Help refuting a facebook post

[ThePuppyTurtle]

Okay, The Posts’s argument goes like this:

P1:

"Father John O’Brien, in his book, “The Faith of Millions”, writes:

“When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. The priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man—not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.”"

P2 This quote is plainly wrong

P3

“… the Vatican DOES accept this book as being free from error and usable in teaching official RCC doctrine”

C: The Church is plainly wrong.

P1 is probably true, I’ve seen other Protestants complaining about this.

P2 Seems true, According to Catholic teaching as I understand it, Christ is not sacrifice again at communion, rather, his sacrifice is made present.

P3 Seems most doubtful therefore.

Any Thoughts?

 

[nuntym]

+JMJ+

P2 This quote is plainly wrong

Why?

 

[ThePuppyTurtle]

+JMJ+

Why?

I explained.

 

[Edmundus1581]

"When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. The priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man—not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.

I’ll try, but I admit I am not well qualified for this.

Note that the quote refers to Christ as the eternal victim, so the sacrifice of the Mass is the same sacrifice as calvary. The quote said the Christ is offered up again, so the priest makes a new **offering **in each Sacrifice of the Mass, but the sacrifice is the once-and-for all sacrifice on the cross.

 

[Inego_de_Loyola]

The quote is correct. We have a sacrificial, and not merely ministerial, priesthood. This distinction is actually what causes the invalidity of Anglican orders, as in ordaining to a ministerial priesthood they do not intend to do as the church does.

 

[Actaeon]

Okay, The Posts’s argument goes like this:

P1:

P2 This quote is plainly wrong

P3

C: The Church is plainly wrong.

P1 is probably true, I’ve seen other Protestants complaining about this.

P2 Seems true, According to Catholic teaching as I understand it, Christ is not sacrifice again at communion, rather, his sacrifice is made present.

P3 Seems most doubtful therefore.

Any Thoughts?

As other posters have pointed out, premise 2 is not a statement of fact, it is an assertion. Such an assertion begs the question of whether or not premise 1 includes a quote that is doctrinally wrong… in other words, premise 2 is itself a conclusion of an argument which ws not given.

To refute the argument given, you simply have to deny premise 2 and demand a logical syllogism for that statement (then you attack the stuffing out of those premises used to prop up that conclusion, because the quote in premise 1 is not wrong… although it is worded a little difficultly for protestants to understand)

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

This exact quote is actually discussed a little in a debate on the Mass as a sacrifice between Robert Sungenis and James White that you can find on YouTube. It’s titled “Is the Roman Mass a Propitiatory Sacrifice?”

 

[steve_b]

Okay, The Posts’s argument goes like this:

P1:

Quote:
"Father John O’Brien’s book, “The Faith of Millions”, writes:

“When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. The priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man—not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.”"

P2 This quote is plainly wrong

P3

C: The Church is plainly wrong.

P1 is probably true, I’ve seen other Protestants complaining about this.

P2 Seems true, According to Catholic teaching as I understand it, Christ is not sacrifice again at communion, rather, his sacrifice is made present.

P3 Seems most doubtful therefore.

Any Thoughts?

I’m not familiar with Fr O’brien’s book

but the mass and what it is, as a propitiatory sacrifice is clearly described here

“Here the Council of Trent interposed with a definition of faith (Sass. XXII, can, iii); “If any one saith, that the Mass is only a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving but not a propitiatory sacrifice; or, that it profits only the recipient, and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities; let him be anathema” (Denzinger, n. 950). In this canon, which gives a summary of all the sacrificial effects in order, the synod emphasizes the propitiatory and impetratory nature of the sacrifice. Propitiation (propitiatio) and petition (impetratio) are distinguishable from each other, inasmuch as the latter appeals to the goodness and the former to the mercy of God. Naturally, therefore, they differ also as regards their objects, since, while petition is directed towards our spiritual and temporal concerns and needs of every kind, propitiation refers to our sins (peccata) and to the temporal punishments (poence), which must be expiated by works of penance or satisfaction (satisfactiones) in this life, or otherwise by a corresponding suffering in Purgatory. In all these respects the impetratory and expiatory Sacrifice of the Mass is of the greatest utility, both for the living and the dead.”

oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Sacrifice_of_the_Mass

 

[ThePuppyTurtle]

The quote is correct. We have a sacrificial, and not merely ministerial, priesthood. This distinction is actually what causes the invalidity of Anglican orders, as in ordaining to a ministerial priesthood they do not intend to do as the church does.

