I don't understand the Eucharist

[Mammoths]

I don’t think of myself as a pantheist. I will try to describe how I came to sound like one. When we studied both the transcendence and immanence of God, God’s being above and simultaneously within every aspect of creation, I realized that to be completely transcendent, any ‘god’ would have to be completely immanent; and, for any god to be completely immanent it would have to be completely transcendent. You can think of it this way, if we had existence outside of God, we would then have something God did not have: our own self. This would destroy God’s transcendence because God has it all. Back some 50 years ago, I concluded that God was more ‘me’ than I was.

Then you can study the mystics of Chrisitianity, Judaism, Islam, and they ALL sound pantheist.

One modern mystic, the Roman Catholic priest, Raimon Panikkar, said in his book, The Experience of God, “were God to be spoken of as object, God would become nothing more than an idol.” When we pray to, adore, or worship, we always pray to, adore or worship an object. So, those activities are technically idol worship. Wow! …but, hold on. It is true. Objects are what our mind can handle. As the neoThomist, the much respected Jacques Maritain says in his book, Degrees of Knowledge, we think in ‘delimited concepts’. In other words, we cannot but think of God as an object. Panikkar knew this: but, as a mystic, he said what he said because he got it.

So, when I made my original comment, it was from this point of view. Catholics are given mysteries without being educated that everything we know of God is metaphor. To presume that we know God in some particular manner, like the meaning of physical presence in the Eucharist, has the danger of forgetting - or not realizing in the first place, Panikkar’s admonition.

This is all very difficult to talk about with the faithful at large because humanity is not made up of people who have had the time, opportunity or inclination to think on these things from such a perspective. However, some humility about the limits of our knowledge would be a wonderful thing, I think. I think of Catholics as being far too docile and far too insecure in their own minds to think as autonomously as they can (and, maybe, ought to). The hierarchy in the Catholic Church has no corner or real authority to tell anyone what they ought to think, but that is exactly what the Church has done.

…Francis, of course, has been changing that. “Who am I to judge?” According to traditional Catholic thinking , the pope is THE one to judge. Francis, though, knows better. We - all of us humans in every religion and not - are capable of independent thought. And, parsing this question with what all the experts down through the ages have said is not the only way of getting at the truth. For me, the TRUTH in its wholeness and ultimate meaning, is not ours to have with any certainty, not here and not now. The Catholic Church, however, has acted as if it were.

I could be kicked off this site for having an agenda. Well, I do. It is to see Catholics release their awesome power by reclaiming their own autonomy in thought. I think it is what Jesus would want.

So the short answer is yes. You conflate imminent with intrinsic. The Eucharist is uncreated God according to catholic dogma. This is in contrast with the stream which is created. The stream is held together by God but it is not God, not a part of God, nor God a part of it. For a man of your genius, I should think this would be elementary to you. Of course God is imminent because he holds it in his hands. But there is no reason other than psychedelics to think imminent plus transcendent equals intrinsic. If God is more you than you He is then born into sin like you. It’s one thing to think beyond what you’ve been told, it’s another to think against what is plain. You don’t get an ‘a’ in heaven by inventing yourself as a part of the incarnation. If only the words were as meaningless as feet planted firmly in mid air, we could dispense with the illusion of the fundamentals of logic and then God could be totally the most you you’ve ever wanted and still you not be God and the laws of identity and non-middle would be irrelevant. Does your bishop know of these opinions?

 

[catholic1seeks]

…Francis, of course, has been changing that. “Who am I to judge?” According to traditional Catholic thinking , the pope is THE one to judge. Francis, though, knows better. We - all of us humans in every religion and not - are capable of independent thought. And, parsing this question with what all the experts down through the ages have said is not the only way of getting at the truth. For me, the TRUTH in its wholeness and ultimate meaning, is not ours to have with any certainty, not here and not now. The Catholic Church, however, has acted as if it were.

The fact that every person is capable of independent thought has no bearing on whether or not Christ meant for his church – his body on earth – to be the sacrament of salvation. The church is the city on a hill; it is the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). I might understand a non-Christian who has hesitation to grant such teaching authority to the Catholic Church, but with someone with Christian sensibilities like yourself, I hope you see how Christ meant for the church to be an instrument of salvation on earth BY preaching and maintaining the gospel, the fullness of the faith delivered once for all to the saints.

