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
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
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
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), Prometheus Books, New York, 1995
Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979
Encyclopedia of Theology, Edited by Karl Rahner, Burns and Oates, London, 1977
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
Hard Sayings, FF Bruce, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1983
Living in Christ, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne, 1969
Martin Luther, Richard Marius, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999
Papal Sin, Structures of Deceit, Garry Wills, Darton Longman and Todd, London, 2000
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/

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