The Vindictive Side of the Catholic Mass

The Roman Catholic Mass is claimed to turn bread and wine into Jesus who is God. It is in violation of the rule that faith should risk upsetting and hurting nobody unduly. The Mass threatens bad people and those who are accused of being bad unjustly - such as those who are in committed relationships without being married.

God says to Jeremiah in chapter 25, "Take this cup of the wine of wrath from my hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it. They will drink and stagger and go insane all because of the sword I will send to them." The parallel here with the communion cup is frightening. And the parallel is real - it is not the wording alone that shows that but the context of what communion wine is about.

The Vindictive Potential of Communions

1 Corinthians 11, God's word according to Christians, says:
 
Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup.

For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.

That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment.

Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world.

So then, my brothers and sisters, when you gather to eat, you should all eat together.

Anyone who is hungry should eat something at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.

End of quote.

What does failing to discern the body of the Lord when taking the bread mean?

Paul said earlier we are all one for we eat the one bread. Paul said that those who behave badly and divisively at worship, are those who he accuses of not discerning the body as in refusing to keep union with others and see each other as a member of Christ’s body. That could be the key but not all agree.

It is pointed out that Paul already condemned division. But the answer to that is he did but is now on to why division is so terrible. His reason is that we are the body of Jesus and cannot divide the body.

Paul in the relevant chapter does start off condemning divisions but as he moves on to other subjects why can’t we hold that he only condemns taking the bread and cup if you don’t see the other person as a friend in Christ and fellow member of Christ’s body?

The best way to read unworthy manner is the simplest way. It just means eating and drinking without taking the message they embody seriously. It is the problem of people not taking the resurrection seriously even to the extent of thinking it will never happen all over again. They do not discern the physical existence – the body of Jesus. We are not talking about bread and wine becoming the body of Jesus. If he had meant the bread and wine change into the body and blood of Christ he would write, “without discerning the body and blood of Christ in the bread and cup” or better still “without discerning the presence of the body and blood of Christ.” Discern is about what you believe about Jesus.

The condemnation of doctrinal disunity and spiritual disunity where factions appear in the fold are paramount. The text makes it a sin to use the Eucharist where a church may be in division or separated from the real Church of Christ. If Catholicism is a false Christianity then its communion and masses are sins.
 
The text says taking the bread and cup without respect is sinning against the body and blood of Jesus. If you don't examine your conscience properly, you will be condemned. So you will be condemned for being careless with the examination. And if there are other sins, you will be condemned for taking the food and drink without having repented. The bread and cup become judgement or punishment. This is why a lot of people are suffering and dying. The text warns that eating and drinking alone is a sin and that if you are only interested in getting filled up you had better stay at home. This implies that anybody could take food or drink in memory of Jesus so there was no need for priests to bless them.
 
The Roman Church disagrees with the Protestant sects that teach that only those who have repented all their sins and have some love for God receive the body and blood of Jesus in Communion. The Church says that all, no matter how evil or sinful, receive the body and blood of Jesus. For those who have rejected God by sin, it is a grave sin of desecration of communion and sacrilege for them to receive the body and blood of Jesus. Why is it so bad? Is it because you take Jesus into your body and won't unite your heart to him? But you are not uniting with him anyway. So why would eating and drinking him make it any worse? Surely not uniting spiritually with Jesus who dwells everywhere spiritually all the time is worse? The implication is that there is no union with Jesus except at communion. This alone makes the rite idolatrous and blasphemous.
 
The Mass is vindictive for it is Church teaching that it threatens judgment and death on anybody who eats the wafer and drinks the cup without believing its the body and blood of Jesus or who is in a state of grave sin. This is based on a text from the Bible that say he who eats without recognising the body eats judgment and punishment and condemnation to himself from God. It tells the Corinthian Church that the reason it has members sick and dying is because they have committed that sin!
 