And you take Francis out of context. He was saying that gay priests cannot be judged simply because they are gay (are homosexual). He was emphasizing traditional Catholic thought on the issue; though I will admit it is something that needs to be emphasized more in the church. If you think Pope Francis is changing the church’s self-understanding with regard to objective truth, infallibility, or papal primacy, I would say that you are mistaken.

 

[fisherman_carl]

"And this food is called among us Eucharistia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.

For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh." - (AD 153-155, First Apology, 66)

wordonfire.org/resources/blog/st-justin-martyr-on-the-eucharist-and-the-ancient-mass/4780/

 

[Mammoths]

wordonfire.org/resources/blog/st-justin-martyr-on-the-eucharist-and-the-ancient-mass/4780/

So not a random stream in the mountains. As far as my personal search is concerned that is the strongest answer yet.

 

[Church_Militant]

Here, maybe this blog article of mine will help you out.
The Eucharist IS Scriptural

 

[rayteurfs]

I certainly understand what you are saying. Such was what I believed/thought for many years. However, if you even use Catholic theology itself, you can see where you might be wrong and where your opinion is no more than that, an opinion. Let me explain…

According to Catholic theology, the essence of being in the Church is to be a member of the mystical body of the Church. In order to be in the mystical body of the Church, you need to be in a state of sanctifying grace. In order to be in a state of sanctifying grace, you need to be first baptized. Baptism can be by water, fire (martyrdom) or desire (love). So, the pagan who loves is essentially and really a “Catholic”.

Being a Catholic is also a cultural thing, something that Catholics have been long happy to say about Judaism. And, Love is the essential and only needed message of Jesus. So, when someone in the Church becomes enlightened in their own way and realizes that many of their religion’s doctrines are simply not important or, even, necessarily true, they must - if your conclusion holds true - get out of the Catholic Church. You are right that this is the commonly held belief, but I reject it. Let me go through some interesting things for you: Christ became God in the 4th century for political power (read ex nun Karen Armstrong’s A History of God). The story of Jesus is taken from many sources and a lot from the Egyptian god, Horas (theologian, Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ). Masturbation is a mortal sin? …why do you think priests have been molesting kids? …it is not for failure to vet seminarians or because they are homosexual: it is because the Catholic Church has an awesomely dysfunctional record on teaching about sex (I, for instance, was told more than once by Catholic clergy that sex was a necessary evil). Heck, you ought to read the discussion of oral sex needing to come to completion in the vagina for it not to be another sexual sin capable of sending one to hell. This stuff is all bad theology.

Here is another one. How can the doctrines of the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception be important in God’s eyes if humans cannot keep them even separate in their own minds. Most Catholics think the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary conceiving as a virgin. And, of course, it has nothing to do with that. In fact, the Immaculate Conception has nothing to base it in the bible. It was invented to support other doctrines.

All this stuff, this stuff to believe in, is left over from centuries of mixed temporal and spiritual authority in the Church. The authority part keeps Catholics from using their own minds. This in turn locks up the creative thinking that Catholics could apply to the problems of this world. Catholics do not need to believe in anything they do not want to: the theological doctrine of the primacy of conscience demands this.

So, I go to Church when I want to. I receive communion despite any technical rules that say I should not. And, if someone comes with me, I tell them to feel free to receive the Eucharist while I inform them of the Church’s antiquated rules against it. I mean, really, if you invite someone to dinner and then say, “no food!”

Again, one thing necessary to be good and to be a good Catholic, love your neighbor. All else is unimportant.

I consider myself Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, Jain, Taoist, Agnostic, Jew, Mormon and a lot more.

