Pope Francis stirs debate on Lutheran spouses of Catholics receiving Communion [CH-UK]

[GKC]

Well yes and no. The 39 articles as you say are not always binding. And the modern COE and Episcopal Church have skewed more toward the Lutheran view of Christ’s presence in that they don’t try to limit it’s definition to just a spiritual presence as defined by the 39 articles. Indeed some Anglicans do believe in Transubstantiation today despite it being rejected by Anglicanism initially. So that is something the COE, ECUSA and Lutheran Churches do share is that somewhat detail un-oriented take on Christ’s presence beyond saying he’s there.

Or as GKC would probably say, a motley take on Christ’s presence.

I’ve said afore and I’ll say it again. Motley.

 

[GKC]

There ought to be a GKC emoji when we invoke your most common reminders. We could use a picture of the namesake, but I’m not sure my screen is wide enough.

I use one, on another site, one of the rather well known Howard Coster “bulldog” photos. It’s scaled way down.

But it was put up as my avatar by another. I have no idea how to do that sort of thing.

 

[Starwarsfan2]

Not quite. The Anglican 39 Articles are rather explicit that:

​

Of course, not all Anglicans are bound to the 39 Articles, and even those who are have paved highways around them. But to describe the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as merely “spiritual” is decidedly not-Lutheran. Genuine Lutherans typically deride that Calvinistic influence as “Real Absence.”

To be fair many Anglicans simply say that the sentence means his deity is in the elements ( Anglo Catholic interpretation) not a spiritual presence .

 

[GKC]

To be fair many Anglicans simply say that the sentence means his deity is in the elements ( Anglo Catholic interpretation) not a spiritual presence .

Or, many Anglo-Catholics ignore the Articles. Either way works.

 

[tryphon]

I believe Pope Benedict gave the Eucharist to his brother, who is a Lutheran minister.

 

[Padres1969]

I’ve said afore and I’ll say it again. Motley.

Absolutely

 

[phil19034]

I just read this entire text on Zenit

zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-visit-to-lutheran-community-in-rome?utm_campaign=dailyhtml&utm_content=%5BZE151116%5D%20The%20world%20seen%20from%20Rome&utm_medium=email&utm_source=dispatch&utm_term=Image#sthash.q9xxWRHf.dpuf

The woman did NOT ask if she could receive communion. She asked what Catholics and Lutherans can do to reunite in communion. HUGE DIFFERENCE

God Bless

 

[Padres1969]

To be fair many Anglicans simply say that the sentence means his deity is in the elements ( Anglo Catholic interpretation) not a spiritual presence .

Don’t the Orthodox have a somewhat similar view to Lutherans in that they believe in the real presence but don’t go into the detail the RCC does about how that real presence is presented? Or is that a too much of a simplification of their view?

And don’t Eastern Catholics share a similar view of the Eucharist not necessarily accepting Transubstantiation as in the Western Catholic Church?

 

[steido01]

Don’t the Orthodox have a somewhat similar view to Lutherans in that they believe in the real presence but don’t go into the detail the RCC does about how that real presence is presented? Or is that a too much of a simplification of their view?

And don’t Eastern Catholics share a similar view of the Eucharist not necessarily accepting Transubstantiation as in the Western Catholic Church?

Yes to the first two questions. Couldn’t tell you about the third.

 

[Starwarsfan2]

Yes to the first two questions. Couldn’t tell you about the third.

Correct

 

[theropod]

To be fair many Anglicans simply say that the sentence means his deity is in the elements ( Anglo Catholic interpretation) not a spiritual presence .

I have even heard it explained that the wording in the Articles was to counter a particular common misunderstanding of Transubstantiation at the time. Which wouldn’t be surprising that something like that could be misunderstood by an illiterate population and a barely literate English clergy. I’ll see if I can find what I read.

