According to Protestants who believe in the Real Presence, what makes for a valid Eucharist?

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That is why it is Protestant they are not United in their teachings that not only protest the Catholic they protest each other’s
 
Words of Institution done as Jesus said them in the Gospels and having the Bread and Wine consecrated by a called pastor.

I won’t take Holy Communion anywhere now except my church (or if I happen to be out of town I’d find a LCMS church to attend).
 
Well, my (name removed by moderator)ut is that asking a protestant perspective is asking for a lot of different opinions. Some believe it’s not really Christ, and that it’s a symbol and metaphor, some believe it’s just the presence in the bread and not actually his flesh (Anglicans), and some actually completely believe in the Catholic teaching of Transubstantiation (Anglo-Catholics).

I was talking to a former Baptist, now Anglican, and could be Catholic, person not long ago. I thought Baptists were in the “symbolism” category like most mainline denominations where they have a eucharistic memorial four times a year, but he told me they have it every week when he was Baptist, and I was surprised.

So, in the end, it’s hard to even know what is a valid Sacrament of the Eucharist if protestants are so varied on the subject. To me, as a cradle Catholic, I believe once a clergymen no longer believes in Transubstantiation, they lost their power of Apostolic Succession. Without the intention of carrying out the Holy Sacrifice in its fullness knowing it is actually Christ being sacrificed, the living flesh and blood, then they are no longer priests with valid ordination. This is my current view as I am ongoing in my research on Anglican’s view of the Real Presence.
 
I wish you luck with your research. Report back.

Intent, if all other sacramental factors are valid, would normally be taken as valid, too. Intent is an interior state, and absent something (like a loud declaration that one is not intending to any such thing as confect the Body and Blood), there is no way to tell if it is valid or not.

Valid intent is, at the most basic, to intend what the Church intends in the particular sacramental action; facere quod facit ecclesia. Unless there is something that permits a determination that the intent is otherwise (determinatio ex adiunctis), assumption would be that it was valid.
 
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Hodos said:
Again, there is no scriptural requirement for who may administer the Holy Supper.
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Christ specifically ate the Last Supper with the Twelve. Why would he do something like that, excluding the others? It was to the Twelve that he instructed to do as he had done.
 
This is indeed how I and my late mother saw it. Only I found out soon before she passed that she assumed it was the real presence and a more faithful person I have yet to meet and she was Methodist. I never saw it as the real presence when I was Protestant although I treated it with all due respect. I converted last year and I pray that her understanding was enough to experience grace from it . I believe something happened - she used to describe feelings after she had the bread and wine that could only have been from the Holy Spirit
 
GKMotley said:
I wish you luck with your research. Report back.
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Well, we’re talking about two different intents, of Transubstantiation, the full conversion of bread to body, and Real Presence, where Christ is instilled in the bread. Transubstantiation intends to carry out what Jesus wants, for us to eat his flesh (John 6:54) and saying “This IS my body”, not “This is bread which will have my real presence placed in it, but it’s not actually my flesh.” Catholic Priests carry out His full intentions.

Then we need to think why would Jesus even command us to do such a thing. What is the subsequent truth behind eating His flesh, which won’t be realized if we just think of the Eucharist as a real presence. The answer is the Covenant, and two examples of it, all of this I learned mostly through Scott Hahn.

First, think of Covenant as Marriage. A man and a woman exchange their lives to become one. The catechism teaches that once the two become one (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5-6) the Marriage is indissoluble. Jesus wants to enter a Covenant with us, as God did with His chosen people in Exodus (more on that later). It is often spoken that Jesus is the Bridegroom and the Church is His Bride, and how that is done is that Jesus’s flesh actually becomes one with us through consuming the Eucharist. This is how a Covenant is made and continuously renews.

Second, as I pointed out earlier, in Exodus, God’s Covenant with His people was made with the Passover meal. They had to sacrifice an unblemished lamb, spread the blood on the door with hyssop, and eat the lamb. If they did not eat the flesh of the lamb, then the Covenant wouldn’t be formed with that family, and the firstborn would die. If they made a bread shaped into a lamb and intended the real presence of the lamb that they had sacrificed be instilled into the bread, the first born would still die. Eating the flesh of the lamb was absolutely necessary, at the command of God, to form the Covenant. And what did John the Baptist proclaim Jesus is? Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
 
Jesus goes through some painstaking procedures to make sure He performs the Holy Sacrifice. At The Last Supper, there was obviously no lamb, but the key note is Matthew 26:29 where he would not drink it again. As Scott Hahn puts it, The Fourth Cup of wine, in Jewish tradition, the Fourth Cup concludes the passover meal, but Jesus wasn’t done. He would go through His Passion all the way up to the cross before he thirsts, but why would He thirsty only at the cross? Alcohol is a great painkiller back then, He could have had it at anytime, but once you realize, in John 19:29, a hyssop branch was used to give Him drink, and that’s when He proclaimed “It is finished.” Many protestants believe that His proclamation means we’re saved, but no, Jesus finished performing the Holy Sacrifice when the hyssop branch was used to give Him drink, the same hyssop branch used to spread the blood of the lamb in Exodus. What’s left is for us to eat the lamb, to complete the Covenant, the consummation of Jesus’s flesh with ours in the most meaningful way.

