The Spiritual Barrier - the Mass cannot
work even if there is a change in bread and wine
The Roman Catholic Church re-enacts the time when Jesus took bread and wine and
said they were his body and blood and invited his apostles to eat and drink.
This ceremony is called the Mass or Eucharist. Incredibly, the Church insists
that the bread and wine are literally the body and blood of Jesus. The bread and
wine at Mass turn into the real body and blood of Jesus. The Church says that
the priest uses God’s power to change bread and wine into Jesus. He changes what
makes the bread to be bread but without the bread seeming any different. So too
with the wine. The priest raises the bread and wine at the heart of the Mass for
adoration by the people.
Jesus Christ said that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your
powers i.e. in totality. We are to love God to that extent just because he
commanded it. We therefore do not do it because it will be good for us or
anybody else. We are to love our neighbour because God commanded it which means
we do not love the neighbour for herself or himself but for God only. Love for
God alone is expressed through doing his will for others. He wants us to do good
for others but for his sake and not theirs at all. It makes us inhuman.
Catholics cannot want the bread and wine to turn into a God like that. They
would not really want to be nourished by him or to worship him in the form of
bread and wine. What Catholics worship is a fantasy god. The Eucharist is
idolatry. The Catholic has no right to ask for anything in return for going to
Mass apart from a reprimand.
Idolatry is adoring what is not divine as your god who has power over you.
Whether intentional or not it is a degrading error. It degrades and those who
are influenced by you and if God exists it means you are bypassing him to adore
a man-made idol. Christianity says that as we are to love God with all our heart
and soul and mind and powers that idolatry is the ultimate sin. It keeps you
from seeing the love of God properly and from growing through seeing it.
Religion argues that idolaters soon turn into brutes.
In pagan magic, sometimes cannibalism was practiced in the thought that the
courage or qualities of the dead person could pass into the person eating his
flesh. The Catholic desire to eat of the body of Jesus is based on that notion.
But a theologian will say that as Jesus' virtues are in his spiritual soul that
is unlikely to be the motive. But that is irrelevant. You cannot absorb the
qualities of a person by eating their flesh unless there is spiritual or magical
power in the flesh to make that possible.
The Catholic Church reveres the Eucharist as the Body and Blood of Jesus. That
is what makes it special. If Jesus were believed to be spiritually present in
the Eucharist it would not get the veneration it gets. This clearly shows the
Catholic is interested in the magic and in the body and blood not what really
matters, the spirit and life and divinity - and therefore virtue - of Jesus.
Even if Jesus is in the Eucharist, the Catholics are guilty of idolatry in their
intent. If he is not in it, then their idolatry is immeasurable.
The Argument from Fruits refutes the goodness and usefulness of the
Mass
In terms of good fruits, even if the Mass does not produce bad fruits it does
not help produce good ones. Any good that mass goers do was going to be happen
anyway and it would be arrogant and degrading to them to say the Mass was behind
this good. If our goodness comes from us then it needs to be acknowledged.
Matthew 7:15-20 New International Version (NIV)
Jesus said
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."
The text mentions that the prophets will seem so good that they are like sheep.
All false prophets need to do a lot of good to get a following. Also, how much
bad fruit does a tree need to be called a bad tree? Jesus is saying that a good
tree bears only good fruit. This is a metaphor for a good tree can bear a little
bad fruit. But the metaphor suggests that the true prophet makes his followers
into trees that bear only the best of fruit. True followers of the prophet will
be like angels.
Jesus said that bad fruits follow false prophets. He said that we know the true
prophets and the false from their fruits. Good prophets make good fruits. He
asked if grapes can be gathered from thorns. He meant us to see that they
cannot. He denied that an evil religious teacher or prophet can produce ANY good
fruits. Or did he?
Others say he meant that the false prophet cannot turn evil people into good
rapidly. They point out that he said that a true prophet is able to gather
grapes from thorns metaphorically speaking. He is talking about miracle
conversions following true prophets. So if evil people miraculously turn good
that is like the impossible happening and it is like grapes coming from thorns.
The agent is God through his prophet.
Whatever Jesus meant, he rejected the popular view that if a religion does a
reasonable amount of good it is from God. A reasonable amount of good is not
enough. It is normal and so it means nothing. It has to be abnormally or
miraculously good. Clearly the fruits he has in mind are heroic and supernatural
virtue. He means true prophets have an unusually high following of saints. He
denied that an evil or good natured but fraudulent religious teacher or prophet
can produce such good fruits. People tend to think a religious claim is true if
followers feel happy because of it and do good. But Jesus says that is not
enough. You need to see saintly heroism in them.
The Mass does nothing special. All takers of communion fall away at times
and some sin a lot. They need constant spiritual food at Mass and act like
they are undernourished. It is a con.
Communion - the Placebo for a Tarnished Conscience
The world suffers great harm because of the violence and hatred unleashed by
religions identifying themselves as Islamic. The Muslim is asked to repent
before he prays. There is nothing in Islam that sanctions the person in his evil
and gives him a placebo so that he feels good about being bad along the
shameless lines of the Catholic Eucharist. The Muslims do nothing to make
themselves look virtuous and to win the acclaim of the community when they are
at worship.
The Roman Catholic Church pretended to vehemently oppose IRA violence. This was
mere words. Moreover, the Church says that it is ultimately up to you to decide
if your violent activities are self-defence or protecting people for only you
can know. So the disapproval of the Church does not count for much and may only
be cosmetic. IRA enablers in Sinn Fein or the republican movement were given
holy communion without hesitation though they did nothing to indicate that they
had repented.
Holy Communion in public is a declaration that you are trying to participate in
the Church's ambition to become a family united in love and faith and free from
serious sin. It is a declaration that you are trying to get grace from God to
prevent you sinning seriously. It is parading virtue. It is also saying, "If I
am bad I am trying to do something about it and need God to help for I cannot do
much alone. Therefore do not condemn me but admire me for trying. I may fall but
I am only human." This is just a ploy to feel good while you do outrageous evil.
It shows why the doctrine of grace, God magically turning you from a monster
into God's gift in record time, is so appealing. Holy Communion is a placebo for
the evil person. Thus it can be argued that Roman Catholicism sanctioned
religious terrorism in a way that Islam does not and cannot. It is sanctioned in
a very clear and public and religious way. Which religion then is the worst? It
is the religion that is the best at sanctioning evil and enabling it that is the
worst even if it seems on the face of it to do less violence than say Islam.
That religion is Roman Catholicism.