Cheers and much love,
ray

 

[rayteurfs]

So the short answer is yes. You conflate imminent with intrinsic. The Eucharist is uncreated God according to catholic dogma. This is in contrast with the stream which is created. The stream is held together by God but it is not God, not a part of God, nor God a part of it. For a man of your genius, I should think this would be elementary to you. Of course God is imminent because he holds it in his hands. But there is no reason other than psychedelics to think imminent plus transcendent equals intrinsic. If God is more you than you He is then born into sin like you. It’s one thing to think beyond what you’ve been told, it’s another to think against what is plain. You don’t get an ‘a’ in heaven by inventing yourself as a part of the incarnation. If only the words were as meaningless as feet planted firmly in mid air, we could dispense with the illusion of the fundamentals of logic and then God could be totally the most you you’ve ever wanted and still you not be God and the laws of identity and non-middle would be irrelevant. Does your bishop know of these opinions?

No, the short answer is not “yes”: that is your short answer, methinks. I do not believe I was conflating anything, although ironically you conflated immanent and imminent, the former being the word I used and meaning inherent and imminent, the word you mistook for my word and it means close. Immanent and intrinsic can be argued to mean the same thing. I got your meaning (well, what I take for your meaning …I don’t really know) in referring to me as a genius. I brought up my testing score to illustrate that not even someone who supposedly understood this stuff really understood it in a true and deep way.

You might read the Franciscan Richard Rohr’s book, Eager to Love (his Immortal Diamond is even better). In it, he rightfully speaks of the incarnation happening at the moment of creation, not 2000 years ago. He distinguishes between what is Christ and the historical Jesus. I am not a convert to Rohr’s thinking. I began reading him less than a year ago, and he only confirmed what I had concluded years ago.

I do not abide by the story of our need for salvation, original sin and all. I abide by one thing: the message of Jesus. Love. This is not claim at all that I have achieved anything of note in that regard, only that this is what I believe is the meaning of the Church.

By the way, my bishop does not know of my opinions. If he asks, I will tell him. However, I could hardly care what he thinks. His is only an opinion as well: and, likely, he did not come to his opinions by thought: he accepted blindly what he was told. Read Thomas Merton, another great Catholic mystic: doubt was his friend. You cannot exercise doubt without being open to where it leads you. Thanks for responding and allowing me to get even more off my chest!!!

 

[fhansen]

I don’t think of myself as a pantheist. I will try to describe how I came to sound like one. When we studied both the transcendence and immanence of God, God’s being above and simultaneously within every aspect of creation, I realized that to be completely transcendent, any ‘god’ would have to be completely immanent; and, for any god to be completely immanent it would have to be completely transcendent. You can think of it this way, if we had existence outside of God, we would then have something God did not have: our own self. This would destroy God’s transcendence because God has it all. Back some 50 years ago, I concluded that God was more ‘me’ than I was.

Then you can study the mystics of Chrisitianity, Judaism, Islam, and they ALL sound pantheist.

One modern mystic, the Roman Catholic priest, Raimon Panikkar, said in his book, The Experience of God, “were God to be spoken of as object, God would become nothing more than an idol.” When we pray to, adore, or worship, we always pray to, adore or worship an object. So, those activities are technically idol worship. Wow! …but, hold on. It is true. Objects are what our mind can handle. As the neoThomist, the much respected Jacques Maritain says in his book, Degrees of Knowledge, we think in ‘delimited concepts’. In other words, we cannot but think of God as an object. Panikkar knew this: but, as a mystic, he said what he said because he got it.

So, when I made my original comment, it was from this point of view. Catholics are given mysteries without being educated that everything we know of God is metaphor. To presume that we know God in some particular manner, like the meaning of physical presence in the Eucharist, has the danger of forgetting - or not realizing in the first place, Panikkar’s admonition.

This is all very difficult to talk about with the faithful at large because humanity is not made up of people who have had the time, opportunity or inclination to think on these things from such a perspective. However, some humility about the limits of our knowledge would be a wonderful thing, I think. I think of Catholics as being far too docile and far too insecure in their own minds to think as autonomously as they can (and, maybe, ought to). The hierarchy in the Catholic Church has no corner or real authority to tell anyone what they ought to think, but that is exactly what the Church has done.

