Posted on 09/16/2017 1:21:07 PM PDT by ebb tide
The group "Spezzare il pane" ("Breaking the Bread") in the archdiocese of Turin, Italy, has officially started with the celebration of "ecumenical masses" where Holy Communion is distributed to Catholics and non-Catholics.
The group is headed by Father Fredo Oliviero, an apologist for illegal immigration, who has the support of his archbishop, Monsignor Cesare Nosiglia. The practice of the group to distribute Holy Communion to non-Catholics, is openly promoted in the newspaper of Turin Archdiocese "La Voce e il Tempo".
Among the members of the group are "Catholics", Anglicans, Baptists, Waldensians and Lutherans. They gather once a month in one of their churches, where they celebrate a "Eucharist" according to the respective denomination, distributing "Communion" to everybody.
According to Fra Cristoforo, writing on maurizioblondet.it, these abuses are recommended by Pope Francis. Archbishop Nosiglia is informed about them but does not intervene. The future goal is to spread such gatherings to other Italian cities.
Distributing Holy Communion to people who do not share the Catholic Faith and have not previously confessed their sins, profanes the Holy Species, leads the participants to condemnation, and promotes superstition.
What are you babbling about?
Ha! It's been done before, on this forum. You run away (or deny the plain words, or else turn to some kind of word-game trickery) EACH and EVERY time.
Why should anyone believe it will be different this time?
But before we go there, let's have a bit more clarity as to what you mean when you say "Eucharistic realism".
Does that include that you are saying the sources you linked to, are each one of them, universally & clearly supporting there is "realism" inclusive of there being corporal physical presence?
I could show you a few who clearly deny such a concept, Augustine being one of them. There were others also.
I could provide trace outline for the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation too.
Wanna go there? Ask me nicely -- but only after you answer the questions just now posed to you.
It depends on what you mean by "corporal physical".
If you mean "physiological," no. The consecrated elements do not have the physiological characteristics of body and blood that we are familiar with (e.g. basal body temperature, red corpuscles, gaseous diffusion through cell membranes, requiring nutrition and hydration to keep on living, etc.)
If you mean Christ's real body as He lives now "at the right hand of the Father," yes. The consecrated elements do have the real nature of Christ's glorified and resurrected Body, which quite transcends all physical laws and limitations.
Please define your terms. I am interested in how you would do this.
BTW, Are you familiar with the distinction between appearance (called "accident") and essence? You don't have to use those exact terms -- the men I cited from the first five centuries of the Christian Era, didn't use those exact terms in Greek or Latin --- but it helps to understand the concepts.
Amen.
Who said magical powers?
You did. You didn’t use those exact words, but you certainly implied the same meaning. By saying that “Lutheran priests” don’t have the power to consecrate communion, you implied that there are certain people (i.e., Catholic priests) who do possess such a power. That’s magic.
I’ll stick with believing that it’s God that effects consecration, as it is a work of God and beyond the ability of any human.
As compared to...?
Do all these ‘amens’ get you off the hook?
As compared to most all of his predecessors, especially the pre-coniliar popes who have been canonized.
So do you think you can effect your very own consecration of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ? If not, who can, besides God? Why do y'all even have a "communion"?
They do not such thing except in isolation (typical of Catholics), but to the contrary, rather than partaking of the Lord supper ever being the means of obtaining spiritual and eternal life, apart from which one does not have this, and with the substantiated bread and wine being spiritual food - all of which is what a literal reading of Jn. 6:53,54 requires this to mean - then as said and shown, it is believing the gospel message that one obtains life in oneself, and with the engrafted word being salvific and nourishing milk, meat, spiritual food to those who receive it.
And as said, the "real food" of Jn. 5:55 is not what the text says but that it is surely food, which Scripture clearly affirms the word of God is to those who believe/receive it.
You are just parroting Cath polemics which Scripture has refuted time and time again.
Would you like to go chapter by chapter through the book of Acts and what follows to see what is presented as the means by which one obtains spiritual life and grows in it?
