Evidence for God from Science

As for it's present form, I detest the legalism. Legalism is the oppposite of grace and does, (though not always,) lead people away from grace. I detest that they teach they and their earthly leader are infallible, and that you should give over your heart and mind completely to them, trusting that they'll always tell you the truth. I detest their perversion of the New Testament church. I detest their... well I don't feel like going on.

Mary was born sinless.
Must come to Christ through Mary
Prayers to dead saints.
Transubstantiation (that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Christ).
The Mass being necessary for salvation.

OBJECTOR: Now that Christmas is approaching, a lot of people are thinking about Christ more than they would at other times of the year. It's too bad that Catholics have to spoil it by focusing so much attention on Mary to the exclusion of Jesus.

CATHOLIC: I must admit that I find it difficult to comprehend what you are saying. How could focusing on Mary ever lead us away from Jesus? The whole purpose of her life was to lead us to Jesus. There may be some Catholics who have a misguided devotion to Mary and almost make her equal to Jesus, but that's not the official teaching of the Church, nor is it good Marian devotion.

OBJECTOR: Well, doesn't the Catholic Church officially teach that Mary is the New Eve? That's certainly putting too much emphasis on Mary. It's hard for me to know even what it might mean to say that Mary is the New Eve, but it certainly does not occur anywhere in the Bible.

CATHOLIC: No, it doesn't. But the concept certainly does. There are many terms in our Christian theological vocabulary that are not in the Bible, such as Trinity, Incarnation, and Rapture. But those who believe these doctrines will say that they are taught in the Bible. Do you want to exclude all terms or phrases that are not in the Bible?

OBJECTOR: Well, no. But I don't find any Scripture passages that support even remotely the idea of Mary as the New Eve.

CATHOLIC: Perhaps, I should first explain what Mary as the New Eve means. Because of Eve's disobedience to God and Adam's cooperation with her, they lost sanctifying grace for themselves and their offspring. Like Eve, Mary was created full of grace. But unlike Eve, Mary remained obedient to God, just as Christ, unlike Adam, remained obedient to God. In cooperation with God, Mary became Mother of the Redeemer and, in cooperation with Christ, she became Mother of the redeemed as well.

OBJECTOR: There you have it. The Bible says nothing about Mary cooperating with Jesus to redeem mankind. Where does the Catholic Church get this stuff anyway? Jesus said that he is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Where does the Bible say anything about Mary cooperating with Jesus?

CATHOLIC: The phrase "New Eve" or similar expressions occur in the early Church Fathers. Take, for example, Justin Martyr, who wrote within a couple of generations of the apostles. In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (ca. A.D. 150), Justin explains that Christ destroyed Satan's work in the same way evil originally entered the world. Evil entered through Eve while she was still a virgin; so too salvation entered through Mary while she was still a virgin. Each woman willingly participated in the act they performed. Neither was an unconscious instrument. Eve listened to the serpent and conceived death. Mary listened to the angel Gabriel and conceived life. Justin sees this clearly in Luke 1:38 when Mary says, "Let it be to me according to your word." Thus, for Justin, Christ's becoming a man involved his Mother's willing cooperation in undoing the tangled web of sin that Eve introduced.

OBJECTOR: While I don't believe that we can ignore all of Church history, there are times when these early Fathers of the Church went beyond Scripture in their speculations. I see Justin Martyr as going beyond Scripture in his teaching on this point.

CATHOLIC: Then you would have to say the same about one of the greatest defenders of Christian orthodoxy, Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons in the second century. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus expounds the doctrine of recapitulation. He teaches that Christ embodied Adam and all his posterity in order to redeem mankind from sin. Basing his teaching on Paul's inspired doctrine of Christ as the Last Adam (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45), Irenaeus viewed Jesus as reversing the effects of Adam's sin by bringing the life and righteousness that Adam lost (cf. Rom. 5:17, 18). Irenaeus saw the obvious implication. As Eve cooperated with Adam, the covenant head of humanity, so Mary cooperated with Jesus Christ, the covenant head of the new humanity. Thus Irenaeus says that Eve "by disobeying became the cause of death for herself and the whole human race, so also Mary . . . was obedient and became the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race" (Against Heresies 3.22.4). Later he says of these two virgins, "Just as the human race was subject to death by a virgin, it was freed by a virgin, with the virginal disobedience balanced by virginal obedience" (ibid., 5.19.1).

