THE ROMAN CATHOLIC TEACHING OF THE MASS EXAMINED IN THE LIGHT OF SCRIPTURE AND COMMON SENSE.
1) IS JESUS CHRIST REALLY PHYSICALLY PRESENT IN THE BREAD AND WINE OR IS HE ONLY SPIRITUALLY REPRESENTED?
ROME: He is physically present.
"The bread and wine are changed
truly, really and substantially into the body and blood, together with
the soul and divinity, and the bones and sinews of Christ," (Catechism
of Council of Trent)
BIBLE: He is spiritually present only.
SOME OBJECTIONS TO ROMAN THEORY:
1) If Christ is actually physically present, then we cannot remember
Him as He has bid us to do. You cannot remember one who is actually
physically there. You can remember one who is not physically there but
who has left tokens that remind us of him.
2) The Lord’s Passover (when the feast was instituted) was itself
symbolic. The words of Moses: It (i.e. the lamb) is the Lord’s
Passover. No Jew was so irrational as to think that the lamb was
transubstantiated into the Lord passing over the houses of the
Israelites. The Passover was a figurative feast - likewise the supper
which replaced it: "This is my body etc.,"
3) The grammar bears the symbolic sense also. Illustration: You produce
a photograph and say, "This is my friend." You point at an outline on a map and say,
"This is Ireland." It is not really, actually what you said it was. It
is a representation. Likewise when the Bible says: "Issachar is a
strong ass couching down between two burdens." (Genesis 49:14) or "I am the
door" (John 10:9) then, we understand it figuratively.
4) Did Christ have two bodies in the Upper Room? The one body breaking
and distributing the other? Was one body being offered up as a
sacrifice that night and the other offered up the next?
5) The purpose of the Lord’s death is given in 1 Corinthians
11:26 i.e. to show forth the Lord’s death. The word translated
"show forth" is translated as "preach" elsewhere. By contrast the mass is a
virtual re-enactment of the Lord’s death.
6) The Lord’s death is shown "till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26)
Surely if the mass is right, then He is come already? If so…has
every eye seen Him and the earth wailed because of Him? (Revelation
1:7)
7) The mass wafer even when transubstantiated into the body of Christ
soon corrupts. This is contrary to Psalm16:9-11 (quoted in Acts 2:27)
which declares that His body would not see corruption.
8) The mass denies our senses since the bread still looks, smells,
tastes and feels like bread. Luke speaks of the senses as furnishing
infallible proofs (Luke 1:3) Christ Himself appealed to the senses:"Handle me and see" (Luke 24:39) In the only case of true
transubstantiation in the NT - wedding feast at Canaan where the water
was turned into wine - the senses were appealed to particularly the
richness of the taste.
9) A similar passage appears in 2 Samuel 23:25-17 where the water
poured out unto the ground before the Lord is called blood. This was
figurative language which was put so forcefully to recognise the risks
that had been taken to get this water in the first place. No one takes
it literally.
10) Christ cannot be bodily in more than one place at once. He cannot
be in Heaven at God's right hand and at the same time be elsewhere not
only in one place but in many other places. It would not be a true
human body if it could.
11) Christ’s body cannot possess opposite properties at the same
time. It cannot be glorified in Heaven and at the same time be humbled
on earth under the appearance of bread and wine.
12) When a body is in parts, the parts cannot be individually and
separately be equal to the whole. Not only is it declared that the body
of Christ is complete in each of the millions of wafers handled by the
priests of Rome, but if each single wafer was broken into a thousand
parts, each single part is declared to be a whole Christ. This cannot
be said of a true human body.
13) How can a priest of Rome create out of a piece of bread not only
the true physical body, but also His soul and divinity? This makes (to
quote St Alphonus de Ligouri) the priest to be greater than the
Creator. Surely we have to say of the mass wafer: "For from Israel was
it also: the workman made it; therefore it is not God..." (Hosea 8:6)
14) How could Paul say "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the
flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now
henceforth know we him no more." (2 Corinthians 5:16) if His flesh was
present there on the altar?
15) Rome refers to the mass as an unbloody sacrifice - surely this is a
denial that the wine has turned into blood? A clearer inconsistency
would be harder to find.
16) If we are going to take all the language of the words of
institution strictly literally, then surely when Jesus said: "This cup
is the New Testament in my blood" (Luke 22:20/1 Corinthians 11:25) we
mean that it is the cup and not the contents which is the New
Testament. If we take a figurative look at the passage, then the cup
speaks of the wine which in turn speaks of the blood.
17) The Bible expressly forbids the eating or drinking of blood in the
NT: "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you
no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from
meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and
from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well.
Fare ye well." (Acts 15:28-29)
18) Consider particularly the old style masses (which continued for
hundreds of years) and see the priest dressed in a gaudy fashion. See
the candles - smell the incense - hear the ringing of the bell etc.,
observe (as is still the situation) only the priest partaking of the
wine. How far removed it is from the simple meal presented in
Scripture. One could not be simpler - the other burdened down with many
complex rules and regulations etc.,
19) Two of the greatest Cardinals in the RC Church (Cajetan and
Bellarmine) both expressly confessed that the doctrine of
Transubstantiation was not founded on the word of God, but received
from the Church. This means that the words of institution as recorded
in the gospel records and 1 Corinthians 11 cannot be taken literally.