…Francis, of course, has been changing that. “Who am I to judge?” According to traditional Catholic thinking , the pope is THE one to judge. Francis, though, knows better. We - all of us humans in every religion and not - are capable of independent thought. And, parsing this question with what all the experts down through the ages have said is not the only way of getting at the truth. For me, the TRUTH in its wholeness and ultimate meaning, is not ours to have with any certainty, not here and not now. The Catholic Church, however, has acted as if it were.

I could be kicked off this site for having an agenda. Well, I do. It is to see Catholics release their awesome power by reclaiming their own autonomy in thought. I think it is what Jesus would want.

The problem is that faith is not an intellectual concept first of all; it’s a grace-given knowledge- and all the philosophizing in the world simply cannot arrive at the knowledge of God. That knowledge is strictly, authentically, a mystical experience, which faith is sort of a dim foretaste of as Aquinas put it, but which some have been privileged to receive in much more powerful ways during this life.

The Church can speak authoritatively by virtue of coming off the initial revelation given two millennia ago, and then centuries of experience contributed by her members. It matters not whether the particular Church leaders in place at any one point in time possess that kind of faith themselves-or have known God in a direct and intimate manner. What really matters is that Church members possess the practical faith that simply believes that such knowledge of God is ultimately attainable, a knowledge which will completely satisfy our spiritual thirst, a faith that perceives the Church as being correct in her collective wisdom about God.

Anyway, for us God is ultimately an experience, the experience *of *Him; everything else is talk about Him that attempts, to the best of our ability, to surround and codify and understand that experience.

 

[rayteurfs]

The fact that every person is capable of independent thought has no bearing on whether or not Christ meant for his church – his body on earth – to be the sacrament of salvation. The church is the city on a hill; it is the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). I might understand a non-Christian who has hesitation to grant such teaching authority to the Catholic Church, but with someone with Christian sensibilities like yourself, I hope you see how Christ meant for the church to be an instrument of salvation on earth BY preaching and maintaining the gospel, the fullness of the faith delivered once for all to the saints.

And you take Francis out of context. He was saying that gay priests cannot be judged simply because they are gay (are homosexual). He was emphasizing traditional Catholic thought on the issue; though I will admit it is something that needs to be emphasized more in the church. If you think Pope Francis is changing the church’s self-understanding with regard to objective truth, infallibility, or papal primacy, I would say that you are mistaken.

Sure, I took Pope Francis out of context, but such a refreshing thing he said. And, even when interviewed about his comment, he declined to get into what he was not judging the homosexual about, only that no one ought to be judged for their tendencies. I certainly do not see Pope Francis changing all those things (objective truth, infallibility, or papal primacy). However, I hope so. Objective truth is unknowable if for no other reason objective truth isn’t even ‘objective’: it is a mistake from my perspective to think of truth as being rooted in an object.

When you say teaching authority, I cringe a bit. I have been taught blatantly wrong stuff by priests, like sex being a necessary evil. The Church has taught terrible things in its history. The main authority of every human being is something we are all born with: our conscience. Conscience trumps even papal infallibility. If I think what the Pope says ex cathedra is not what I should believe or do, I am bound to reject that belief or action immoral. The Church does not stress this doctrine, but I claim it with enthusiasm.

Again, as I have seen so much fall from my “belief” system, the one thing I retain is the one thing all Catholic theologians, priests, popes, bishops etc. is THE essential thing to being Catholic, saved and the rest: love. Jesus and the Beatles had it right: all you need is love. Love is all you need. All the rest, well, it’s frills.

 

[rayteurfs]

The problem is that faith is not an intellectual concept first of all; it’s a grace-given knowledge- and all the philosophizing in the world simply cannot arrive at the knowledge of God. That knowledge is strictly, authentically, a mystical experience, which faith is sort of a dim foretaste of as Aquinas put it, but which some have been privileged to receive in much more powerful ways during this life.

The Church can speak authoritatively by virtue of coming off the initial revelation given two millennia ago, and then centuries of experience contributed by her members. It matters not whether the particular Church leaders in place at any one point in time possess that kind of faith themselves-or have known God in a direct and intimate manner. What really matters is that Church members possess the practical faith that simply believes that such knowledge of God is ultimately attainable, a knowledge which will completely satisfy our spiritual thirst, a faith that perceives the Church as being correct in her collective wisdom about God.