If you answer the sinner has only herself to blame then consider this, "I should only believe or encourage what will not deliberately upset or harm another even if it is wrong. I should only have beliefs that should they prove to be wrong, no harm to me or others is done."

Homicide?

It is said that Paul makes it clear that the worship using the bread and cup involves the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now Paul says that anybody who takes the bread and wine unworthily or without faith or without recognising the body is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. This leads believers into the insane notion that to take communion sacrilegiously is actually in some real sense murder. The believers can point to Numbers 35:27, Deuteronomy 21:8, 22:8, Ezekiel 35:6 which say that saying you are guilty of the body and blood of somebody means homicide. Communion is just spiteful if it has that connotation and when it is given that connotation say in Catholicism. But perhaps Paul means it is symbolically homicide? If the bread and cup are only markers of Jesus' body and blood then to abuse them is homicide in a symbolic sense. The memory of Jesus' death is mocked. The Catholic Church pretends to believe that Paul meant the communion is a human sacrifice and to abuse it is murder. But surely if you need Jesus to die for your sin you are in fact a murderer whenever you sin? Paul did not say the sin of abusing the bread and cup was the only way to become guilty of Jesus' death. Thus there is no way you can read sacrifice into it. He spoke a lot of how our sins put Jesus on the cross.
Now the Church says that Paul talks as if the body and blood of Jesus are really present meaning the bread and cup become them so to partake in a bad manner is homicide and a grave and dangerous sin. But it does not believe that at all. What it believes is that Jesus is present but not as crucified and dead or dying but as risen and glorious. Suppose the Church has a point about the real presence then the homicide link is only possible if the bread is the dying body of Jesus. It is evident that Paul means symbolic homicide - or it could be that guilty of the body and blood of the Lord is not inspired by the Old Testament texts at all. He may just mean it is an insult. Why did he not say guilty of murdering the Lord? He would have if he meant homicide for the Corinthians were not Jews and did not know the Jewish usage of the term as exemplified by the mentioned texts from the Jewish Bible. There is no evidence that Numbers 35:27, Deuteronomy 21:8, 22:8, Ezekiel 35:6 was behind his choice of words or that they were important to Paul or remembered by him.

The worst version of the notion that taking the bread or cup without recognising the body is that it means if you take them without believing that the bread actually is the body of Jesus. That is totally vindictive for belief is not a choice.

To think that Christians are happy with an apostle and a Jesus who says people must suffer and get sick and die if they take communion without recognising the body or unworthily is alarming and disgraceful and intolerable.

Patrick Madrid on the subject

Paul the apostle wrote in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 11:17) that whoever partakes of the bread and the drink (he never says wine) without recognising the body is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord and so people should examine themselves first.

Patrick Madrid says Paul means three things cause this guilt.

The person in a state of grave sin so it is sacrilege for him to eat and drink.

The person who partakes and doesn't believe the bread and drink are the body and blood of Christ is committing a grave sin.

The person who partakes and doesn't examine himself to make sure he is not guilty of grave sin also commits a grave sin.

See page 113, Where is that in the Bible?

But Paul simply says that whoever partakes of the bread without recognising the body eats and drinks judgement and suffering to himself. He doesn't say recognising the body in the bread or that the bread is the body but nevertheless the Catholics do believe that it is a grave sin for anyone to take communion while being sceptical that communion is the body and blood of Jesus. Romanism does not believe that Protestant communion is real communion. But nevertheless the Protestant intends to partake of communion by taking it. He or she is in the same position as a Catholic who takes real communion but doesn't believe it is the body of Christ. Both intend to take communion while believing that bread does not become Jesus. The intention is the same so if one sins so does the other. The reality or not of the communion is not the point. Paul does not say that grave sinners are banned from the bread and cup or that it is a sin for them to partake.
 