If a Christian were to just think that it’s still bread and not His flesh, there would be no consummation of flesh, and no Covenant renewed, for, in Revelation 19:6-9, we are called to participate in the Marriage of the Lamb Supper.

Edit: I actually should correct that last part. Catholic Eucharist is the body of Jesus, whether we believe it or not. The difference is whether protestant pastors, wanting to perform the Holy Sacrifice, believes in Transubstantiation in order to validate their ordination as I pointed out earlier.
 
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The only way a Protestant would be “doing the Eucharist correctly,” (your words, @RealisticCatholic) would be to convert and become a member of the Catholic Church.

Protestant Communion is not the same as Holy Communion (which is what Catholics receive). Protestants don’t believe they are receiving the Real Presence. They believe that the piece of cracker and the sip of grape juice they partake of are symbols of remembrance only. They use the explanation that Jesus said “Do this in memory of Me.” Eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood is, as they say, “cannibalism.”

Only a validly ordained Catholic priest can preside at the Eucharist.

No crackers. No grape juice.

They don’t believe in the Eucharist. They don’t believe in transubstantiation. They call what we do “worshipping a cookie God,” “a false Christ,” etc.

Since my mother used to be a Protestant, I was able to attend Protestant churches, listen to their sermons and be told to my face the comments I quoted above. Yes, I know what they believe because I witnessed it.
 
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Speaking of crackers and grape juice, another point of contention is the form of bread, and why Anglicans (and probably other protestants) are definitely having trouble grasping this Sacrament.

Pope Benedict XVI disallowed gluten-free bread because it wouldn’t be unleavened bread anymore. He does allow low-gluten bread or even recommending just taking the wine (as taking one host validates both hosts per Council of Trent). My Anglican friends said that their church doesn’t offer any alternatives and they just deal with the gluten if there is any disputes, but other Anglican churches offer gluten free bread. Such contention just points to the lack of understanding about the Eucharist.
 
@dochawk can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that the use of unleavened bread in the Latin Rite is a matter of discipline, not doctrine, and that Eastern Rite churches use leavened bread.
 
Also, those of you who keep popping in here to say “no Protestants have a valid Eucharist” are off-topic. We all know the Catholic position. This thread is not asking whether or not Protestants have the Eucharist; it is asking what Protestants who affirm the Real Presence believe is necessary to confect it. It is not true that no Protestants believe in the Real Presence. Please stop being obnoxious.
 
rightness said:
Well, we’re talking about two different intents, of Transubstantiation, the full conversion of bread to body, and Real Presence, where Christ is instilled in the bread.
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The Catholic position is that the priest must intend to do what the Church does, not that he must specifically will transubstantiation.
 
HopkinsReb said:
The Catholic position is that the priest must intend to do what the Church does, not that he must specifically will transubstantiation.
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Well, the Church’s Sacrament of the Eucharist is what Christ instituted as evidence in the Bible, then the Catholic position is that the priest must intend to do what the Church does because it’s what Christ has done. The position of the Church is the position of God.
 
Yes, that is correct. And it does not disagree with anything I said.
 
Thank you.

Keep in mind that the ministerial sacramental intent, to validly confect a sacrament, is to do what the Church does, in the sacramental action. It is why an atheist, sincerely intending to do what the Church does in the sacrament of baptism, can validly baptize. Intent, being an interior state, cannot be assessed in the same sense that form or matter can. If all discernible sacramental factors are valid, the sacramental intent will likewise be assumed to be valid, absent something permitting a contrary judgment to be made. The reasoning is observable in Apostolicae Curae, for example.

Good luck.
 
GKMotley said:
Thank you.

Keep in mind that the ministerial sacramental intent, to validly confect a sacrament, is to do what the Church does, in the sacramental action. It is why an atheist, sincerely intending to do what the Church does in the sacrament of baptism, can validly baptize. Intent, being an interior state, cannot be assessed in the same sense that form or matter can. If all discernible sacramental factors are valid, the sacramental intent will likewise be assumed to be valid, absent something permitting a contrary judgment to be made. The reasoning is observable in Apostolicae Curae, for example.

Good luck.
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Baptism and Marriage are particular because they don’t require a priest, the other sacraments do. Using baptism as an example doesn’t work in this comparison with the Sacrament of the Eucharist. If you used confession instead, then that would be comparable, but we all know that confession requires the Apostolic Succession to receive absolution, as is written in the Bible, and so does the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
 
I think you think we’re making claims we’re not making.

I and (I think) @GKMotley, are in complete agreement with the Catholic Church as to what is required for a valid Eucharist.

The questions come in elsewhere, specifically with validity of Holy Orders.
 
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The illustration is to show that not only is not a priest required to baptize, neither is a Christian. The point is that the sacramental intent, of whoever the valid minister of the sacrament is, is assumed to be valid if all other sacramental factors are valid, absent something permitting a determinatio ex adiunctis.

Good luck.
 
And only where the valid sacramental minister requires holy orders.
 
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