At least we may be having some conclusion here. It appears to boil down on whether or not the early Church fathers believed the Eucharist is the true body and blood of Christ. Protestantism after all came onto the scene some fifteen centuries later. So if we settle this question, this continuing argument ends.
Boatbums took refuge in an anti-Catholic’s blogger’s understanding of the practice of the early Church fathers. When corrected by a renowned Protestant scholar (whose study is cited in the theological departments of major colleges and universities) on early Christian practices who confirms that indeed the Church fathers believed that the Eucharist contains the living body and blood of Christ.
She (boatbums) has no answer to this. She keeps to her corner repeating the canard that the early Church fathers held different doctrines.
But this can be settled very easily. Lawyers do this in court every day. Surely, on a matter of this profundity there would have been major dissents and ruptures, schisms, would have occurred if successive popes continued to practice error. Yet, there is not a single instant where any of the early Church fathers, theologians, saints or martyrs raised any doubt about the Eucharist. None. As they say, “case closed.”
But unfortunately it does not end because denying the Eucharist has become a source of employment for the Creflo Dollars of this world.
Metmom and Zuriel are simply not getting it. They are doing what “Bishop” TD Jakes, Jeremiah Wright; Al Sharpton; Billy Graham; Jim Jones; David Koresh; Benny Hinn; Joel Osteen; and Jimmy Swaggart and every Sunday Protestant televangelist and corner street First Calvary, First AME; First Methodist, First Presbyterian or any of the other “Firsts” would do.
They select scriptural quotations, give it “their” definitive interpretation, and if this collides with the Catholic Church Credo, Catechism, Magisterium, liturgy and rituals, then it “they” who are correct, not the Catholic Church.
In case you missed it, here’s Zuriel’s main thesis to show that the Catholic Church is false: He serves up this rare piece of nonsense. That Satan is behind the grand design of Catholic Churches. Truth be told, I am not sure anyone of us have heard this one before.
Zuriel writes:
“We know from scripture that the devil has supernatural powers; even to do things that seem like miracles. But, he can’t forgive sins, and of course, doesn’t want to. Would Satan make sure to erect the most impressive places of worship?....Put on the most elaborate displays of ceremony?”
He forgets the Grand Temple of Solomon “a most impressive place of worship” housed the Ark of the Covenant. Catholic Churches house the Eucharist.
This is the level of argument we Catholics are expect to forbear and constrain our contempt for lest we fall afoul of the norms of discussion in this forum as the religious moderator keeps reminding us.
Apparently, until the Reformation, it never seems to occur to these folks that Petrine Authority was well established. This too can be decided by what the early Church Fathers believed.
Indeed, it has been settled for 2000 years. Christ established ONE Church, taught ONE truth, and for ALL time.
As early as 110 A.D., not even fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to execution St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote:
“Where the bishop is present, let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church”. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: “He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me” (Lk 10, 16).
This debate on Petrine Authority is closed. Even pre-eminent Lutheran and Episcopalian converts to Catholicism accept this fundamental truth. You ask whom? Well here are just three examples that we can all agree are far more knowledgeable on the subject than the contrarians here.
1. Ulf Ekman, the founder of Scandinavia’s biggest Bible school, with a congregation of some 4000 individuals, converted to Catholicism because his theological inquiry confirmed for him the indispensability of the Catholic sacraments.
2. Francis J. Beckwith, a “born-again” evangelical, a tenured professor at Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Tex, was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), an association of 4,300 Protestant theologians resigned and joined the Catholic Church.
3. Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, was a pre-eminent Lutheran theologian in America. He knew his Bible-text and history like no other Protestant having taught and written extensively on the subject. When he converted to Catholicism he said, “I have long believed that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the church of Christ through time.”
Metmom appears to believe that the unwritten Word of God (John 21:25) dissolved into a dust cloud. But had she read the great Oxford and Protestant historian J.N.D. Kelly, an authority on early Christian beliefs she would have learned at least this much. Kelly writes:
“[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . . . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church, where it had been handed down from generation to generation. . . . Unlike the alleged secret tradition of the Gnostics, it was entirely public and open, having been entrusted by the apostles to their successors, and by these in turn to those who followed them, and was visible in the Church for all who cared to look for it.” (Early Christian Doctrines, 37).
Finally, lets move onto Ealgeone who beats his drum about Genesis and the six-day creation. Had he read the great Doctor of the Church St. Augustine, that every student of theology is exposed to, this question would not be raised.
When St. Augustine talks about the “literal” meaning, he doesn’t quite mean what others think he means. Today, a “literal” meaning is fundamentalism: the world was created in six 24-hour periods about 4-5 million years ago and Fred Flintstone rode around on a brontosaurus, etc, etc.
St. Augustine does not believe that at all. St. Augustine recognized two levels of scripture in most of his exegesis: literal and figurative. The figurative meaning was a kind of typology, in which each event in the Bible stands for something else, usually a prefiguration of Christ. It’s as Paul says in 1 Cor. 10:11: “All these things, however, happened among them in figure.”
The literal meaning is what the text is saying. A text may be wholly figurative, such as the Song of Songs, and indeed some early interpreters read Genesis purely figuratively. Augustine himself did this in his On Genesis Against the Manichees.
In his literal interpretation, however, St. Augustine was trying to understand what Genesis really says. He’s not searching for either an analogy (the figurative meaning) or a purely literal meaning (what we now would call literalism or fundamentalism), but is instead querying the text about what it means. And for Augustine, it was vital that we understood this text in an intelligent way.
Augustine repeatedly warns against interpretations that defy the clear evidence of the sciences. As students of St. Augustine will tell you he was extremely concerned that foolish Christians reading scripture too literally would bring discredit on the entire faith.
Good night all and let me end with the Divine Praises we Catholics say before the Blessed Sacrament:
“Blessed be God. Blessed be His Holy Name. Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. Blessed be the Name of Jesus. Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart. Blessed be His Most Precious Blood. Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy. Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception. Blessed be her Glorious Assumption. Blessed be the Name of Mary, Virgin and Mother. Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse. Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints.”