Anyway, for us God is ultimately an experience, the experience *of *Him; everything else is talk about Him that attempts, to the best of our ability, to surround and codify and understand that experience.

I agree with your characterizations of God, to knowable intellectually and all …it is much what I have said. I have, of course, my own idea of authority. The authority that I find stolen from the faithful is their own. I think that personal autonomy is where the true power to heal this world lies. I am not talking about anarchy, but the exercise of true, deep, authority, one that issues from the heart of one’s own being. This is not talked about much, but it is talked about, and by respected, if somewhat obscure, modern Catholic writers. Richard Rohr, the Franciscan author of books like Immortal Diamond and Eager to Love and the spaniard Raimon Panikkar come to mind.

Yes, what I am talking about is radical in terms of the Catholic Church’s culture of authority. I also think, admittedly radically, that it is the stealing of personal autonomy via misplaced trust in the authority of the Church (better: misplaced emphasis on this authority by the clergy) that actually produces clergy that molest children. A powerful, conscious person who is in authentically in touch with their inner voice, conscience, is not likely to molest anyone. Someone who has given themselves over to the too often inept moral teachings of the Church is far more likely.

Further, I think that the power of this yet untapped energy within the Catholic Church is enough to save a crumbling world. Untapped? Yes, when one is convinced that their own autonomous self must be sacrificed for conformity to a now stilted idea of what belief is, personal power is now gone to that extent as well. Tell Catholics to start thinking for themselves and coming to their own conclusions, believing what they choose to believe and not what they MUST believe, and you will see an awakened and powerful and loving faithful.

Cheers and lot of love,

ray

 

[Mammoths]

I don’t mind if you think what you want. However words like “Christian” “catholic” “pantheist” have definitions that correspond to categories of world views. A person who believes the universe is God is a pantheist. A person who believes the universe is a part of God is panantheist. I’ve never met a panantheist didn’t like and we have lots of them in the Pacific Northwest–beautiful people. It is ok to admit your world view is panantheism when it is. The things you are sayin hardly qualify as Christian in the anthropological sense of the word and don’t even come close to orthodoxy. That’s ok if you are honest about it. God is the ultimate judge. But please don’t insult our intelligence by saying you are promoting the true faith Jesus intended. We’ve read the Bible and the fathers and it doesn’t say anything like that. It actually indicates that God planned to use bread and wine as icons of His sacrifice prepared the stage through many acts over thousands of years. It was not a bumbling choice of circumstances that could just as easily have been a mountain stream. It was a dilibrately orchestrated plan. If your God is creation, you deny Christ and I invite you to repent.

 

[Mammoths]

I agree with your characterizations of God, to knowable intellectually and all …it is much what I have said. I have, of course, my own idea of authority. The authority that I find stolen from the faithful is their own. I think that personal autonomy is where the true power to heal this world lies. I am not talking about anarchy, but the exercise of true, deep, authority, one that issues from the heart of one’s own being. This is not talked about much, but it is talked about, and by respected, if somewhat obscure, modern Catholic writers. Richard Rohr, the Franciscan author of books like Immortal Diamond and Eager to Love and the spaniard Raimon Panikkar come to mind.

Yes, what I am talking about is radical in terms of the Catholic Church’s culture of authority. I also think, admittedly radically, that it is the stealing of personal autonomy via misplaced trust in the authority of the Church (better: misplaced emphasis on this authority by the clergy) that actually produces clergy that molest children. A powerful, conscious person who is in authentically in touch with their inner voice, conscience, is not likely to molest anyone. Someone who has given themselves over to the too often inept moral teachings of the Church is far more likely.

Further, I think that the power of this yet untapped energy within the Catholic Church is enough to save a crumbling world. Untapped? Yes, when one is convinced that their own autonomous self must be sacrificed for conformity to a now stilted idea of what belief is, personal power is now gone to that extent as well. Tell Catholics to start thinking for themselves and coming to their own conclusions, believing what they choose to believe and not what they MUST believe, and you will see an awakened and powerful and loving faithful.

