THE BLESSED SACRILEGE OF THE ALTAR WHEN BREAD IS MADE TO BE GOD

Roman Catholicism says the Blessed Eucharist or the Mass is an act of worship wherein the bread and wine are turned by the priest, who uses the power of God, into the body and blood of Jesus Christ who is true God and true man.
 
The altar of modern Catholicism is a place of sacrilege and hence sacrilege that is blessed for the Church has no repentance and makes virtue out of its practice.
 
WAFER-WATCHING
 
The Catholic Church likes to expose the communion wafer and put it on display so that the people can come and look at it, adore it and pray to it as if it were God. It is kept in tabernacles for the worship of the people. Also, the priest may take a large host or wafer and put it in a monstrance which it can be displayed in for the adoration of the people. The priest may perform an act of worship called Benediction in which the wafer is adored and used to bless the people.
 
The Church says Jesus is bodily in Heaven and that the host is this same body. Each host then is the one entity, Jesus. The Church denies that the more wafers that are changed into Jesus the more Jesuses there are. Jesus' body doesn't get bigger the more wafers there are. Jesus's body in Heaven is supposed to be a body as we understand it. The Church teaches that its height and appearance and weight etc do not make it a body - do not make it Jesus. A body is something ghostly. So it follows that a marble can be a human person. The breeze can be a human person. Having eyes and ears and flesh is optional to having a body, to being a person. None of this makes any sense. What the Church is doing is hiding the fact that it is pretending that the wafer is Jesus. If you say the wafer is physically transformed into Jesus and yet the wafer is physically unchanged then that is what you are doing. The worship of the eucharist is far worse than any idolatry engaged in by the pagans.
 
The wafer may be displayed on an altar. This is called exposition. Many Churches hold Eucharistic Adoration in which the exposition may carry on for a length of time. Eucharistic Adoration is surprisingly popular in the Church especially among women. Its appeal lies in how it offers a condensed God. He is there in the form of a helpless wafer. The worshipper feels bigger than God. The idolater might believe in a great and powerful god but he likes to feel better than the god by treating an image or object as if it were the god or the abode of the god. It is placebo for the fear of the supernatural.
 
If people were invited to worship key rings or remote controls or the mother-in-law's hairdo as God incarnate like they are asked to worship the wafer in Catholicism, they would recoil and see how odd and wacky it is. The Catholic Church hit upon the idea of using unleavened bread which is bleached white and looks mysterious. This was because people would feel that worshipping a loaf or a bun would be too idolatrous and strange. It needs to look sacred to make people adore it. The same psychology is behind the fact that Catholics can venerate traditional images of the Virgin Mary but cannot venerate one that looks more like Lady Gaga than the Virgin Mary. The Church seeks to trigger the feeling that the wafer is Jesus. This is idolatry for you must adore the wafer because it is Jesus not just because you feel it is. Feelings led pagans into idol worship.
 
If you give somebody tap water and say it is actually pure arsenic you are telling the person to kid themselves that it is not water but arsenic. If you say the tap water is physically unchanged but still somehow not water you are trying to hide the pretending. Admit it. The worship of the wafer in Catholicism is pretending that it is Jesus Christ. Even if it is Jesus, you don't know that and could still be pretending that it is Jesus. The pagans thought that the spirits of their gods went into the statues they worshipped. That made them idolaters. Catholics are worse - they adore bread as God and it is deliberate for they are only pretending it is not bread but God.
 
Jesus did not say at the Last Supper that we are to eat and adore or just adore the bread but that we are to eat it. To this it might be objected that if it is Jesus it should be adored. Yes but that does not imply it would be treated with the extra devotion and ceremony that Catholics make.
 
The priest can change the bread into his god when he visits the sick. Providing the Eucharist for the sick is an excuse for keeping it in tabernacles.
 
When all we see is bread it is easy to forget about Jesus and adore what looks like bread. When you are looking at the bread you are often forgetting to be aware of God. You can love a person’s looks and forget even that it is a person you are looking at. Prayer is awareness of God and nothing else. That is why the only true form of prayer is just being aware of the presence of God and intending to be one with him. Words remove that awareness because you cannot concentrate on saying, “Jesus be praised,” and on the divine presence at the same time. In between the words yes but not when you are voicing the words. Vocal prayer is actually sinful. It is idolatry to pray with a picture of God or Jesus or Mary in your mind. It is as much adoring an image as would adoring a statue be.
 
Praying to the blessed sacrament betrays ignorance of spirituality. It is no use saying that Jesus accepted worship when he was on earth because that was not real worship even though he might have accepted it as a start on the way to higher things. Bowing or praying to Jesus is not worship because only being aware that he is with you is. You could say it was worship but not literal worship. It was just emotional stuff like being grateful or emotionally loving.
 
Jesus does not want to be adored with incense and candles any more. He permitted the woman to anoint his feet with expensive oil though selling the oil for the poor would have been a better idea. Judas pointed out that the oil should have been sold for the poor. But Jesus said that it was preparation for burial and he was allowing this extravagance just once for the poor would still need help after he was gone meaning that after that we can sell oil for the benefit of the poor. He does not want incense any more or candles when he said that about the oil.
 
God would not let Moses see his face because he hated idolatry – which proves that God would never become man. Read Exodus 33. Moses was unlikely to commit that sin unlike everybody that has been born since but God still would not take a chance. This episode proves that the Catholic rites of adoration for the Eucharist are pagan. It also proves that Jesus Christ would not have turned bread and wine into his own body and blood for it would be adoring an image not God even though God is in that image. We don't see him. As far as we are concerned we see bread. You don’t need helps to prayer in the form of exposed communion wafers or images for if prayer is hard for you and you try it is as good a prayer as any for God rewards effort not success. The helps actually reduce or ruin merit and God would not set up anything that would lead to that.
 
Tabernacles can be robbed and wafers can decay over being kept or displayed too long. Jesus would not suffer such indignities if he was eaten at Mass and nothing left over. It is wrong to have them and have these things occurring when they are not needed.
 
The doctrine that the bread is really a human being is very hard for people to believe and very hard to defend. It would be simpler to take the bread as a symbol of Jesus that you take to get grace from God that makes you closer to Jesus. If somebody is not sure if the bread is the body then in so far as they are not sure they are committing idolatry EVEN IF THE BREAD IS THE BODY OF JESUS. If they are not sure or not very sure, then they are guilty of intending to worship bread. Even pagan idolaters didn't go that far. They didn't adore images but the god they thought lived in the image or who had turned into the image.
 
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
Born-Again Catholics and the Mass, William C Standridge Independent Faith Mission, North Carolina, 1980
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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
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