Mark 7:18 And He said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?"[ Jesus declared that what goes in the mouth is going in the mouth, not into the soul. But the catholic twist is made, anyway. Jesus also taught that the eye can allow 'things' into the soul, and thus what is allowed into the eyegate can defile the soul. Committing sacrilege, committing an act which is against a command from God, can also defile the soul, because it is done by faith that this defiance must be accepted by God as sacred.]
That passage from Mark is used to fabricate mumbo jumbo. The followup passage from the 'wise' catholic answers should be seen in the light of the proof text scrabbled for use above:
Third, the Old Testament is very specific about why one was not to eat blood: "The life of every creature is the blood of it; therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood" (Lv 17:14, cf. Dt 12:23). The Israelites could not eat animal blood because it contained the animal's life, but there is one Person whose life you must have in you, "Christ who is your life" (Col 3:4).
Now readers can see why some are declaring catholicism is a false religion, for these catholic answers show that the religion has not a clue how GOD'S LIFE GETS INTO A CHRISTIAN! The Holy SPirit at Pentecost came INTO the listeners who received the Word with repentence. They didn't eat Jesus and drink His blood to get Holy Spirit life in them!
But wait, there's more mystery religion mumbo jumbo!
This supposed wise source of catholic dogma goes down the same heresy drain hole it created:
Finally, even if the Jehovah's Witnesses were right that drinking blood were intrinsically evil instead of the subject of a temporary prohibition, they would still have problems with John 6 because, in their interpretation, Jesus would be commanding us to eat his flesh symbolically and to drink his blood symbolically. He would be commanding us to act out symbolically an intrinsically evil deed as part of a sacred worship service. But this leads us to a ludicrous conclusion, so it must be that drinking Christ's blood is permissible (not to say desirable).
Because the author of the tripe is so twisted in thinking, it goes after the Passover Feast which included four cups of wine drunk in remembrance, as symbolic foreshadowing of realities. Though I am in no way a Jehovah's Witness, I join with their objection to the catholic mystery religion assertion that catholics should drink the literal blood of Jesus! THAT IS sacrilege taught as sacred. That is a form of blasphemy.
Catholic answers twist the seeker into pretzels so the only hope they appear to have is to just trust the priests of the mystery religion for their welfare. God forbide! The above 'catholic answers' teaching is an example of double talk used when the author had not a clue to the coming of God's Life into the believing/faithing person. Do readers really accept the teaching from catholicism that you must drink Christ's literal blood to have God's life in you? Or do readers believe the sacred ceremony of symbolically drinking the wine and breaking and eating the bread is an fiath affirmation of the sacrifice He made for us? The symbolic affirmation is exactly what Passover is all about! In fact, it is what all the Feasts, the Times of God, are about. Symbolism focusing the soul/spirit upon the Grace of God.
LOL at my gnarly fingers. ‘God Frobide’ should read God Forbid! When I get home to my desktop unit, I’ll wade into this catholic foolishness a little deeper. Oh yes, there’s more.
It is indeed "mumbo jumbo," which can be defined as needed as Catholicism does with the words eat My flesh and drink My blood." For these words, which RCs claim to take literally, do not convey "if you eat even a speck of consecrated bread you are consuming as its essence My soul and divinity, flesh and blood, but which by appearance really is not."
This is set in contrast to cannibalism in which actual flesh and blood is consumed, yet it can include the belief (in endocannibalism) that spiritual qualities of the deceased are thereby conveyed, though these are not seen in what they eat.
And if we allow for a extraBiblical; neoPlatonic theology of transubstantiation that of necessity (lest they be seen as typical cannibals) explains how one can consume the real body and blood of Christ without actually consuming His bloody body, and with what they appear to be eating being in substance something entirely different, so can we allow pagans to develop a theology that defines cannibalism as being what Catholicism claims, though in endocannibalism it can be in essence very similar.
Supposing one gains spiritual life by literally eating human flesh and blood is akin to pagan endocannibalism, and is not Scriptural and the Scriptural gospel.
Alpers and Lindenbaum’s research conclusively demonstrated that kuru [neurological disorder] spread easily and rapidly in the Fore people due to their endocannibalistic funeral practices, in which relatives consumed the bodies of the deceased to return the “life force” of the deceased to the hamlet, a Fore societal subunit. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%...9#Transmission
he custom of eating bread sacramentally as the body of a god was practised by the Aztecs before the discovery and conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards."
The May ceremony is thus described by the historian Acosta: “The Mexicans in the month of May made their principal feast to their god Vitzilipuztli, and two days before this feast, the virgins whereof I have spoken (the which were shut up and secluded in the same temple and were as it were religious women) did mingle a quantity of the seed of beets with roasted maize, and then they did mould it with honey, making an idol...all the virgins came out of their convent, bringing pieces of paste compounded of beets and roasted maize, which was of the same paste whereof their idol was made and compounded, and they were of the fashion of great bones. They delivered them to the young men, who carried them up and laid them at the idol’s feet, wherewith they filled the whole place that it could receive no more. They called these morsels of paste the flesh and bones of Vitzilipuztli.
...then putting themselves in order about those morsels and pieces of paste, they used certain ceremonies with singing and dancing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idol. This ceremony and blessing (whereby they were taken for the flesh and bones of the idol) being ended, they honoured those pieces in the same sort as their god....then putting themselves in order about those morsels and pieces of paste, they used certain ceremonies with singing and dancing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idol. This ceremony and blessing (whereby they were taken for the flesh and bones of the idol) being ended, they honoured those pieces in the same sort as their god...
And this should be eaten at the point of day, and they should drink no water nor any other thing till after noon: they held it for an ill sign, yea, for sacrilege to do the contrary:...and then they gave them to the people in manner of a communion, beginning with the greater, and continuing unto the rest, both men, women, and little children, who received it with such tears, fear, and reverence as it was an admirable thing, saying that they did eat the flesh and bones of God, where-with they were grieved. Such as had any sick folks demanded thereof for them, and carried it with great reverence and veneration.”
...They believed that by consecrating bread their priests could turn it into the very body of their god, so that all who thereupon partook of the consecrated bread entered into a mystic communion with the deity by receiving a portion of his divine substance into themselves.
The doctrine of transubstantiation, or the magical conversion of bread into flesh, was also familiar to the Aryans of ancient India long before the spread and even the rise of Christianity. The Brahmans taught that the rice-cakes offered in sacrifice were substitutes for human beings, and that they were actually converted into the real bodies of men by the manipulation of the priest.
...At the festival of the winter solstice in December the Aztecs killed their god Huitzilopochtli in effigy first and ate him afterwards. - http://www.bartleby.com/196/121.html
There are some differences, but these have far more in common with the Cath idea of the Eucharist than anything seen in Scripture interpretive of the words of the last supper. ^