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Is The Eucharist Inclusive Or Exclusive?


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Ok...I found that actual thread that I was taling about,Des, here it is:

 

"Issue #6 Understanding Progressive Christian XJWs & X-Catholics Fear of

Participating in Communion. ( Explaining What The 10 Wrong Things Author

Does Not Understand About XJWs & XCatholics Uncertanity About Communion

 

 

des Mar 28 2005, 03:34 AM Post #2

 

 

funny little bit on diversity).

 

>Issue #6 Understanding Progressive Christian XJWs & X-Catholics Fear of

Participating in Communion. ( Explaining What The 10 Wrong Things Author

Does Not Understand About XJWs & XCatholics Uncertanity About Communion

 

Well I don't know about this personally, but this did come up in the new members class. Apparently some ex-Catholics can not get over the idea that the bread and wine (or grape juice in our case) are literally the blood and body of Jesus. I'm sure if they would be able to accommodate to the more Protestant type sentiment they would be able to participate but we know that for many people conversion to a different belief system doesn't come in one big jump. I don't know that that explains everybody, perhaps not JWs. Perhaps if there is no communion service they don't quite know how to integrate it. CS do not have any ritual elements, but I was quite happy for them and just felt very comfortable since I thought it was a missing piece in my life. But some people might feel differently and feel fear over something different.

 

 

This is very good that you explain this FACT about Catholics so that those who have not been raised Catholics would understand. Also I talked to someone who said another reason as an X-Catholics feel uncomfortable about communion is because Catholics make such a big deal about only serving communion to worthy Catholics..that once a person does not want to be catholic anymore than everytime they think of communion they think of embracing the Catholic church and it's views which they do not want to do.

 

In JW the belief is that each person chooses in their heart which type of after life he or she best desires and whether they desire a non-organic/supernatural relm or an earthly organic paradise. They make a big deal about if you don;t know what you are doing then you might be saying you wish to spend enternity in the version of paradise that is non-earthly..and to me I always picture this is a version of paradise devoid of organic matter and animals which i loved. Thus both JW's and Catholic warn so much about not taking communion if you don;t understand it..that a person fears taking it..because they are confused about what these symbols mean and it's meaning to their after life beliefs.

 

Because of this confussion I think many Progressive XJWS and Progressive X-Catholics perfer to focus on the meaning of Christ's ransom and resurrection..then to actually particpate in the taking of the actual symbols."

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I think there are two important things that are trying to come out of this discussion:

 

1) In our natural being, we are born, we grow, we develop, we die.  We participate in a developmental process that is going on all around us, from the infinitessimal to the cosmic.  As such, what is appropriate to a person at one level of understanding is inappropriate to someone at another.  It is futile at best -- and destructive at worst -- to teach higher spiritual teachings and practices to those who have just begun a spiritual path, or to those who are still curious and don't even know if they want one.

 

2) In our eternal being, we are completely and utterly God, we have never stopped being God, we never will stop being God, we'll never become less God than God, and we'll never become more God than a speck of sand on the seashore.  As such, each and every person is God's child, welcome at God's table, heir to the blessings of the life of God's good creation.

 

If we don't try to steer between these two moorings, we're lost; but how to tie the two together?  For one thing, we all agree that the process of initiation and growth is equally, freely available to all.  The freedom to practice medicine means that anyone (economic situations being equal) can go to medical school: not that anyone can walk into the operating room and perform surgeries.  For another thing, if the process is worth its salt, the participants know full well that their growth and development doesn't bring them closer to God in any eternal way, and that God remains both utterly beyond reach, and utterly at the true center of each of us, no matter who we are or how "evolved" we imagine ourselves.  If it turns into a power play, that's the surest sign that the process has gone wrong somewhere.

 

 

Well put. I admire your ability to give voice to these subtlties Fred. I am aware of them but can not always articulate them. Thanks once again for providing clarity.

 

lily

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In the Presbyterian Church--PC(USA)-- communion is theoretically restricted to those who are baptized, but I don't think you could find a case where someone had been turned away who wished to take communion on account of that person not being baptized.

 

I don't think that it so exclusive to say that those who wish to take communion should have been baptized when one is pretty inclusive about baptism. Communion is seen as an activity of the whole of the church as the body of Christ. Baptism is seen as the ingrafting of persons into that church, or the recognition that God has already ingrafted those person in. You don't have to pass an examination or be voted in to be baptized. If you take seriously the meaning of communion, why would you not want to be baptized?

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I started writing a longish reply to this and then thought. No, I didn't want this up for debate. So I am starting another thread in the discussion area.

