jhpb@lancia.garage.att.com (11/15/89)
As a charasmatic protestant with no church ties(i have one fish tie:-) just kidding, i read the nt communion of our Lord to be a memmorial and not a continous sacrifice, but i can find backing for this in Hebrews and Romans, if read as a child. Here is a passage from St. Augustine, writing around 425 A.D., in a sermon against the Jews: "'From the rising of the sun even to its setting My name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place sacrifice is offered to My name, a clean oblation; for My name is great among the Gentiles,' says the Lord Almighty." What do you answer to that? Open your eyes at last, then, any time, and see, from the rising of the sun to its setting, the Sacrifice of Christians is offered, not in one place only, as was established with you Jews, but everywhere; and not to just any god at all, but to Him who foretold it, the God of Israel... Not in one place, as was prescribed for you in the earthly Jerusalem, but in every place, even in Jerusalem herself. Not according to the order of Aaron, but according to the order of Melchidesech. The verse quoted is Malachias 1:11. It has thus been viewed as a prophecy of the Mass since at least the days of the Fathers. Melchisedech offered bread and wine. There is a verse referring to the Messiah in one of the Psalms: "Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech." There is lots of interesting material in patrology collections on this subject. Joe Buehler
barry1@ihlpa.att.com (Barry O Olson) (11/17/89)
[In response to an article by jhpb@lancia.garage.att.com --clh] Here is an excerpt from Pope Pious IV in his creed on the Eucharist. [* will indicate a footnote which i want to emphasize] "I profess that in the Mass is offered to God a true, proper, and *propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holuy sacramant of the Eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus christ; and that there is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which the Catholic church calls transubstantiation". [end] Ok, now contrast that with this simple statement: "For this is what i received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you. That on the same night He was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and thanked God for it, and broke it, and He said, This is my body which is for you; do this as a memorial of me." In the same way He took the cup after supper, and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me". This was taken from the njb 1 corinthians 11:23-25. *propitiatory in my dictionary means to appease or abate wrath. This can certainly read that God is very angry at the Catholics, and the appeasement is the Mass of communion. barry olson [This discussion has presented me with quite a problem. I don't like to cut off anyone's contributions. However the primary purpose of moderation is to prevent flame wars, and it's hard to see how anything else can result from people refusing to accept Catholics' presentation of their own position. This group has a variety of active Catholic participants, including one priest, one lay brother, and several well-informed laymen. At least one of the laymen can be somewhat light-heartedly characterized as "more Catholic than the Pope". It's very hard to believe that all of these folks are going to be wrong in the same way about current Catholic belief. I've looked fairly carefully at the statement on the Mass produced at the Council of Trent. There is certainly language that sounds a lot like what Barry is objecting to. However when you look at the whole statement, it seems that the intent is somewhat different. The overall context is that Christ did all that was necessary when he died on the cross. The Mass is not because his sacrifice was incomplete. Rather, it is the way Christ's sacrifice is made visible to us. "... that He might leave to His beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man requires, whereby that bloody sacrifice once to be accomplished on the cross might be represented ... and its salutory effects applied to the remission of sins which we daily commit." Yes, it goes on to say that "it [the mass] is truly propitiatory ... For, appeased by the this sacrifice, the Lord grants the grace and gift of penitence and pardons even the gravest crimes and sins." Taken out of context, this is exactly what Barry is afraid he is hearing. But the whole context makes it clear that the sacrifice being discussed is not an independent action, but a way of presenting Christ's original sacrifice to us visibly: "The fruits of this bloody sacrifice [Christ's death on the cross], it is well understood, are received most abundantly through the unbloody one [the mass]." As far as I can see, the statement by Pius quoted above can be understood in this way. This does not mean that I think the way the Catholics treat communion is in every way wise. I think the Catholic concept is based on an overly literal reading of Christ's words. Furthermore, I agree with the concerns of the Reformers that the doctrine and the way it was used tended to concentrate peoples' attention on Christ's sacramental presence to such an extreme as to almost push out concern for the original events as portrayed in Scripture, and our ability to encounter Christ directly. (However this comment seems to be more true of the 16th Cent. than the 20th.) But there was a tendency for the debates in the past to push both sides into positions that really don't do justice to each other. It should be possible to believe that the Catholic Church has made an unwise choice without going quite to the extreme that the Reformers did, of claiming that the Mass is a blasphemy against Christ, and completely replaces Christ's sacrifice with a man-made ceremony. --clh]