It is hardly even conceivable that if the NT church was the Catholic church with its cardinal position and salvific importance of the Cath Eucharist, then the only possible mentions of the Lord's supper in Acts would not simply be that of 2 instances mentioning the breaking of bread together, and with the Lord's supper being completely absent from every other book after the gospels (and which are interpretive of them) except for 1 Cor, and the mention of the feast of charity in Jude 1:12. None of which teach that the Lord's supper or Cath Eucharist is the means by which spiritual life is obtained and eternal life, apart from which one does not have this, but instead it is be believing/ receiving the word of God.
While you can argue that this obedience would include taking part in the Lord's supper, and indeed it does, but we are taking about the importance of a specific act of obedience, and of a paramount "sacrament" after baptism. Yet do not even see NT pastors manifestly conducting the Lord's supper (let alone distinctive "priests" and unique so).
1 Corinthians 11:27-29 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lords body.
Which is another case of isolationist eisegesis, for in context the only "body" that was not being discerned/recognized was that of the church, because some were selfishly eating independently to the neglect and shunning of others which effect was to "shame them which have not," in utter contradiction of what they were supposed to be showing, that of the Lord's sacrificial death for them, so that they were bought with His sinless shed blood, (Acts 20:28) and were thus to show that unity and love to each by that communal meal.
When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. (1 Corinthians 11:20-22)
For as often as ye eat this bread , and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come. (1 Corinthians 11:26)
And as Paul was guilty of persecuting Christ by how he treated his body the church, so "whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." (1 Corinthians 11:27)
That this lack of recognition was the problem, versus some failure to believe in the "Real Presence" (which Caths can manifestly do while ignoring others or simply in a perfunctory manner), is further evidenced by the remedy:
Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come. (1 Corinthians 11:33-34)
You can actually hold to your belief in the Eucharist and still recognize that "not discerning the Lord's body" in the context of 1Cor. 11:27-34 is not referring to failure to believe in the Cath "Real Presence, and in favt the notes in your NAB bible state,
The self-testing required for proper eating involves discerning the body (1 Cor 11:29), which, from the context, must mean understanding the sense of Jesus death (1 Cor 11:26), perceiving the imperative to unity that follows from the fact that Jesus gives himself to all and requires us to repeat his sacrifice in the same spirit (1 Cor 11:1825). (http://usccb.org/bible/1corinthians/11#54011028-1)
First Apology of St. Justin Martyr, c. 155 AD
What does such show except an example of the progressive accretion of errors among post-apostolic men, some of which errors perhaps existed among a few during the apostolic age, but later gained the ascendancy, though such could still be saved as being of poor and contrite hearts who yet trusted in Christ to save them on His account.
Your anti-sacramental POV --- refuting the "real" and "true" description of what is "indeed" His Body and Blood ---can be sustained only be refuting the Gospel of John, the Epistles of Paul, and all Christendom.
Simply bombast, as it is actually the Gospel of John, the Epistles of Paul, etc. which do not teach the Lord supper ever being the means of obtaining spiritual and eternal life, apart from which one does not have this spiritual life being obtained, but teach believing being the occasion of obtaining this life, and the word being believed/received as being spiritual food by which one is build up.
I doubt you can show me that anybody made your kind of arguments to "refute" or "deny" Eucharistic realism, for the first 1500 years of Christianity.
There are those argue that what certain early so-called "church fathers" (they were not) believed was not the Catholic position, but while some can be a Catholic and find salvation despite believing in Catholic Real Presence, yet what matters is what we see in Scripture, in which we nowhere see the metaphysical Catholic Christ being present as non-existent bread and wine, which must be read into the text,as well as the LS being a priestly paramount practice, after baptism, as said.
Hook?
I have to give you some credit that you keep pitching what you believe or wish.