 

But I thought that was a decent question re: why wouldn't you wnat to be baptised?

 

--des

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I really just wanted to clarify a little bit about what the Catholic Church teaches about communion and Transubstantiation.

 

FredP was essentially right in describing that the essential substance of the bread and wine offered on the altar become the essential substance of Christ. This means that Jesus the Christ is as present in the Eucharist as He was on the cross at Calvary or when He was fishing with the Apostles. I can imagine that for this reason, an ex-Catholic, would have trouble partiicpating in the "communion" of any other group. It must be very hard to forget what Christ taught us in the Gospel of John about the Eucharist. (Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to Saint John, Chapter 6, verses 50-64)

 

50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die.

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven.

52 If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.

53 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

54 Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.

55 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.

56 For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed.

57 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him.

58 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me.

59 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever.

60 These things he said, teaching in the synagogue, in Capharnaum.

61 Many therefore of his disciples, hearing it, said: This saying is hard, and who can hear it?

62 But Jesus, knowing in himself, that his disciples murmured at this, said to them: Doth this scandalize you?

63 If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?

64 It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life.

 

I would imagine that were I to leave the Church I would always some trepidation of participating in a ritual which failed to take these words of the Saviour into account.

 

But my original intent was to argue over Transubstantiation and what Real Presence mean (when other Christian groups use that term they mean different things that Catholics, by the way) For example, My anglican friend has informed me that she doesn't believe the consecrated bread retains the Presence of Christ after their service. So the change in substance is not irrevocable. The best that you will get out of most Lutherans is a Consubstantiation, that is, the Presence of Christ is really there along with the original substances of bread and wine (or juice and so forth). From this point on, the insistence on Christ being truly and really present is less and less literal)

 

My original point was about the original meaning and understanding of the Eucharist which was in the Early Church. It is mentioned by several of the early Fathers, (including Ignatisu ofAntioch who probably knew Saint John) that those who were unable through heresy or having not been baptized were unable to recevie the Eucharist.

 

From Ignatius of Antioch (martyred c. 110)

 

Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).

 

From Justin Martyr

 

"We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology 66 [A.D. 151]).

 

Cyprian of Carthage

 

"He [Paul] threatens, moreover, the stubborn and forward, and denounces them, saying, ‘Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]. All these warnings being scorned and contemned—[lapsed Christians will often take Communion] before their sin is expiated, before confession has been made of their crime, before their conscience has been purged by sacrifice and by the hand of the priest, before the offense of an angry and threatening Lord has been appeased, [and so] violence is done to his body and blood; and they sin now against their Lord more with their hand and mouth than when they denied their Lord" (The Lapsed 15–16 [A.D. 251]).

 

Before all of these men, of course, there was Saint Paul. Who wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 11, verses 27-29

 

27 Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.

28 But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice.

29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord.

 

The Eucharist is exclusive because Christianity is exclusive. You must abandon the world for Christ. Those unwilling to do so are not members of the Church in good standing (those who have committed mortal sins) cannot receive because it would be a blasphemy before God and it would be unhealthy for their souls. The Church is therefore not only concerned with profanation of the Sacred Species, but also of the souls of those who would do this. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is sometimes more loving to tell someone not to do something that will be bad so that they will not end up in a worse state by the end.

 

Victory and Peace in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

 

jamesAMDG

 

jamesAMDG.blogspot.com

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James, all this presupposes you interpret the statements as a. Literal statements as opposed to metaphorical ones. b. that you interpret that Jesus actually said them, and that they were not statements made by a member(s) of the ancient Christian church. I don't necessarily acknowledge Catholic saints or popes. But ones beliefs do tend to follow one around. I would guess that beliefs are never so much given up as transformed. Sometimes you take them with you regardless of your own wishes on the subject. So that much I agree with. An ex-Catholic learning those particular things may not give them up as much as they say they are.

 

BTW, though I think there is something about a "beyond memorial" sense of communion. Although Jesus was also attributed as saying "do this in remembrance of me, so I think that's where the memorial sense comes from. I think I attach some other meanings perhaps something of "Christ's presense" (in danger of sounding New Agey-- and maybe veering off into something almost Christian Sciencey-- though I did say you take it with you-- but these things do defy easy language) in the faith community vs more specifically in the bread and wine, but not necessarily NOT in the bread and wine as well.

 

 

--des

Edited by des
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I had to redo my meaning of communion or eucharist after I realized that Jesus was not a literal sacrifice for sins and of course that belief is part of communion.

 

What I did is create my own communion ritual. I'm not saying others should do that, just that it was important to me to keep that sacramental practice, yet not as most churches do it.

