Memaw and Cinette,
We had written:
Cinette wrote: Lutheran minister explained to me they believe that the “Real Presence” only occurs at the moment the bread is received – anything left over is fed to the birds. I don’t know – maybe it depends [on] which Lutheran church.
Jerry wrote: *Well, there are Lutherans who practise the sacrament of Holy Communion that way, regarding left-over hosts and wine at the conclusion of the service. Alas, as in so many matters, there is a lot of variance from one Lutheran group (and among pastors of each) on this and many other matters. However, I think that most Confessionally conservative Lutheran pastors would consume the remaining bread and wine, as Anglican priests do. Simply throwing away the consecrated elements smacks of Presbyterianism at its most sacramentally abusive! The sects are, of course (as they are in all matters), even more revolting than “liturgical Protestants” (or “semi-liturgical Protestants”) are!
There long has been disagreement in Lutheranism as to when the change of the elements to the Body and Blood of Our Lord occurs. “Receptionism” (i.e. the teaching that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ only at the moment that any communicant receives it) is a common view (as it is among “low church” Anglicans and the best of the Reformed), but the most Confessional of Lutherans contest hotly any such attitude. However, the attitude that the consecrated elements not received or which are left over somehow revert to common bread and wine, is typical of a lot of Lutherans. (That explains the grounds of refusal of many of them to display the reserved elements in Benediction or other public or private devotions,) However, just to toss them out (instead of consuming or reusing them) is an horrid idea for any Christian of “a Catholic mind”, many “high church” Lutherans included. After all, even if the consecrated elements were to revert to ordinary bread and wine, they still would be hallowed from the use to which they had been put!
The lack of agreement among Lutherans about matters even stated most clearly in the Book of Concord (the Lutheran Confessions), which is far “too Catholic” for many Protestantised Lutherans, is disconcerting. Many Lutherans (as the putatively Confessional and conservative Lutherans of the former Synodical Conference, i.e. L.C.M.S, W.E.L.S., and E.L.S.), and of smaller groups that have hived off the denominations which had formed the Synodical Conference, exert themselves in finding ingenious ways to circumvent the clear teachings of the Lutheran Confessions.
Is it any wonder that so many Lutherans look to Constantinople or to Rome out of disgust?*
Memaw wrote: *They look to us with disgust??? Wow and with all that confusion among them!!! I am sorry but no matter what they believe, they do not have the valid consecration and therefore the bread and juice they use can NEVER become the Body and Blood of Jesus, no matter what they say or do. They do not have Apostolic Succession and a valid priesthood. That’s the simple truth. *
Now me (Jerry) again: Now I really do not personally care much any more what any Lutherans teach, rest assured of that, Memaw! Protestants and the sectaries “argue themselves blue in the face” about sacramental matters, as they do about everything else, bickering over what things mean, and, from the standpoint of both the Eastern Orthodox Church and of the Roman Catholic Church, they have no full ecclesial standing, no valid public ministry (orders), and no objectively valid sacraments (at least so far as the Eucharist is concerned, Holy Baptism being less contested in its validity).
However, at least the Lutherans, Anglicans, and many of the Reformed among Protestant ranks, approach the holy sacraments overall with real piety and faith, which is more than one can say of the sects (especially the Baptists, Pentecostalists, and “Restorationists”, and those who reseumble the same, among their ranks), and the cults (L.D.S. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, et al.)who so rail against and blaspheme the sacraments. It is nauseating that a sectary like Jack Chick can call the consecrated Host a “death cookie” for a Mass that is “wafer worship”! How these all will have much to condemn them when they meet their Lord (and ours), Whose Holy Body and Blood are what the wafer and wine become in the Holy Eucharist!
Better it is somehow, with whatever difficulties a Protestant, a sectary, or a cult member encounters along the way and has to overcome on the path to conversion, to accept the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches as the only right claimants to be Christ’s visible Body (the Church Militant) on earth!
Jerry Parker