Some housekeeping:
First, you made a specific truth claim that "This euchastisric Body and Blood of His are so real, they are real on every Catholic altar and in every Catholic tabernacle in the world, and in the very body--- yes, body to Body --- of His servants who receive Him. The first 15 centuries of Christians all saw this sacramental sense IN Scripture. "I asked you to show this was true, since without proof, it is simply an assertion, a wish. I asked you to prove your truth claim. I do not need to disprove what you claimed. You need to demonstrate your claim is true.
As evidence, you provided some copied information that is inadequate.
Your link tries to pass off the Didache as before 100 ad. This is problematic. Scholars have dated it somewhere between 50 ad and 220 ad. No one knows.
There are additional problems:
The link and you are reading back into history a doctrine that didn't develop until hundreds of years later.
There are no fragments of the Didache from before 100 ad that I am aware of. Fragments of the Didache were found at Oxyrhyncus from the fourth century and in coptic translation from 3rd or 4th century.
The Didache was considered a lost document and was not discovered in whole until 1873.
We have no idea as to whether the document existed before 200 ad, nor whether the document was updated as the doctrines of the church were altered.
Nor do we have sufficient fragments from before 100 ad to reconstruct the original...
And that is the first problem - we do not know it was not changed as doctrines in the church changed.
I think more importantly though, the Didache - even if it were not corrupted later - doesn't make the case to support your claim.
The Didache doesn't describe the cup of wine as the real physical presence of Christ.
There is no mention of the wine in the cup being symbolic of Jesus’ blood.
The Didache simply says, "Celebrate the Eucharist as follows: Say over the cup: “we give you thanks, Father, for the holy vine of David, your servant, which you made known to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory for ever”.
Of the bread, the Didache says, "Over the broken bread say: “we give you thanks, Father, for the life and the knowledge which you have revealed to us through Jesus your servant. To you be glory for ever. As this broken bread scattered on the mountains was gathered and became one, so too, may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For glory and power are yours through Jesus Christ for ever.”
Since it is late and it is sufficient that you have not proven 1500 years of the current Roman teaching of real presence nor transubstantiation, I will stop here.
There is more, like that scholars have noted that the document itself is a compilation of other documents later rolled into one document.
What is here though is sufficient - that there is no teaching of real presence nor transubstantiation.
I wish you the best as always, but you have not supported your truth claim.
I hope you didn’t mean it that way, but your comment to me reads very insulting, putting communion in air quotes and all. I’ll take it in good faith that you didn’t mean it that way and were sincerely asking. We “have a communion” because Jesus promised that it was His very body and blood given to us for forgiveness of sins:
What is the Sacrament of the Altar?
It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself.
What is the benefit of such eating and drinking?
That is shown us in these words: Given, and shed for you, for the remission of sins; namely, that in the Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us through these words. For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation. - Luther’s Small Catechism. http://bookofconcord.org/smallcatechism.php#sacrament
This is a much more exhaustive treatment in the Large Catechism: http://bookofconcord.org/lc-7-sacrament.php
As to who CAN consecrate the elements - frankly, I don’t know what our official position on that is. Never really had a reason to consider it before. As to who SHOULD, that’s another matter. That should be an ordained pastor, because it is part of his job and calling, and he’s supposed to understand (as much as a human can anyway) what’s going on and be able to instruct and guide those in his pastoral care. Much the same reason that it SHOULD be a pastor who does other pastor-y stuff.
Bear with me...I'm just wondering...if it truly is the receiving of the body and blood of Christ that imparts eternal life, then why couldn't a non-Catholic participate? Don't Catholics desire that all people attain salvation? If the bread and wine ("properly" confected) are the literal flesh and blood of Christ, then it shouldn't matter whether or not one believes they are or represent them, should it? Where does Scripture tell us that everyone must first belong to a church in order to receive Christ?
After all, it is faith IN Jesus Christ that places us into the BODY of Christ, His bride, His called-out ones.
In that case was Judas saved? He participated in the Last Supper.
You mean there is NO standard?
Just how one pope compares to another?
Lovely one word answers from the lady that wants others to more fully explain themselves.
Ok.
Just who 'consecrates' a Seder meal?
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