Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: johnw@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (John Warren) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Importance of sacrifice Message-ID: Date: 6 Aug 90 01:05:15 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 35 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [This continues the discussion on the sacrifice of the mass. John had quoted Hebrews as saying that Christ's sacrifice put an end to all sacrifices. Chris at Checkpoint Technologies argued that it was odd to quote Hebrews against Catholic tradition, since it was Catholic tradition that established the canon of Scripture in the first place. --clh] Then the Catholic Church is saying two contradictory things, which cannot be reconciled. On the one hand it holds up the Book of Hebrews, which says 'one sacrifice', and on the other hand it holds up Tradition, which says 'many sacrifices'. (I'm sorry, but I don't buy the stretching of logic which says all the Masses are mystically connected to Christ's One Sacrifice, therefore they are only one event. Yes, there **is** a mystical connection, and I love to go to Mass once in a while, because I do consider it a time to focus on Christ's healing and empowerment, and I do believe it is a time to receive healing and empowerment. And I think that many Protestant churches don't emphasize this enough.) But I don't think it's splitting hairs to say let's get our definitions straight.) If you're upholding Tradition, then your logic is as faulty as mine. This leads us into a different topic: the canonization of scripture. As this was a very messy business, and I know very little about it, I don't want to get into it. [If Catholics solve this problem by saying that they aren't making a new sacrifice, but bringing you into contact with the original one, then it seems to me that you can't criticize them for making many sacrifices. If you don't believe they can make Christ's original sacrifice present for us now, you can criticize them because what they think they are doing is impossible. But it doesn't seem to make sense to criticize them for doing something that they say they aren't doing. --clh]