Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: barry1@ihlpa.att.com (Barry O Olson) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: transubstantiation... Message-ID: Date: 17 Nov 89 08:47:03 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 83 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [In response to an article by jhpb@lancia.garage.att.com --clh] Here is an excerpt from Pope Pious IV in his creed on the Eucharist. [* will indicate a footnote which i want to emphasize] "I profess that in the Mass is offered to God a true, proper, and *propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holuy sacramant of the Eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus christ; and that there is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which the Catholic church calls transubstantiation". [end] Ok, now contrast that with this simple statement: "For this is what i received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you. That on the same night He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and thanked God for it, and broke it, and He said, This is my body which is for you; do this as a memorial of me." In the same way He took the cup after supper, and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me". This was taken from the njb 1 corinthians 11:23-25. *propitiatory in my dictionary means to appease or abate wrath. This can certainly read that God is very angry at the Catholics, and the appeasement is the Mass of communion. barry olson [This discussion has presented me with quite a problem. I don't like to cut off anyone's contributions. However the primary purpose of moderation is to prevent flame wars, and it's hard to see how anything else can result from people refusing to accept Catholics' presentation of their own position. This group has a variety of active Catholic participants, including one priest, one lay brother, and several well-informed laymen. At least one of the laymen can be somewhat light-heartedly characterized as "more Catholic than the Pope". It's very hard to believe that all of these folks are going to be wrong in the same way about current Catholic belief. I've looked fairly carefully at the statement on the Mass produced at the Council of Trent. There is certainly language that sounds a lot like what Barry is objecting to. However when you look at the whole statement, it seems that the intent is somewhat different. The overall context is that Christ did all that was necessary when he died on the cross. The Mass is not because his sacrifice was incomplete. Rather, it is the way Christ's sacrifice is made visible to us. "... that He might leave to His beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man requires, whereby that bloody sacrifice once to be accomplished on the cross might be represented ... and its salutory effects applied to the remission of sins which we daily commit." Yes, it goes on to say that "it [the mass] is truly propitiatory ... For, appeased by the this sacrifice, the Lord grants the grace and gift of penitence and pardons even the gravest crimes and sins." Taken out of context, this is exactly what Barry is afraid he is hearing. But the whole context makes it clear that the sacrifice being discussed is not an independent action, but a way of presenting Christ's original sacrifice to us visibly: "The fruits of this bloody sacrifice [Christ's death on the cross], it is well understood, are received most abundantly through the unbloody one [the mass]." As far as I can see, the statement by Pius quoted above can be understood in this way. This does not mean that I think the way the Catholics treat communion is in every way wise. I think the Catholic concept is based on an overly literal reading of Christ's words. Furthermore, I agree with the concerns of the Reformers that the doctrine and the way it was used tended to concentrate peoples' attention on Christ's sacramental presence to such an extreme as to almost push out concern for the original events as portrayed in Scripture, and our ability to encounter Christ directly. (However this comment seems to be more true of the 16th Cent. than the 20th.) But there was a tendency for the debates in the past to push both sides into positions that really don't do justice to each other. It should be possible to believe that the Catholic Church has made an unwise choice without going quite to the extreme that the Reformers did, of claiming that the Mass is a blasphemy against Christ, and completely replaces Christ's sacrifice with a man-made ceremony. --clh]