The Early Church: If They Weren't Catholic, What Were They?

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If you have received the Apostolic faith, then you reject it, yes, you will burn in hell. That applies to everyone who becomes an apostate. . . . .
So, if anyone rejects the Immaculate Conception of Mary, they will burn in hell? I didn’t even think Catholics believed in a literal burning in hell.

Anna
 
:yawn:
Catholics, please clarify: Is Eucharistic Adoration just a practice or is it a doctrine. I’m not hearing the same things from Catholics. It’s confusing :ehh:

Thanks,
Anna
Sorry Anna for the confusion.I will try and get you an answer as soon as possible.I have a slight cold at the moment…
 
Catholics, please clarify: Is Eucharistic Adoration just a practice or is it a doctrine. I’m not hearing the same things from Catholics. It’s confusing :ehh:

Thanks,
Anna
It can’t be a doctrine Anna, as it is not in and of it’s self a belief. Rather, it is inherently a practice because you are in fact doing something. It is built however, upon Apostolic teaching, there for I maintain the practice is Apostolic. I hope that helps, God bless!
 
It can’t be a doctrine Anna, as it is not in and of it’s self a belief. Rather, it is inherently a practice because you are in fact doing something. It is built however, upon Apostolic teaching, there for I maintain the practice is Apostolic. I hope that helps, God bless!
Crazzeto,

I’m confused. The link you gave was on development of Doctrine in the Catholic Church.

“The History of Eucharistic Adoration, Development of Doctrine in the Catholic Church,” by John A. Hardon, S.J.

I really miss your posts. Lots of people are posting, but without sources. You gave sources for Catholic beliefs in the early Church, and I felt like I had something to work with.

Anna
 
So, if anyone rejects the Immaculate Conception of Mary, they will burn in hell? I didn’t even think Catholics believed in a literal burning in hell.

Anna
Are you kidding? They love that stuff around here!
 
Crazzeto,

I’m confused. The link you gave was on development of Doctrine in the Catholic Church.

“The History of Eucharistic Adoration: Development of Doctrine in the Catholic Church,” by John A. Hardon, S.J.

I really miss your posts. Lots of people are posting, but without sources. You gave sources for Catholic beliefs in the early Church, and I felt like I had something to work with.

Anna
Anna, this is my take on the article in question: Eucharistic adoration is not a doctrine but is founded upon and/or is part of the doctrine of the real presence by virtue of its being a development of that doctrine, i.e., we practice eucharistic adoration because it is an extension of our developed understanding of the real presence.

p.s. Please, take the time to re-read, reflect, and pray in order to understand the article in question, I do not doubt that if you are sincere in this endeavor God will help you to understand.
 
Calling you a “cafeteria catholic” or citing Matthew 16:18 is far more often used than the hell stuff in here I’d say…
I just meant that hell is a perennial favorite topic on this forum 🙂
 
Sure. We can find, “My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink.”

We can find, “Amen, amen I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.”

…and lots of other things in the Lord’s discourse which goes on for over 35 verses, repeating the same theme over and over again.
You missed the “protestant verses” of John 6! 🙂
 
I just meant that hell is a perennial favorite topic on this forum 🙂
i havent seen that much about hell on this forum. but if you want to get a good visual. check out brother michael diamonds video series on the subject. you may find yourself running back to Mother Church. and if you ever get the chance, (maybe you already have) go through the c.s. chamber the military uses. breath that stuff for a few minutes. gasping flaming fumes is not something i would want to spend eternity doing… taking hell too lightly my friend can lead to devestating consequences. not a gamble im ready to take. one mortar on my C.H.U. one EFP hitting my vehicle, one rkg grenade going off, one lucky sniper, and id better be right. not a game where im at. or theological conjecture. Peace 🙂
 
So, if anyone rejects the Immaculate Conception of Mary, they will burn in hell? I didn’t even think Catholics believed in a literal burning in hell.