Whoever partakes of the bread and cup without recognising the body is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. So Paul says. Madrid says this is a euphemism for murder (page 113, Where is that in the Bible?). Christianity thinks there isn't enough guilt in the world causing trouble and making people anti-social so it has to add to it with rubbish like this. It must be the worst form of murder to kill the son of God or the man who is God, Jesus Christ. Doctrines like that accustom you to feel you are a murderer and live with it. It won't be surprising if you get the strength to go out and kill somebody and not mind doing so! Christianity has a nerve accusing a person taking communion who has the sense to disbelieve that it is the body of Jesus of murder and then deny that the Church is a murderer for gathering up treasures and not selling them for the dying poor in Africa. Nobody can prove I kill Jesus by taking communion while not believing. But people can prove I kill by neglect when I won't serve the poor in Africa. The Church says it is not a murderer for it doesn't intend to kill the poor. But when I take communion I don't intend to kill Jesus either! And besides, if I won't take my dying cat to the vet knowing the vet could save it, I am simply lying if I say I didn't intend to kill it. It is actions not words that tell the tale!

Paul accuses those who behave badly at the Supper of possibly hating the Church by giving bad example. Then he says he will not praise them for he received from the Lord what he passed on and he goes on about this being the bread and cup and body and blood of Jesus. He clearly thinks the scandal of taking the bread and cup unworthily as in giving bad example to others is a serious matter. Why does he link refusal to praise those who partake unworthily to Jesus saying it’s his body and his blood? Because the Church is said to be Jesus' body and thus blood in some sense so unity and commitment to it and Jesus are essentials. He clearly suggests that the church community not just God should be opposed.

Abraham

Jesus singled out Abraham a lot for praise in the gospels. Abraham's claim to fame was when God gave him a baby, Isaac, who should not have been born as his wife was too old, he took that boy up a mountain, violently subdued him, tied up up and took a knife to cut him up as a sacrifice. God told him to kill the boy and burn his body as a burnt offering that God could relish the smell. Presumably like all burnt offerings, Abraham had to eat him as well. God stopped Abraham at the last minute. Then Abraham sacrificed an animal instead. The Bible says God only likes sacrifices from holy righteous men so God's approval for the sacrifice shows his total regard for Abraham's fanatical devotion. The story offends modern sensibilities and progressivism which regards animal sacrifice as a gross perversion.

It is no excuse that Abraham was stopped. You do not praise acts of obedience like that. Making an excuse is totally abhorrent.

After the bread and wine are supposedly changed, the priest offers them to God in the spirit of this insane Abraham who was willing to murder his son as a sacrifice to God. "Look with favour on these offerings and accept them as once you accepted the gifts of your servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchisedech." That is a quote from the Catholic Mass. The root problem is people believing that Abraham should be praised for being willing to obey God's order to kill his son in sacrifice. Decent people reject such ideas outright whether they appear in Catholicism or Islam.
Jesus when he did the Passover meal that he transformed into the Lord's Supper of bread and wine showing forth his sacrificed body and blood was doing it in that context of affirming and remembering the animal sacrifices of Passover and the other ones of the past including all that Abraham did that day.

Jesus was called a good teacher in the earliest gospel, Mark, and he strenuously objected to being called a good teacher. The Mass insults him by calling him sinless and making him into God. It mocks his death and his god by making out that Jesus was a human sacrifice appointed by God to pay for sins he did not commit.

So?

Any communion service, even one which sees the bread and wine as symbols, is a vindictive expression of Christian fanaticism. Obviously the Catholic Mass which pretends the bread and wine actually are the body and blood of Jesus is going to have to accentuate that nastiness for it goes further about the meaning of the bread and wine. The Mass is a serious violation of the humanitarian conscience. What right has any religious person to exclude another at a fellowship ritual over faith? What about innocent until proven guilty? The fruits of the Mass are accusations of murder and what kind of smug person can be happy with it while knowing all that? Those who partake against the rules are even accused of bringing evil on themselves and those they love! It is an outrage that parents take children for first communion. And parents who are only doing it for the after-party need to see what disgraces they are. It is not a trivial or party matter.

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