20) If the wine turns into the literal blood of Jesus Christ, how is it
possible to get drunk if you drink the consecrated wine in excess?
21) The canon law of the Church (Canon of Aelfric 957AD) gives
instruction as to what should happen if, through carelessness, a mouse
should eat the wafer. Indeed, "Quid comedit mus" (What eateth the
mouse?) became quite a debating point in the various schools. Did the
wine sanctify the mouse or did the mouse pollute the wine? Canon law
also required the priest either to re-swallow a vomited host or at
least separate the consecrated species and laid up in a sacred place.
Can God be eaten by a mouse or vomited by a priest? The whole thought
is revolting and ridiculous - but such are the questions which can be
and indeed were raised and answered by the Church as it sought to
defend a teaching that is far removed from the simple feast instituted
so long ago.
2) IS JESUS REALLY SACRIFICED AT THE LORD’S TABLE?
ROME: Quoting from Catechism of Christian Doctrine: [Catholic Truth Society. Revised: 1985]
Q.274: Is the Blessed Eucharist a Sacrament only?
Ans:- The Blessed Eucharist is not a sacrament only: it is also a sacrifice.
Q. 277: What is the Holy Mass?
Ans:- The Holy Mass is the sacrifice
of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, really present on the altar
under the appearances of bread and wine, and offered to God for the
living and the dead.
Q.275: What is a sacrifice?
Ans:- A sacrifice is the offering of a victim by a priest to God alone…
THE BIBLE: Jesus Christ is not sacrificed at the Lord’s Table.
SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE ROMAN THEORY:
1) The Bible speaks consistently of the sacrifice of Christ being only
a one off act: Hebrews 9:27-28/10:10-14/Romans 6:10/1 Peter 3:18. This
cannot be if He is being continually offered even now on many Roman
altars.
Objection: Rome claims (above catechism Q278 that the mass is the one
and same sacrifice as that of the cross i.e. there is only one
sacrifice which is still ongoing.
Note: That a different priest takes a different wafer and a different
cup of wine and pronounces yet again the words of consecration
grammatically means another offering is professedly being made. The
semantics say one thing - the reality another.
2) Why then did Jesus cry: "It is finished"? (John 19:30) Surely it
would have been better to have cried: "It is only beginning!" or cried
nothing at all? The RC Douay Version renders it: "It is consummated"
3) Why then does the Bible say: "But this man, after he had offered one
sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God."
(Hebrews 10:12) The word "after" is so significant. It is finished.
There can be no "after" in the RC teaching.
4) The offering of Christ upon the Cross was a sin offering. According
to Leviticus 6:30 the sin offering was not to be eaten afterwards. The
two are not the same.
5) The Lord Jesus used the present tense to describe His body being
broken: "Which is broken for you" not shall be i.e. future. This is in
line with the one sacrifice which is now finished forever.
6) Why does the Bible say in Hebrews 10:16-18 "This is the covenant
that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put
my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And
their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission
of these is, there is no more offering for sin." This language is
grossly inconsistent with the teaching of Rome. Rome would have to
contradict the inspired writer and point to the mass and say to the
effect that there the writer could find an offering for sin. Both
cannot be right. I choose the inspired writer.
3) DOES PARTAKING OF THE LORD’S SUPPER CONVEY SAVING GRACE TO THE PARTICIPANT?
ROME: Same catechism quoted above:
Q.269 Why has Christ given himself to us in the Holy Eucharist?
Ans:- Christ has given Himself to us
in the Holy Sacrifice to be the life and food of our souls. ‘He
that eateth of me, the same also shall live by me’: ‘He
that eateth this bread shall live for ever." (John 6:58-59)
BIBLE: No sacrament can impart eternal life to its participants.
Note: The passage in John 6 has no reference to the Lord’s
Supper. If so, then it was instituted about two years earlier than Paul
makes out in 1 Corinthians 11:23 i.e. the night in which He was
betrayed. The arguments against Christ referring to His flesh and blood
being literal may be referred to in the first section.
SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE ROMAN THEORY:
1) What becomes of those who never partook of the sacrament of the mass? The Dying Thief coming immediately to mind.
2) Nowhere in Bible is any sacrament presented as an instrument of salvation, be it baptism or the Lord’s Supper.
OTHER INTERESTING INFORMATION:
The Mass as we know it today was not formally adopted until the 4th
Lateran Council in 1215. Arguments that Councils only issued statements
when something was challenged is a weak argument. There are plenty of
evidences that the Church Fathers did not believe the teaching of the
mass e.g. "Jesus made the bread, which He took and distributed to His disciples
His body, saying, ‘This is my body’ that is to say,
‘a figure of my body." (St. Tertullian.) Where the Church Fathers sometimes use language like "drinking His
blood" or "eating His flesh" (so loved of Roman apologists) consider
how we are to interpret such words, as defined by St. Augustine: "For we must not consider in the sacraments what they be, but what they
signify. For they be signs of things, being one thing in themselves and
yet signifying another thing."
THE END