Cheers and lot of love,

ray

Are you a Unitarian Universalist catholic?

 

[rayteurfs]

I don’t mind if you think what you want. However words like “Christian” “catholic” “pantheist” have definitions that correspond to categories of world views. A person who believes the universe is God is a pantheist. A person who believes the universe is a part of God is panantheist. I’ve never met a panantheist didn’t like and we have lots of them in the Pacific Northwest–beautiful people. It is ok to admit your world view is panantheism when it is. The things you are sayin hardly qualify as Christian in the anthropological sense of the word and don’t even come close to orthodoxy. That’s ok if you are honest about it. God is the ultimate judge. But please don’t insult our intelligence by saying you are promoting the true faith Jesus intended. We’ve read the Bible and the fathers and it doesn’t say anything like that. It actually indicates that God planned to use bread and wine as icons of His sacrifice prepared the stage through many acts over thousands of years. It was not a bumbling choice of circumstances that could just as easily have been a mountain stream. It was a dilibrately orchestrated plan. If your God is creation, you deny Christ and I invite you to repent.

Yes, words have meaning. And, those meanings often come with a host of other attitudes and ideas. The truth is, as we all must at some level know, that you cannot really define some things. For instance, as I have already said, the essence of a Christian is to be someone who understands and accepts love. The essence of a Catholic is to be a member of the mystical body of Christ. I then accept both of these labels, if you will, while also accepting that someone else - not me - wants to label me a pantheist. Yes, part of me is a pantheist - from one aspect of the myriad aspects from which you can view me. And, I am also Buddhist.

You may not understand how what I am talking about makes sense. I get that. However, you make your judgments based on ‘truths’ that are not all that fundamentally understood. For instance, probably less than 1% of people have ever thought that God is not an object. Yet, God cannot be an object. Yet, we pray to an object. No one thinks of this. Yet, it is fundamentally and profoundly true …not just because I said it. Not at all. Ask Raimon Panikkar. Ask anyone who understands the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (THE philosopher of the Catholic Church).

The bible is written by man. It is a book filled with fallacies if taken anything like literally. I do not “believe in” the bible in the traditional sense.

I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but I certainly don’t mind challenging it. I have thought as a good, orthodox person for many years. I did not read anyone who convinced me to do differently. I got here mostly on my own. My support did come from the inspiration of many Church writers, but they were not telling me to leave, and I have not. I just think radically different whilst I make intelligent claims that the orthodoxy is not necessary to be ‘essentially’ a good Christian or Catholic. Indeed, I believe orthodoxy gets in the way. I believe that orthodoxy is a prison of the mind and heart. I am not telling you to think that. I am telling you that this is how I think. It is an alternative way of thinking, of course. Is it invalid …well, you have tried to tell me it is. I don’t accept it.

By the way, Jesus was human. He behaved like a hothead in the temple (we make it into a virtuous act, of course). If he was human, he had to bumble along sometimes. Humans are only human, no. If he suffered on the cross, why would you deny him the ability to suffer a little human bumbling. The bread and wine were symbols - you call them icons - and, had Jesus been in a different situation, he might have chosen something else. The importance of the symbol is in its ability to bring us to a truth. Unfortunately, that truth may not be some magic trick we call transubstantiation. That truth just may be - as practically all mystics have tried to tell us - that we and it are all one. That oneness is not pantheism as pantheism is thought of in Catholic orthodoxy. All mystics in the Catholic tradition were suspected of being pantheistic. The Catholic Church had to let that notion slide or there was no way to accept them as saints. That, of course, is the power of interpretation. You have decided how to interpret me, and the Catholic Church has decided how to interpret things, too. I am sure we all make errors.

 

[davidv]

Yes, words have meaning. And, those meanings often come with a host of other attitudes and ideas. The truth is, as we all must at some level know, that you cannot really define some things. For instance, as I have already said, the essence of a Christian is to be someone who understands and accepts love. The essence of a Catholic is to be a member of the mystical body of Christ. I then accept both of these labels, if you will, while also accepting that someone else - not me - wants to label me a pantheist. Yes, part of me is a pantheist - from one aspect of the myriad aspects from which you can view me. And, I am also Buddhist.