Which then brings the common protestant question

“If Christ’s sacrifice is once and for all, why must he be sacrifices again, and again, and again, and again…”

 

[BerhaneSelassie]

The Glories of Mary and the Faith of Millions are part of the canon of books to smear catholic with. No one ever quotes these books on their own–they always quote a catholic hater site. They love to exploit the POETIC nature of these older writings and run away with it.

Their twisting of non biblical poetry should be not surprise to you, since they cannot even handle biblical poetry in an honest way and fail to see hyperboles and other figures of speech, and from this reach absurd doctrines like double imputation “became sin” 2 Cor 5:21, or total depravity from “our righteousness is like filthy rag” Isaiah 64:5, and “no one seeks God” in Romans 3/Psalms.

 

[themonk86]

Which then brings the common protestant question

“If Christ’s sacrifice is once and for all, why must he be sacrifices again, and again, and again, and again…”

Well the original FB post seems to be attacking Fr. O’Brien’s book and more directly the Holy Mass as a sacrifice. Now Fr. O’Brien’s book does contain the nihil obstat and imprimatur so it is free from doctrinal and moral error. The quote from the book can be found on pgs. 255-256 of the book. Now to answer the Protestant objections and misunderstanding to this doctrine, we as Catholics don’t sacrifice Christ over and over again at every mass. No, it is the same sacrifice that Christ did two thousand years ago. It is just made present at every mass through the power the priest has due to the sacrament of Holy Orders. I would encourage you to look at Rev 5:5-6 where we see the lamb. Now if you ask a Protestant who the Lamb is, they will definitely say it is Jesus. Then ask okay then why does the Lamb appear slain? The reason is is that Jesus continues to offer the same sacrifice he did at Calvary. Also see Heb 7: 25-27. I would also encourage you to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 1366 and 1367. They deal specifically with the issue of the mass and Christ’s sacrifice. You can read the CCC free on this website. scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

Hope this helps and God bless.

 

[uther]

Which then brings the common protestant question

“If Christ’s sacrifice is once and for all, why must he be sacrifices again, and again, and again, and again…”

This is actually an intellectually dishonest question, at least on the part of most Evangelicals that I have known.

Let us take what they believe in common with each other, and partially in common with us as Catholics. What must we do to be saved? Repent of your sins, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal saviour and you will be saved. This is the common formulation of the way of salvation often written out as what we know as the “sinner’s prayer.” Most further believe that this is a one-off, a one time event of conversion, and regardless of what happens later, that person’s salvation is assured.

However, if we dig deeper into the theology, they would explain that even though Christ lived and died and rose from the grave roughly 2000 years ago, we still can today appropriate that “once only” sacrifice that he made on the cross because he is alive today, in 2012. So right there, in the construct of their theology they have to presume the transcendence over time of the sacrifice on the cross, that it was made then for our salvation now, 2000 years later. So they accept the idea of transcendence.

Again, in believing the doctrine of once-saved-always-saved (OSAS I’ll call it) they must accept the notion of transcendence of the sacrifice one step further, because they believe that the one conversion experience, the one moment of repentance and faith in Christ, will cover all sins whether venial or mortal that the person has not even committed yet.

Why then, the mental block, the odd objection to the transcendence of the once-only sacrifice itself being presented on the altar for the forgivenesss of sins? The idea of re-sacrificing Christ is mostly a red herring, and they cannot really believe it if they think a moment. The truth of it is that underlying the objection is the knowledge that if they accept the sacrificial representation, they will then have to accept the real presence and the really hard one which is the sacrificial priesthood sacramentally ordered, and with that Apostolic succession and the authority of the Church, which is far too much to swallow for those in “protest.”