 

[theropod]

Here it is. anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com/2008/11/transubstantiation-and-black-rubric.html

Quotes from the piece that stand out:

When Anglicans rejected “transubstantiation” they were quite right. They were not rejecting the Real presence of Christ in the sacrament at all, especially inasmuch as they affirmed it clearly in the Holy Communion service of the Book of Common Prayer: “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood…” Not symbols, not memorials, not metaphors; like St. Paul writing to the Corinthians, they simply affirmed the truth that the bread and wine were in fact the Body and Blood of Christ. In the words of Queen Elizabeth I: “'Twas God the word that spake it, He took the Bread and brake it; And what the word did make it, That I believe and take it.”

So, why do I say the Anglicans were right? The answer to how the Anglicans were able to reject “transubstantiation” and yet not reject, as we mean the expression today, the Real Presence is in that very “Black Rubric” that far too many Anglo-Catholics find embarrassing. For heaven’s sake-if they would only think about it, they would be glad that the offending passage clears them of the Roman-Polemicist charge. For, it demonstrates that the entire problem was simply one of definition.

Emphasis mine.

Many times I have pointed out that when the Anglicans of past generations rejected “transubstantiation” it was not the same doctrine that modern Roman Catholics believe, and not the same doctrine that Pope Benedict XVI carefully laid out (as a corrective, I might add, in case any of his own people were still thinking along the early Medieval lines he so strongly denounced). They were rejecting, as Pope Benedict does, a “crude material understanding” by which the bread becomes flesh and the wine becomes blood physically, or materially. They were rejecting, as Pope Benedict felt compelled in modern times to teach his own people to reject, a definition of “transubstantiation” by which the conversion of “the whole substance” means that the appearance of bread and wine conceals the physical reality of Christ’s flesh and blood. They were sure that what the Council of Trent was teaching actually did amount to cannibalism, an eating of human flesh and and drinking of human blood, which thing they saw as an abomination and superstition that overthrew the nature of a sacrament.

Furthermore, then Archbishop, later Cardinal, Ratzinger-now the Pope-saw a need to teach this clearly to his own people:

Jesus is not there like a piece of meat, not in the realm of what can be measured and quantified…How should we relate to reality? What is “real”?..Concerning the Eucharist it is said to us: The substance is transformed, that is to say, the fundamental basis of its being…Whenever the Body of Christ, that is, the risen and bodily Christ, comes, he is greater than the bread, other, not of the same order. The transformation happens, which affects the gifts we bring by taking them up into a higher order and changes them, even if we cannot measure what happens…The Lord takes possession of the bread and the wine; he lifts them up, as it were, out of the setting of their normal existence into a new order; even if, from a purely physical point of view, they remain the same, they have become profoundly different.

Give the entire article a read.

 

[GKC]

Here it is. anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com/2008/11/transubstantiation-and-black-rubric.html

Quotes from the piece that stand out:

Emphasis mine.

Give the entire article a read.

I have, and not for the first time.

I’d like a few examples of RC dogma, specifically making the transformation of the host/wine into not merely truly, really, and substantially, but also physically, carnally, corporeally, the Body and Blood. That wouldn’t be Trent, of course. Where might it be found? And where might it be found corrected, before Benedict?

 

[theropod]

I have, and not for the first time.

I’d like a few examples of RC dogma, specifically making the transformation of the host/wine into not merely truly, really, and substantially, but also physically, carnally, corporeally, the Body and Blood. That wouldn’t be Trent, of course. Where might it be found? And where might it be found corrected, before Benedict?

Well, I don’t know where that would be found, and I don’t think the author is making the claim that it is/was RC dogma, but that it was and has been a common misunderstanding of the dogma. Fr. Hart’s discussion in his comment section about “nun theology” and stories about body parts appearing in people’s mouths point to some holding to those misunderstandings. It’s not hard to believe that people who don’t have a solid grasp of AT metaphysics would gravitate towards a belief that it was corporeally the Body and Blood.