 

It has been important for me to find new ways to reinvest in the area of loss.

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BTW, though I think there is something about a "beyond memorial" sense of communion. Although Jesus was also attributed as saying "do this in remembrance of me, so I think that's where the memorial sense comes from.

Etymologically, the word remember means to put back together what was taken apart (dismembered). So I don't think that "Do this in rememberance of Me" is some sort of mundane exhoration to hold the Last Supper in memorial. If what I've been suggesting is true -- that Jesus Christ is a sign of the Divine-human state of being in which we originally share -- then the call to rememberance means that by doing this, you literally put God and nature back together again. More accurately, you disclose in the world of space and time the Eternal rememberance of God and the world. In this sense, Eucharist and Crucifixion are the same thing. Which is why the body/bread is broken and wine/blood pours out...

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I've been having fun with Wikipedia today. :D

 

Six contrasting views on the body and the blood:

 

Consubstantiation - the body and blood of Jesus Christ are substantially present alongside the substance of the bread and wine, which remain. (This view is often erroneously attributed to the Lutheran church.)

 

Pious Silence - the bread and wine become the real Body and Blood of Christ in a way that is beyond human comprehension; the specific mechanisms and details of this are not possible to understand nor to explain; this view is held by the Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches.

 

Spiritual presence - the body and blood of Jesus Christ are received in a spiritual manner by faith . This view is held by most Reformed Christians, such as Presbyterians.

 

Suspension - the partaking of the bread and wine was not intended to be a perpetual ordinance, and/or was not to be taken as a religious rite or ceremony (also known as adeipnonism, meaning "no supper" or "no meal"); this is the view of Quakers, the Salvation Army, as well as the "ultra-dispensational" teaching of E. W. Bullinger, Cornelius R. Stam and others.

 

Symbolism - the bread and wine are symbolic of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and in partaking of the elements the believer commemorates the sacrificial death of Christ (also known as Zwinglianism or Zwinglian view after Ulrich Zwingli); this view is held by several Protestant denominations, including most Baptists.

 

Transubstantiation - the substance (fundamental reality) of the body and blood of Jesus Christ replaces that of the bread and wine, but the accidents (physical traits) of the bread and wine remain; this view is held by the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Anglican author C.S. Lewis famously summed up the Anglican position: "The command, after all, was Take, eat: not Take, understand."

Edited by AletheiaRivers
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Etymologically, the word remember means to put back together what was taken apart (dismembered).  So I don't think that "Do this in rememberance of Me" is some sort of mundane exhoration to hold the Last Supper in memorial.  If what I've been suggesting is true -- that Jesus Christ is a sign of the Divine-human state of being in which we originally share -- then the call to rememberance means that by doing this, you literally put God and nature back together again.  More accurately, you disclose in the world of space and time the Eternal rememberance of God and the world.  In this sense, Eucharist and Crucifixion are the same thing.  Which is why the body/bread is broken and wine/blood pours out...

 

Hotdiggitydog Fred! That's it!

 

The Eucharist, like any ritual, can be taken on many levels- on one very crucial level, the Eucharist acts as a “combining” sacrament, in which the otherworldly or heavenly forces, or the Father, and the human participants are united; this is its primary religious function, and another echo of the “marriage of Heaven and Earth” which can, by practise and Gods Grace, lead to the birth of the Child of Regeneration and Renewal, or the Christ Child, and this "Child" mediates regeneration and renewal to all of creation simply through Awareness of this great and deep truth. The participant of the Eucharist, if operating with understanding and Awareness of the significance of these truths, does indeed "literally put God and nature back together again." Amen and Amen.

 

lily

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Fred, I'm in awe of your use of language. I very much like what you had to say. It is my understanding as well. But I find language difficult, sometimes, in these matters.

 

--des

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Have you ever read Jung's essay called "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass"?

 

If I have its been too long ago. Where can I find it? I checked in "Aion" and "Alchemical Studies", both books I happen to have on hand and I don't see it.

Do you know of an on-line source where the essay can be read in its entirety?

 

lily

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Have you ever read Jung's essay called "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass"?

 

If I have its been too long ago. Where can I find it? I checked in "Aion" and "Alchemical Studies", both books I happen to have on hand and I don't see it.

Do you know of an on-line source where the essay can be read in its entirety?

 

lily

I'm not sure it's online in its entirety (it's pretty long). It can be found in a smaller collection called Psychology and Western Religion, along with another great essay called "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity." The two make up the lion's share of the book. I have no doubt you'd dig them both.

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