Anna
anna, you have nothing to worry about. your too sweet to end up in hell. :console: the Blessed Mother wouldnt allow it. peace 🙂
 
To play devil’s advocate, the same thing can be said of Catholics. A Protestant can’t figure out why Catholics take John 6 literally when Jesus says that his words are “spirit and life” and that the flesh is of no consequence? Yet they believe “I am the vine” to be symbolic. It goes both ways. Sorting out metaphor from reality in Scripture is a full-time job! 😛
The Real Presence have been interpreted in the literal sense since the birth of the Church. Jesus himself taught it. You have to read the entire chapter of John 6 and not pick the ones you think makes sense to you.

When questions of biblical interpretation are raised, it is beneficial to read in context the entire passage that is in dispute. The bread of life discourse begins in John 6:22, and the first point to address is the discussion of the heavenly bread. Jesus makes the point that as the Father sent manna from heaven for the physical nourishment of the Israelites, he has sent Jesus for the spiritual nourishment of the world. When Jesus announced this (6:41), the Jews murmured because he said that he had come down from heaven, not because he said that he was like bread. They understood his symbolic statement regarding the origin of the manna, and were scandalized by what it implied: “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’” (6:42).

Beginning in verse 43, Jesus replies to these objections. At the completion of his answer (6:51), he speaks of a bread that he is yet to give. The Jews’ understand that he is now speaking in a literal sense, and so they object, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So the Jews first objected because of what Jesus’ initial words meant symbolically, and now they object to what his second statement means literally. Had Jesus been speaking in a metaphorical sense here, this would be the perfect point to clarify his intentions.

Matthew 16:5–12 is one such example where Jesus’ listeners thought that he was speaking in a literal sense, and he had to correct them. In this passage, Christ was warning the disciples of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The disciples concluded that he was speaking of the bread they had forgotten to bring for their journey. In seeing their confusion, Jesus had to reiterate that he was not speaking literally of bread.

Keeping this in mind, look how Jesus answers the Jews’ objections in John 6:53–58: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. . . . For my flesh is food indeed, and my flesh is drink indeed.” These words would hardly quell the Jew’s fear that Jesus spoke literally. Following this, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”(6:60). At this point, we witness the only place in Scripture where anyone leaves Jesus for a doctrinal reason. Had Jesus been speaking metaphorically, what would have been so hard for the disciples to accept?

One last passage worth considering is John 10:9, where Jesus says, “I am the door.” Some say that this is the sense in which Jesus’ words in John 6 should be taken. However, no one understood Jesus to be speaking literally when he said that he was a door. The narrative does not continue, “And his disciples murmured about this, saying, ‘How can he be a door? Where are his hinges? We do not see a doorknob.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Amen, Amen, I say to you, I am a door, and my chest is real wood, and my hips are real hinges.’” This is absurd, but it illustrates how shocking Jesus’ words were when he said that his flesh was real food and his blood real drink.

Continue…
 
If Jesus was speaking literally, then why did he say, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail,” and “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63)?

The fundamental misunderstanding here springs from the implication that the word spirit is symbolic. Never in Scripture is this the case. We are told that God is spirit and that the devil is spirit, but no one would conclude from this that they are merely symbolic beings. What Jesus is driving at is that the carnal understanding of fallen human flesh is incapable of g.asping spiritual realities—such as the Eucharist.

If one concludes from the above verses that Jesus was speaking metaphorically of his flesh and blood, a major difficulty arises. The Bible teaches that blood is essentially the seat of life within living things, and thus it is sacred. Every time the Bible speaks of symbolically eating another’s flesh and drinking their blood, this is the idiomatic phrase that meant to persecute, betray, and murder (see Micah 3:3; Psalm 27:2; Isaiah 9:20, 49:26). Now read John 6 in light of those that understood Jesus to speak symbolically. “I solemnly assure you that unless you persecute and betray me, you have no life within you. He who does violence to me has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” This is senseless, but it is what his words would have meant if they were symbolic.
 
The New Testament accounts describe the Holy Eucharist as Jesus gave it to us. The term “bread from heaven” becomes fully clear only when we reach the Revelation to John. The Gospels Christ said at Capernaum. Jn 6:51 “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is My Flesh.”

