Speaking for myself, and likely for all former Catholics, if you're trying to explain the doctrine of transubstantiation so that we can understand it, save your keyboard.
I was not so *poorly catechized* that I do not understand what the Catholic teaching is about it. I understand completely what is taught about it because I remember what I believed about it and it wasn't different from what you're explaining.
My point is that it's wrong and the challenges are WHY I believe it to be wrong. There are too many contradictions and inconsistencies in the teaching. The justification and explanations that Cathlics have to put forth and believe in direct violation of any kind of reasoning is staggering. Catholics HAVE to claim that you just have to accept that it happens by faith, because there's no other way that that any reasoning mind can justify the belief. And honestly, God doesn't expect us to kiss our brains good-by when we become followers of His.
The interpretation of the Scripture surrounding the institution of communion and the teaching about the cup and bread being the body and blood of Christ as a symbolic ceremony is easily supportable by Scripture, while there is plenty of Scripture that disallows the meaning that the Catholic church has attached to it.
As far as the whole Mary worship thing, while you can, no doubt, point to various statements made by the Catholic church over the years to *prove* that the Catholic church does not endorse the worship of Mary, for all practical purposes, it does. For one thing, what happens in practice is that people treat Mary as deity. They relate to her as such by praying to her as they ought to pray to God the Father only. Everything they do in practice screams *worship*. The Catholic church has not discouraged publication of prayers to Mary that are idolatrous. They have given their official approval to the publication of material in books that is just out and out wrong. Lies, in reality.
If the Catholic church is going to have any credibility in its claims that Mary worship doesn't occur, then it needs to get the message out to its parishioners and much more strongly discourage the kind of behavior that is worship in practice.
AMEN!
The real problem with Rome, besides all the superstition and aberrant doctrines, is that they resemble Islam in that they present a different face to non-Catholics than they really are. We've seen on various caucus threads that Roman Catholics LOVE their Mariology. They can't wait to heap blasphemous accolades on this simple Jewish girl.
But when questioned about it, they simply deny there's anything untoward about their "devotion" to Mary. They say whatever is expedient. They deny they worship Mary while at the same time they kneel to her and pray to her and ask her to mediate between God and men; they look to her as a dispensatrix of all graces and believe her to be a co-mediator and the queen of heaven and hell and purgatory, and they even go so far as to believe that true piety lies in giving ourselves to Mary during our entire lives and most especially, at the hour of our death.
It's difficult to tell which is worse -- Mary worship, the abomination of the mass as a re-sacrifice of Christ, or following the guidance of "another Christ."
Any one of those errors would brand a church as one who preached another gospel.
Rome is three for three.
Personally, I think the Mary worship is the worst because it has the greatest potential of leading folks well off the track and over the cliff.
The other two are more of a mixed bag, depending, imho.
The Maryolatry stuff is blazingly dangerous almost from the git-go, imho.
The Church is indeed three for three but you are "Ofer three"> You have misstated each of the Church's position on all three. It as if it were deliberate:
1) Catholics do NOT worship Mary, we venerate her.
Catholics do NOT re-sacrifice Christ, we reenact the original sacrifice.
3) Priests are not "another Christ" (for the hundredth time!!!) Priests act symbolically in the place of Christ.
It doesn't matter how many times you throw this against the wall, it ain't going to stick.