I shall not bore anyone with the official teaching of the papacy on transubstantiation first officially formulated in 1215 (see, e.g., Trent, Vatican II and the RC Catechism), but this non-miraculous miracle has left me bamboozled.
So here are 15 questions:
1. Did Jesus say
this ‘is’ my body or this ‘becomes’ my body?
2. Was our LORD holding His own (glorified?) body /
divinity in His own hands?
3. Is the Apostles’ Creed wrong when it insists
that ‘He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty’ until the final judgement Day?
4. Is Jesus truly human if He can be present
both in heaven where He remains until He returns as well as in thousands of
different altars (wherever the mass is celebrated and the elements are
consumed) at the whim of a male priest’s intervention? Women excluded. Not sure about transgendered ones.
5. Is the doctrine of concomitance (not to mention
the use of a wafer rather than bread!) not a flagrant violation of our LORD’s
command in Matthew 26:27, as well as the universal practice of the apostolic
church?
6. Why does Paul retain ‘eating bread’ (1. Cor.
11:27ff.) if the bread has disappeared?
7. How does transubstantiation differ from
‘transubstantiation’ in John 2:1-11?
8. Once the communicant has partaken of the Mass, at
what stage do the elements ontologically cease to be the literal person of
Jesus?
9. Which New Testament writer relies on the Aristotelian
explanation of ‘substance’ and ‘accidents’?
10. How can one get drunk on blood, if the wine
ceases to be wine? Just let any priest drink a few cups of the left-over 'blood'!
11. How can the ‘real presence’ be reconciled with the
teaching of Jesus in Mark 14:7 and John 16:7?
12. Does transubstantiation not destroy the
sacramental character (destroying the analogy between the sign and the thing
signified) as defined by Augustine, since the symbols (about to vanish) are
changed into Christ?
13. Is it right to speak of two miracles, in the
words of one scholar, who says that “it takes a miracle to have the substance
of one thing and something else’s accidents, and it takes another miracle to
have the accidents of something and the substance of something else”?
14. Why ‘do this in remembrance’ when Jesus is
actually literally present?
15. How does partaking of the Mass differ from
cannibalism?
Let the reader be warned that
a. the papacy has not rescinded the following statement: "CANON lI.-If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the
Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the
body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and
singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and
of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of the
bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most
aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema.
" (source: click here)
b. My comments could have got me burnt in the 16th century!