Jewish life is rich in symbolism. The Seder table is filled with symbolic foods. Jesus said, Mt 26:23 “He who has dipped his hand in the dish with Me, will betray Me.” He referred to the urhatz, the first washing; slaves eat quickly without stopping to wash their hands, but now Jews wash their hands in a bowl of warm water as a symbol of their freedom. The moror, bitter herbs which remind Jews that the Egyptians made their ancestors’ lives bitter with hard labor, are dipped in charoset, a sweet mixture of chopped apples, nuts, and wine, to recall that even hard lives have their sweet moments. The matzo is the bread of haste that the Hebrews ate as they fled from Egypt. The karpas, green vegetables, represent the coming of Spring with its renewal of life, symbolizing the journey from slavery to the promised land; Jews dip them in salt water before eating to recall the tears shed along the way. If Jesus had said the Holy Eucharist was a symbol the Jews at Capernaum would instantly have accepted it.

The Jews knew that He was speaking literally. Jn 6:52 “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” On other occasions when our Lord spoke of Himself as a Jn 10:9 “door” or a Jn 15:1 “vine,” nobody said, “How can this man be made of wood?” or “How can this man be a plant?” They recognized these as metaphors. But when Jesus insisted, Jn 6:53 “Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of man and drink His Blood, you have no life in you; he who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life.” The Jews who heard this said, Jn 6:60 “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” They remembered God’s command to Noah and all mankind, Gn 9:4 “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” God spoke more forcefully to His chosen people. Lv 17:10 “I will set my face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people.” It was only after Christ’s redemptive sacrifice and the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment that the Apostles saw the full meaning of our Father’s next words. Lv 17:11 “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life.” In the Old Covenant our Father in heaven had commanded His children not to eat the blood of animals because we are not to participate in the life of animals. Animals, having no immortal souls, are lower than man in the order of created nature. However, in the New and Everlasting Covenant we consume the Blood of Christ to participate in Christ’s eternal life.

Jesus knew we would need a lot of help to become accustomed to the Holy Eucharist. He performed the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes in the dim light of the original Passover sacrifice Ex 12:6 and of His Crucifixion. Mt 27:45 He performed the four great Eucharistic actions: He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to His apostles to feed the people: Mt 14:15 “When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a lonely place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ Jesus said, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘We have only five loaves here and two fish.’ And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass; and taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.”

The three Gospel narratives of the Last Supper are absolutely consistent. Matthew: 26:26 “This is My Body.” 26:27 “This is My Blood…” Mark: 14:22 “This is My Body.” 14:24 “This is My Blood…” Luke: 22:19 “This is My Body.” 22:20 “This … is the New Covenant in My Blood.” Jesus’ next words instituted the Catholic priesthood: Lk 22:19 “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Jesus assured the Apostles that the Holy Eucharist is a reflection of the heavenly banquet. Mt 26:29 “I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

After His resurrection, Jesus walked with two disciples to Emmaus. When they arrived, He celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for them; Lk 24:30 “While He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them.”
 
In Scripture it also affirms Real Presence,

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”

-1 Cor. 10:16-17

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.”

-1 Cor. 11:23-27

St. Ignatius of Antioch in 110 AD wrote the strongest argument about the real presence. He was taught by St. John the Apostle. There is no surprise that he was taught by him.

“Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.”

“Letter to the Smyrnaeans”, paragraph 6. circa 80-110 A.D, St. Ignatius of Antioch.

The heretical belief of the symbolism of the Eucharist is unheard of until the Protestant came into the history during the 1500s.
 
So, if anyone rejects the Immaculate Conception of Mary, they will burn in hell? I didn’t even think Catholics believed in a literal burning in hell.

Anna
That’s one of the things wrong with the Church today. Too many people calling themselves Catholics don’t believe what the Church teaches on a variety of subjects.

Anyone who dies in an unrepentant state of mortal sin will burn in hell. Don’t take my word for that. You can consult the Gospels.
 
I just meant that hell is a perennial favorite topic on this forum 🙂
‘Favorite’ may not be the right word, but hell, as a consequence of sin, is a very real message in the Gospels. Have you read them lately?
 
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