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I would like your commentary on these scriptures.
Matt. 26-29.

26 And they were eating, Jesus took the bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 27 and he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. 29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Could the 29th verse be read in a way that Jesus, Himself, affirmed that what he was drinking was 'fruit of the vine', and he will drink 'the fruit of the vine' AGAIN. Thus affirming that what he drank was not blood, but, "FRUIT OF THE VINE".

Where am I going wrong? I do not see where the Romist can come to any other conclusion.

Well, I don't think you are going wrong. I've raise that same point with some of my RC correspondents in the past. I don't recall ever getting a response. But just for fun, I looked up what the standard reply would be if I were on the other side of the argument, and it goes something like this:

The wine is fruit of the vine. But Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. So Jesus is really not referring to a vine but to his physical constituents, body and blood. Such that when we partake of the Eucharist, this is how we physically abide in Him and He in us and therefore bear much fruit.

Got that? Clear as mud, I know. So we leap from a literal wine into a previously mentioned metaphor for spiritual indwelling, the Vine discourse, that had nothing to do with the Eucharist, and was never contemplated as physical. Then we jump back to the wine of the paschal meal as though we've secured Aristotelian substance (though we haven't) and say, see, here you thought he was talking about the literal fruit of the vine, but by this trick of inverted metaphor, we've shown he was metaphorically referring to the other non-metaphor of his physical body and blood. Viola! Easy! Right?

Well, it is quite an incoherent mess. Which is probably why only folks who are comfortable with that sort of thing would even attempt it. Fortunately so far here, I have not seen any RC attempt it, which is much to their credit as logicians.

The truth of the matter is, the reference to "fruit of the vine" is very damaging to the claim of transubstantiation. Jesus is clearly not referring something which looks like wine but really isn't. The substance really is, even after the blessing, still a fruit substance. No change occurred. Other than spiritual and mental. Here's the crazy thing. Why does a spiritually real thing seem somehow less real than a physically real thing? God is spirit, and He's more real than you or I or anything else there is. Spirit is real. If Jesus is binding us to the memory of His love and sacrifice for us through the simple beauty of this sacred meal, and it's all happening spiritually, how is that less real than skin and muscle and blood? It isn't. It's about worshiping Him in spirit and in truth. That's how we come to dwell in Him and He in us. That is our true food. Not some bit of man-made bread.

Anyway, hope that helps.

Peace,

SR

Thank you for your reply. I just finished reading Peter de Rosa's Vicars of Christ. De Rosa is a catholic and does not criticize the popes. I am convinced that anyone of the catholic faith who read the history of the popes, their Bulls and decrees to murder millions of people for believing in the scripture above the pope would be horrified. Their quest for absolute power over people and kings was insatiable. They murdered, by fire, 3 year old children, infants, women, children, men after the Inquisitors found them guilty of heresy. They defined heresy as believing differently than they believed. The torture was ordered by the popes and the original Inquisitors were Domincans who swore allegiance to Pope Gregory IX. The Jesuits came in later to become Inquisitors. It is said by Lea, de Rosa and other historians that the killing at the direct order of the popes dwarfed any number of murders by Stalin, Mao, Hitler, over the 600 years+ that it was prosecuted. And never so much as an apology for the popes ordering their deaths. It is true that John Paul II apologized for some deaths during the Inquisition carried out by some catholics, but never the popes. The sheer magnitude of the killing is unimaginable.

How anyone can lay claim that they are vicars of Christ and/or their followers defies logic. To say they follow the decrees of infallible popes on morals and faith.....to order these murders......and say they are followers of the One who said, 'Do good to those who despitefully use you", or 'Turn the other cheek", or "If someone takes your coat, give him your cloak also",........is obscene.