You may not understand how what I am talking about makes sense. I get that. However, you make your judgments based on ‘truths’ that are not all that fundamentally understood. For instance, probably less than 1% of people have ever thought that God is not an object. Yet, God cannot be an object. Yet, we pray to an object. No one thinks of this. Yet, it is fundamentally and profoundly true …not just because I said it. Not at all. Ask Raimon Panikkar. Ask anyone who understands the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (THE philosopher of the Catholic Church).

The bible is written by man. It is a book filled with fallacies if taken anything like literally. I do not “believe in” the bible in the traditional sense.

I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but I certainly don’t mind challenging it. I have thought as a good, orthodox person for many years. I did not read anyone who convinced me to do differently. I got here mostly on my own. My support did come from the inspiration of many Church writers, but they were not telling me to leave, and I have not. I just think radically different whilst I make intelligent claims that the orthodoxy is not necessary to be ‘essentially’ a good Christian or Catholic. Indeed, I believe orthodoxy gets in the way. I believe that orthodoxy is a prison of the mind and heart. I am not telling you to think that. I am telling you that this is how I think. It is an alternative way of thinking, of course. Is it invalid …well, you have tried to tell me it is. I don’t accept it.

By the way, Jesus was human. He behaved like a hothead in the temple (we make it into a virtuous act, of course). If he was human, he had to bumble along sometimes. Humans are only human, no. If he suffered on the cross, why would you deny him the ability to suffer a little human bumbling. The bread and wine were symbols - you call them icons - and, had Jesus been in a different situation, he might have chosen something else. The importance of the symbol is in its ability to bring us to a truth. Unfortunately, that truth may not be some magic trick we call transubstantiation. That truth just may be - as practically all mystics have tried to tell us - that we and it are all one. That oneness is not pantheism as pantheism is thought of in Catholic orthodoxy. All mystics in the Catholic tradition were suspected of being pantheistic. The Catholic Church had to let that notion slide or there was no way to accept them as saints. That, of course, is the power of interpretation. You have decided how to interpret me, and the Catholic Church has decided how to interpret things, too. I am sure we all make errors.

Regarding highlighted above.
According to Catholic teaching this is either very misleading, or blatantly wrong.
Jesus is a Divine person with two natures. One Divine. One human.

 

[Kliska]

Unfortunately, that truth may not be some magic trick we call transubstantiation.

Have you told your teachers and spiritual directors all of these beliefs of yours at the seminary you are at?

 

[rayteurfs]

Regarding highlighted above.
According to Catholic teaching this is either very misleading, or blatantly wrong.
Jesus is a Divine person with two natures. One Divine. One human.

Yes, you are right. However, I do not believe that Catholic theologians have been leading us with the Truth, but with opinion. As I have said, the essence of being Catholic- even by Catholic theological standards - is that we love. I also believe that Jesus was God in the way you and I are also God. All the mystics - and certainly the Catholic/Christian ones - had a hard time distinguishing between the themselves and the Beloved. Doctrinal truths are not truth in any real sense: they are doctrines. Doctrines do little more than enslave. A religion ought not - yes, in MY opinion - have adherents or followers. They ought to have witnesses to the essential truth: love is that essential truth. All the rest is silly stuff to me. So, sorry, but I do know all that stuff about Divine person with two natures. I just apply it more universally than you. There are many hints in the bible, even, where Jesus intimated to us that we are ALL alike in this. Really, brothers are brothers.

 

[mattp0625]

Raised Lazarus from the dead? Yes
Cast out devils? Yes
Walked on water? Yes
Rose again on the third day? Yes

Eucharist - suddenly we are limited by science and delving into magic.

This is not consistent.

