A guy stole Jesus, because the priest was slacking on his duties of guarding Jesus from the heathens, lest He fall on the floor and be diss’d or be stolen out of the building by a heathen for potential later diss’ing. This particular stolen Jesus, to all normal ocular observations happened to be disguised as a simple cracker of unleavened bread, because the Priest somehow magically transformed a piece of unleavened bread into the Lord...even though He still remained disguised as a wafer. The heathen thief who stole Jesus then tortured Him and held Him hostage inside of a condom, then crucified Him all over again before throwing Him in the garbage.
Does that about sum it up?
When we dispense with the liturgical rhetoric and use plain English instead, it all sounds a bit odd eh?!?
I'm thinking the Lord Himself is astonished at all of the implications!
Yes, the atheist is hell bound. But not because he abused a wafer! Rather, because He denies the Holy Spirit...that is the one and only unforgivable sin. And yes, the behavior of these guys was in bad taste. But why is anyone surprised by the actions of heathens? Hollywood does MUCH worse insults to the Lord...and we PAY to see it! He went out of his way to get a rise out of the Catholic church and it worked because the church LET it get to them.
I genuinely love the Lord, but this story is...well...let's say it's just wrong on more levels than one post at FR can ever hope to cover.
I mean...does anyone else see the myriad of problems with the theology behind this literal transubstantiation thing?
Not even close.
When we dispense with the liturgical rhetoric and use plain English instead, it all sounds a bit odd eh?!?
Better yet, let Scripture speak for itself.
The Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist (with full Scriptural references)
Further, as God, He certainly knew on that night of Holy Thursday, when the Eucharist was instituted, that His Church would have an uninterrupted, literal viewpoint on the matter, and that it would be 1500 years before any Christian body would believe otherwise. If, then, as God, and armed with the foresight of God, and seeing that His Church would, in the future, "misconstrue" His intentions on the matter into literal interpretations, it should have been no hard thing to simply indicate His desires on the point. If He had desired to convey that the Eucharist is merely symbolic, His foreknowledge would have given Him all the more reason to insure that it would be understood that way. He took no such precaution.
Finally, the entire tenor of John 6 is pointing to literalness. If it were otherwise, all He had to do, when His disciples were leaving in droves, in disgust over what seemed to be full-fledged cannibalism to them, was to say "Hey! Wait! Come back! I was only speaking 'figuratively'!" Yet, He didn't, did He? On the contrary, He "let them all go away."
As for your observations about "unforgivable sin" and the Holy Spirit, you are correct in the strict sense you seem to indicate. But no one here is saying that Myers is going to Hell because what he did is an unforgiveable sin. Any mortal sin leads to damnation without repentance! If Myers continues in unrepentance for this sin, even unto his dying day, then, yes, he will be condemned to Hell for it. Yet, while he still has breath, he has the possibility to act on God's grace, and repent of his sin. We Catholics condemn no one to the fires of Hell, because we have no way of knowing whether any given person has repented of even the grossest and most publicly manifested sins in their last moment of life. Again, get this right, for it's important: we Catholics consign no one to Hell, no matter how heinous their actions appeared in life. We simply don't have a window into the souls of any sinners during their last moments.