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RobbyS
Guest
If you don’t believe in the real presence, you can’t be Catholic or Orthodox, because by extension you deny the entire sacramental system. That makes you all Protestants of a particular stripe. Would not, of course, include the original Protestants (Lutherans) who do believe in the real presence. Beyond that it means you reject the sacerdotal priesthood and the concept of the magisterium, which provides an authoritative interpretation of traditional Christianity, including, BTW, much of which Evangelicals profess to be true. Of course, this is mere logical consistency, and people manage quite nicely each day with congnitive dissonanace, such the as the Zen master who flies in an airplace he does not believe exists. So, if you reject transubstantion you ought to consider the possibility that you also reject a lot More.
As for “cynicism.” the Christian faith is in fact pessimistic about human behavior. There are a lot of people in jail;there are many more people who deserve to be in jail. Given the frequency of adultery in our society–something worse than sodomy IMHO–all those nice suburban houses we pass thru every morning contain a lot of people unfaithful to their vows. We Catholics beat up on Calvin for his horrific double predestination theory, which is a kind of super-Augustinianism. But to give the froggish theologian his due, he came from a legal background and he knew how people behave. He knew that few of us act as Christians ought. By the standards of divine justice, we all deserve death; by the standards of the Gospel, we all fall short. Probably all those “celebrations of life” at funerals might just be a bit premature.