WHY HISTORY SHOWS THAT THE CATHOLIC EUCHARIST IS FULL OF DOCTRINES THAT FAITH HAS INVENTED
The Reformers contended that Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine cease to exist and become Jesus Christ and that the ceremony that does this miracle is the same sacrifice as the Cross of Jesus is not part of required Christian belief but a novelty, a divinely unauthorised invention.
The Bible evidence for the Catholic Mass is unconvincing. Tradition does not support the Catholic understanding either. The early Christians were considered to be fake religionists for they would not call any material thing a god. The pagans slaughtered them for that. If they had been calling bread and wine the body and blood of God and meaning it it would have been a different story.
PAPAL SIN, STRUCTURES OF DECEIT, Garry Wills, Darton Longman and Todd,
London, 2000 gives a good analysis of Augustine's thinking about the Eucharist.
Page 143, tells us about the Catholic scholar Evan der Meer admitting that
Augustine gave no hint in his hundreds of sermons on the Eucharist of the idea
that Jesus is physically present in the bread and wine. For Augustine, the body
of Christ was the people so his formula for communion was, "Receive what you
are, the body of Christ" (page 148).
There is no early witness who says that the bread and wine cease to exist or
that he means they literally become Jesus which we would need. When Jesus called
them his body and blood it was only natural for everybody to call them that but
that is not sufficient to demonstrate that this is a miraculous transmutation.
The Bible and Rome make it abundantly clear that Christian disunity is not and
has never been God’s will (John 17). In 1215 CE, the Catholic Church (at the
Fourth Lateran Council in Rome) infallibly decreed, for the first time, that
Christian faith included the doctrine of transubstantiation.
For centuries Christians could deny the doctrine and not be lawfully considered
heretics. The doctrine might have been enshrined in Church tradition but that is
not much good. Jesus said the Devil would deceive the majority when he said the
world was under the Devil’s control and tradition was often just what most
churchmen thought and it is now impossible to prove what most Christians or
their ministers believed. Forgery to make a new and popular tradition seem to
have come from the early centuries of the Church was dead easy. God would not
have made tradition a sufficient basis for one of his major doctrines when he
had set up an infallible Church that could make the doctrine binding on the
Catholic conscience in the strongest possible way at the time of the birth of
the Church. The Church has certainly erred in non-infallible teaching therefore
it has no right to reprimand, excommunicate or punish those who dissent from it.
Indeed the Church has always allowed dissent as long as no fundamental doctrine
was undermined. Paul told the Church to stay one though there would be many
disputes so he wanted her conflicting parties to agree to disagree and keep
trying to talk things through. But those who dissented from the teaching on
transubstantiation couldn’t legitimately stay in the Church. Those who supported
transubstantiation were idolaters if they were wrong. God forbids fellowship
with those one considers to be idolaters (1 Corinthians 5:11). The doctrine
promoted schisms which God certainly hates for he cannot endure confusion (1
Corinthians 14:33). If transubstantiation were true, God would have revealed it
from the beginning. It would have been defined by a first century council or in
scripture. He didn’t make sure that would happen therefore it is untrue.
Catholics have to consider Protestants who are deniers of the physical
transformation of the Eucharist into Christ to be worse than idolaters. If
idolatry, the sin of having a marred perception of God that leads to you seeking
him in spirits and statues, is so worthy of unfriendly vehemence then the sin of
not acknowledging God in the Eucharist is equally vile. The Eucharist is such a
focus of bitter division that it is clear that if Jesus established it the Devil
was guiding him to do so.
The picture we get is of a God permitting dissent of a type that would tear the
Church apart. The doctrine is not of God for it is lies that lead to division
not God’s truth. The Catholic Church having used her infallibility to proclaim
it proves that the Church is not infallible at all. We have no solid basis for
the doctrine. Transubstantiation must be false for God would not hide it from
his chosen flock.
Communion in the hand was given in the first four centuries of the Church until
the Church began getting funny ideas about the nature of the bread (page 390,
Christian Order Vol 36 Number 8-9 1995). This alone indicates that the Church
didn’t think the bread was literally Jesus for if Jesus is in the bread or the
bread has become Jesus you can’t take it in your hands for pieces will always
come off and Jesus will be sacrilegiously desecrated. The only solution is to
take Jesus in wafer form on the tongue with him being placed there by a careful
minister.
The early Church was nearly all Arian at one stage and God would not turn bread
and wine into Jesus if Jesus were not God meaning that the Church did not adhere
to the notion of a literal change.
The Pelagian heresy thrived and was tolerated and accepted as fine for
centuries. Then it was stigmatised and condemned officially on the basis that it
denied the need for special help (grace) from God in order to be good and go to
Heaven. Pelagians tried to rationalise and explain away the miracles of
scripture and opposed readings of scripture that proposed the events were
supernatural. Thus they would not have been keen on the miracle of bread and
wine changing into Jesus. Nor would they have seen much point in eating the
bread and drinking the wine to be fed by God's grace. Nor would they have put
much importance on the sacrifice of Jesus as recalled in the Eucharist. For them
the example mattered not the alleged sacrifice for sins. They were harsh against
sin implying a lack of respect for the Mass which claims to be making Jesus'
blood present for the forgiveness of sins. They had little time for the
Eucharist. They are proof that the Church of the time was not dogmatic about the
Eucharist and allowed a variety of different opinions about it just like the
Church of England does today.
The Church of Rome says that it does not have the authority to give new
doctrine. At the very least, any doctrine it reveals must have been implied by
the teaching of the apostles embodied in scripture and tradition. This
foundational principle of the Church proves that she was not infallible when she
gave the dogma of transubstantiation to the world and that the doctrine is a
fable for it did not exist in the early years and is unreasonable and is not
inferred by any early doctrine. If transubstantiation is true then Roman
Catholicism is untrue.
The Mass is not part of the Christian faith. It is against it for the scriptures
Jesus established said so. The Bible forbids anything that it does not teach so
the Mass is against the Bible. It must have had a pagan origin.
BOOKS CONSULTED
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Born-Again Catholics and the Mass, William C Standridge Independent Faith
Mission, North Carolina, 1980
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco,
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Christian Order Vol 36 8-9 and Christian Order Vol 36 Number 4 53 Penerley Road,
Catford, London 1995
Confession of a Roman Catholic, Paul Whitcomb, TAN, Illinois, 1985
Critiques of God, Edited by Peter A Angeles (Religion and Reason Section),
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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,
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This is My Body, This is My Blood, Bob and Penny Lord, Journeys of Faith,
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The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/
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