to enslave and insults the human race.
Like the pagans of old, we feel that our statues and material things are gods
and goddesses and worship them. So the Mass is just a scam built on that
very human impulse.
Plus that Catholic transubstantiation doctrine has too many miracles. There is the miracle of bread turning into his body and blood - bread a liquid? There is the miracle of wine turning into his body and blood - wine a body? There is the miracle of how they don't change as regards our experience. And that is not to mention how God gets Jesus to fit. Even the taste of the bread does not change. Then there is the reverse-transubstantiation of how they have to turn back into ordinary things in the bowel. As the food will be digested at different rates this will be a piecemeal transformation back into whatever makes up digested bread and wine. And the miracle is that they are either the old bread and wine back again in digested form or God makes them into digested new bread and wine. Another miracle is how it makes sense to feed on Jesus for a few minutes and how physically eating and drinking affects your soul! Another miracle is how grace is seen as a substance for a soul to feed on. The sacrament gives that kind of grace. Grace in the Bible just means relationship with God. In reality it is like saying mathematics is a substance. Anybody saying that is just inventing something and calling it mathematics. It is absurd. This miracle transformation of grace into what it cannot be is the biggest miracle of all for grace is vital according to the Christian faith. Grace is metaphorically spiritual food - but it is not food in any sense any more than a parent bonding with her baby is food. The mass is blasphemous for it turns grace into magic. It is pure occultism and counterfeit spiritual food.
In John 6 Jesus uses graphic language about eating his flesh. He uses the word for gnaw and chew. The use of the word eat hides all that. Jesus says that whoever gnaws him sort of becomes him. Protestant and even Catholic authorities argue that the emphasis is on how important and meaningful it is for you to absorb Christ spiritually. Even if bread becomes Jesus spiritual eating is necessary not just physical. Gnaw and chew or munch is making an emphasis. Obviously Jesus did not want anybody gnawing communion bread so the expressions are making a spiritual point.
With Catholic communion it is claimed that we are what we eat.
Catholics consume Jesus to become him. So if it is mere bread then it is
idolatry of the worst kind. It is better to worship a frog's backside as
God than to depend on consuming as God in human flesh that which is not God.
At least the frog would be alive and get some benefit.
John Knox wrote, "The Mass is nothing but the invention of man, set up without all authority of God's word, for honouring of God; and therefore it is idolatry. Unto it is added a vain, false, deceitful, and most wicked opinion: that is, that by it is obtained remission of sins; and therefore it is abomination before God. It is contrary unto the Supper of Jesus Christ, and has taken away both the right use and remembrance thereof, and therefore it is blasphemous to Christ's death." He is right about it being a dreadful human invention.
BOOKS CONSULTED
Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Book 2, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, MH Gill & Son,
Dublin, 1954
Apologetics for the Pulpit, Aloysius Roche, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd,
London, 1950
Bolt, P. G. The Cross from a Distance (IVP, 2004)
Born-Again Catholics and the Mass, William C Standridge Independent Faith
Mission, North Carolina, 1980
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco,
1988
Confession of a Roman Catholic, Paul Whitcomb, TAN, Illinois, 1985
Critiques of God, Edited by Peter A Angeles (Religion and Reason Section),
Prometheus Books, New York, 1995
Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1979
Eucharist, Centre of Christian Life, Rod Kissinger SJ, Liguori Publications,
Missouri, 1970
Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, Fr Charles Chiniquy, Chick Publications,
Chino, 1985
Is Jesus Really Present in the Eucharist? Michael Evans, Catholic Truth Society,
London, 1986
Handbook to the Controversy with Rome, Vol 2, Karl Von Hase MD, The Religious
Tract Society, London, 1906
Living in Christ, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne, 1969
Martin Luther, Richard Marius, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul,
Minnesota, 1940
Roman Catholic Claims, Charles Gore, MA, Longmans, Green & Co, London, 1894
Salvation, The Bible and Roman Catholicism, William Webster, Banner of Truth,
Edinburgh, 1990
Secrets of Romanism, Joseph Zaccello, Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1984
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
The Mass, Sacrifice and Sacrament, William F Dunphy, CSSR, Liguori Publications,
Missouri, 1986
The Primitive Faith and Roman Catholic Developments, Rev John A Gregg, APCK,
Dublin, 1928
The Student’s Catholic Doctrine, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London,
1961
This is My Body, This is My Blood, Bob and Penny Lord, Journeys of Faith,
California, 1986
Where is that in the Bible? Patrick Madrid, Our Sunday Visitor, Indiana, 2001
Why Does God…? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls, Bucks, 1970
The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