 

[rayteurfs]

If Snopes or PolitiFact were around when the bible stories were written, a lot of the fluff in the bible would not be there. These, yes, are considered literally true by most Catholics, but they are not necessarily literally true just because the Church says so. Again, for me, love is the only essential truth in Christianity. Dogmas, something the Church has historically been very fond of, are not Truth. Dogmas are commandments to bind our thinking into one coherent form. That is ugly to me. It is unChristlike. It is nothing at all what Jesus’ message of love is about. I do wish that someone on this site would address what I am saying on its merits, not with more recitation of the dogma that I am familiar with from 11 years in a Catholic seminary.
Cheers and lots of love in stirring the pot, ray

 

[Vico]

Yes, you are right. However, I do not believe that Catholic theologians have been leading us with the Truth, but with opinion. As I have said, the essence of being Catholic- even by Catholic theological standards - is that we love. I also believe that Jesus was God in the way you and I are also God. All the mystics - and certainly the Catholic/Christian ones - had a hard time distinguishing between the themselves and the Beloved. Doctrinal truths are not truth in any real sense: they are doctrines. Doctrines do little more than enslave. A religion ought not - yes, in MY opinion - have adherents or followers. They ought to have witnesses to the essential truth: love is that essential truth. All the rest is silly stuff to me. So, sorry, but I do know all that stuff about Divine person with two natures. I just apply it more universally than you. There are many hints in the bible, even, where Jesus intimated to us that we are ALL alike in this. Really, brothers are brothers.

There is a dogma of faith that the person of the Son of God is divine so truly God but that other persons are not God having no divine nature but a merely human person can participate.

Vatican Council (1870 A.D.), Denzinger Sources of Catholic Dogma:

1782 [The one, living, and true God and His distinction from all things.] * The holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one, true, living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, omnipotent, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will, and in every perfection; who, although He is one, singular, altogether simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, must be proclaimed distinct in reality and essence from the world; most blessed in Himself and of Himself, and ineffably most high above all things which are or can be conceived outside Himself [can. 1-4].

1786 The necessity of revelation].Indeed, it must be attributed to this divine revelation that those things, which in divine things are not impenetrable to human reason by itself, can, even in this present condition of the human race, be known readily by all with firm certitude and with no admixture of error.* Nevertheless, it is not for this reason that revelation is said to be absolutely necessary, but because God in His infinite goodness has ordained man for a supernatural end, to participation, namely, in the divine goods which altogether surpass the understanding of the human mind, since “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him” 1 Cor. 2:9 ; can. 2 and 3].

 

[Gorgias]

Upon graduating from the seminary college and scoring the highest in the seminary’s history in the Princeton Graduate Record Exam in scholastic philosophy

OK… so you test well. Very cool.

Since then, I have done a lot of my own thinking - something all Catholics are welcome to do despite any protestations of authority otherwise.

Wow. Hope that chip on your shoulder doesn’t weigh you down…

No one understands ‘transubstantiation’ because it is at least as mysterious as God or the question of why or how anything exists in the first place. No one knows.

This seems to be an epistemological claim, rather than a claim about the notion of the philosophical explanation of transubstantiation…

the thought occurred to me that if I were Jesus walking with my disciples and trying to get them to understand the oneness of all creation, I might with a grand sweeping wave of my arm say, “This is my body,” and with a similar wave of my arm toward the raging river say, “This is my blood.”

He might… if He were attempting to teach pantheism or panentheism. What makes you think that’s what He was attempting to teach?

So, too, I believe Jesus was a frustrated mystic, saying those same words as he picked up the bread and wine, frustrated, looking for a way to say how it is all ONE.

Again, what leads you to assert that this is the proper understanding of His teaching? At the very least, this makes Jesus out to be merely incompetent – and at worst, an outright fraud.

This interpretation is easy to understand.

Mencken is often (mis-)quoted as penning the aphorism “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”.

Back those 45 years, I thought to myself, “what sense does it make to have a mystery (transubstantiation or Eucharistic presence) that not even the priests of the church understand.” I say that the priests don’t even understand it because back then I was recognized as one who would understand it if any of us did among those being prepared for the priesthood, but I thought it was unconvincing and confused thinking.

Ahh… and now we’ve come to the heart of it: if you can’t even understand it – you who alone stand at the top of the mountain, peering into the very fabric of reality – then what hope have these poor, obtuse men who actually did become priests?

I would gently assert that, perhaps, there are those who find transubstantiation less confusing or acceptable than you do.