FIRST PART OF JOHN 6 A CHAPTER THAT IS DISTORTED TO DEFEND ROMAN CATHOLIC EUCHARIST

For such an incredible doctrine as that bread and wine on Catholic altars become the resurrected Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul and godhead, you would expect clear biblical evidence.  It is a case of a religion concocting a doctrine and reading it back into the Bible.  John 6 is the playground for theologians of the Eucharist.

*  In John 6 Jesus preaches in a Jewish meeting house at Capernaum. Why didn’t he preach it in the Temple or at a religious feast or Passover meal?   The context isn't right for a sacramental or eucharistic interpretation.
 
* The Jews sternly required that flesh for eating have no blood in it. The blood had to be drained off. Blood was sacred and the symbol of life. Thus Jesus saying you can eat my flesh meant eat my corpse if you take him literally. Also then, drink my blood meant drink my life. This contradicts the Catholic doctrine that the living body of Jesus is received in communion. It teaches that the bread is both the body and blood of Jesus. And it teaches that the wine is also the body and blood of Jesus. But Jesus separates them.
 
* Jesus said he was the manna of life like the manna of the Hebrews was essential for their lives. We are told in the Old Testament that God gave Israel manna which was "bread" that fell from Heaven to feed them in the desert. The Eucharist is not as essential for spiritual life as the manna was for physical. If it is then anybody who does not receive the Eucharist will be damned. The Church has never taught this.
 
The manna was not bread and did not really fall down from Heaven. It appeared overnight on the ground by natural causes. Jesus would have known this. Even his use of the manna was about symbolism. 
 
* The psalms and the Old Testament say that God gave the Hebrews the manna. The Jews Jesus was preaching to must have thought that Moses gave the manna. He corrected their error for he said that it is not Moses who gives the bread from Heaven the manna but God the Father in Heaven. In a passage full of metaphors and symbols this is important. He was saying that the bread is not human bread. God's bread from Heaven is invisible food and has nothing to do with communion wafers.
 
Moses prayed for the manna and God gave it. Do the Jews mean that Moses gave them the bread by praying for it? Jesus says the real bread from Heaven is not given by Moses but by God. He rejects the view that anybody has to ask God to give it to you - God gives it to you directly. God even gave the manna of his own accord and it was not because of Moses or his prayer. There is no room in this for the notion of Catholic priests giving you the bread from Heaven, the wafer turned into Jesus by their prayer. There are no mediators.
 
Jesus is using the manna as a parallel for the bread he will give that is his flesh. It will then not be obtained by anybody's prayer but from God directly. This understanding demolishes the Mass which presupposes that prayer is needed through which God turns the bread into Jesus.
 
* Jesus said that those who eat his bread will never hunger and it is his flesh and he who eats it will live forever.
 
Therefore it is permanent nourishment or permanent sustenance. The Catholic Eucharist is not permanent nourishment for Jesus only feeds you until the communion wafer is turned into ordinary food in the stomach which takes about ten or fifteen minutes. If he stays behind after the wafer is gone then it is impossible to see what the Eucharist would need to be received over and over again for.
 
When Jesus says you will never hunger if you eat him and when there is no hint that you need to feed on him over and over again as in the Catholic Mass - the chapter indicates that one feeding with him lasts forever. The Jews asked Jesus in the chapter to be fed always.
 
* The passage starts off with Jesus saying he is the bread of life using evident symbolism for he is not bread. At this verse Catholics believe he changes the subject to transubstantiation. “I [myself] am this Living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever; and also the bread that I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh” (v51). So, the first part is symbolism and the second part is literal according to Catholics. But you can’t use symbolic language and then switch to literal language that looks like symbolic talk without warning. Jesus would not have done that for that would only confuse his hearers. He would have said that he was speaking literally now and that the bread he will give is his flesh.
 
There is supposed to be symbolism in the second part of the sentence because the Catholics say the Eucharist is not bread but is the flesh of Jesus and Jesus calls it bread here. So, it is symbolically bread. At this point, the messiness comes down to one thing.  The Church wants to turn Jesus into food and drink. But here Jesus turns food and drink into emblems of himself.  He is not really food and drink.

THE MASS CONTRADICTS "GOD IS SPIRIT SO WORSHIP HIM ONLY IN SPIRIT"

John 4:24 has Jesus telling a woman that God is spirit and all who worship him can only do so in spirit and in truth.  This is inspired by the ten commandments - they command that you worship God without any kind of image.  The commandment bans bowing before or serving images.  Catholicism does serve images by enshrining the communion wafer!

John has Jesus telling Nicodemus that what comes from flesh is flesh and what comes from spirit is spirit.   Here he is clear that the two are fundamentally separate.  The idea of bread becoming Jesus' flesh as spiritual food contradicts that dichotomy.