I also don’t know if it can be found corrected before Benedict, but does it matter? Perhaps nobody before Benedict thought it necessary? Why does Benedict think it necessary? I don’t know the answer to that either, but there we have it. He does.

 

[GKC]

Well, I don’t know where that would be found, and I don’t think the author is making the claim that it is/was RC dogma, but that it was and has been a common misunderstanding of the dogma. Fr. Hart’s discussion in his comment section about “nun theology” and stories about body parts appearing in people’s mouths point to some holding to those misunderstandings. It’s not hard to believe that people who don’t have a solid grasp of AT metaphysics would gravitate towards a belief that it was corporeally the Body and Blood.

I also don’t know if it can be found corrected before Benedict, but does it matter? Perhaps nobody before Benedict thought it necessary? Why does Benedict think it necessary? I don’t know the answer to that either, but there we have it. He does.

I’d place a lot more emphasis on what was actually taught than what might have been hypothetically misunderstood. And a few selected examples of authoritative dicta suggesting a crudely materialistic meaning to “substance” would advance the case.

I know no more than you what Benedict might have been doing, but I doubt it was making a dramatic correction to a common misconception, at the end of the twentieth century. Any local RC comments?

 

[exnihilo]

Similar to Orthodoxy, Lutherans simply accept that the Sacrament of the Altar is a mystery. Lutherans just tend to be more bullish against what we understand to be Aristotelian attempts to explain away the mystery that God really hasn’t explained. Transubstantiation makes fine sense, but why do we need to make sense of a miracle?

I don’t know that we need to make sense of a miracle or that we can. I don’t think that believing it to be carried out by Transubstantiation lessens the miraculousness or even makes it completely understandable. Even believing in Transubstantiation there aren’t other examples of it that one can think on to help form a deep understanding. The term and its meaning are useful and good like the term Trinity. Were there folks who said, ‘why do we need the term Trinity’? If so did they have a point?

 

[skeyes]

As I read Pope Francis’ comments, I can’t help but believe that he is trying to get us to not be robotic, but to think and pray. He is not expecting the Lutheran woman to come to the conclusion that “she should receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church” even though she is not Catholic. It seems to me that he is trying to get her to pray and come to the conclusion that there is indeed not communion between Lutherans and Catholics and to understand the differences.

Pope Francis, to me, has never been about breaking with Tradition in practice, but is trying to get us to pray and seek Jesus.

Stan

 

[FollowChrist34]

I don’t know that we need to make sense of a miracle or that we can. I don’t think that believing it to be carried out by Transubstantiation lessens the miraculousness or even makes it completely understandable. Even believing in Transubstantiation there aren’t other examples of it that one can think on to help form a deep understanding. The term and its meaning are useful and good like the term Trinity. Were there folks who said, ‘why do we need the term Trinity’? If so did they have a point?

I would love to hear an Orthodox Christian’s thoughts on this. I believe we allow they are part of the “original Church,” no?

 

[JonNC]

I don’t know that we need to make sense of a miracle or that we can.** I don’t think that believing it to be carried out by Transubstantiation lessens the miraculousness or even makes it completely understandable.** Even believing in Transubstantiation there aren’t other examples of it that one can think on to help form a deep understanding. The term and its meaning are useful and good like the term Trinity. Were there folks who said, ‘why do we need the term Trinity’? If so did they have a point?

I wouldn’t argue with this.

I like referring to John of Damascus on this issue:

And now you ask how the bread becomes the body of Christ, and the wine and the water become the blood of Christ. I shall tell you. The Holy Spirit comes upon them, and achieves things which surpass every word and thought… Let it be enough for you to understand that this takes place by the Holy Spirit.

Jon

 

[Duane1966]

This is the first Pope I’ve ever lived under that makes me nervous nearly every time he opens his mouth. Its disconcerting. Couldn’t he just say “No!” it would be straight to the point and not confusing at all, and the truth.

LOL. I know exactly what you mean.