OBJECTOR: I am glad to know Irenaeus's views on Mary, but, again, citing two Church Fathers is not exactly proof from the early Church.

CATHOLIC: But I think if you look at a wider range of the Church Fathers, you would find the same or similar patterns of teaching emerging. I suggest you read Luigi Gambero's Mary in the Fathers of the Church, published by Ignatius Press. There you will find widespread support for Mary as the New Eve in the writings of the Fathers.

OBJECTOR: Even if you are right, it still doesn't answer the question about the Bible. You cited a few verses in talking about Irenaeus, but anyone can pull specific verses out of the air to prove something from the Bible. It takes studying the whole Bible and seeing the patterns of teaching.

CATHOLIC: Thank you for saying that. The Bible has been widely misused by well-intentioned Christians. It is vital that we look to those patterns of teaching you mentioned. The concept of the New Eve taught by the Church Fathers is a case in point because it is a summary and natural extension of Paul's doctrine of Christ as the New Adam. Irenaeus based his teaching on Ephesians 1:10, where Paul says that God sent Christ "as a plan [oikonomia] for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." For Paul and Irenaeus, God arranged salvation history in such a way that all reality would be incarnated in his Son, Jesus Christ. Everything was put under Christ's headship (thus re-capitulate). This divine arrangement meant not only that Christ by his obedience reversed the effects of Adam's sin but also that Mary by her obedience reversed the effects of Eve's rebellion. The only difference is that Mary's obedience was derived from her Son's obedience. She was made a part of his saving plan because Christ made her "full of grace" (Luke 1:28).

OBJECTOR: You will notice that the passages from Paul say nothing about Mary specifically. Romans 5:12—21 speaks of a contrast between Adam and Christ. First Corinthians also speaks of Christ as "the last Adam" (15:45) and as "the second man . . . from heaven" (15:47). Neither text says anything about Mary. And in Ephesians 1:10 again Paul says that all things are summed up in Christ, not Mary.

CATHOLIC: Of course all things are summed up (or recapitulated) in Christ because he alone is the Savior of the human race. The Catholic Church fully affirms what you are saying. Mary could not take the place of Jesus, her Son.

OBJECTOR: Then why do you insist on calling Mary the New Eve? It's almost as if you were making her equal to her Son.

CATHOLIC: Because while Jesus alone is the Savior, he is never alone. He asks human beings to join him in his saving work. Surely you recognize this when you say that preachers of the Gospel today are working with God to let others know about Christ. Paul himself says this in 1 Corinthians 3:9 when he says that "we are God's fellow workers [sunergoi]."

OBJECTOR: But there is a crucial difference. Paul and preachers today are merely proclaiming what Jesus alone has done. They aren't adding anything to his work. I sense that the Catholic Church is saying something more about Mary, something like Mary being an integral part of Jesus' saving work.

CATHOLIC: You are very perceptive. The Church is saying that Mary worked with Jesus in a greater way than Paul. Paul only proclaimed what Jesus had already done. Mary made what Jesus accomplished possible by giving him a human nature in which he could live and die.

OBJECTOR: I knew it. I knew that Catholics were giving too much credit to Mary.

CATHOLIC: When we give this high honor (in Greek called hyperdulia) to Mary, we do no more than Paul did. In Galatians 4:4—5 Paul says, "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons." Why would Paul think it necessary to emphasize that God's Son was "born of woman"? On a purely physical level, it is obvious that any man is born from a woman. But Paul is saying something deeper. By speaking of the woman, he is alluding to Genesis 3:15, which says, "I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." The woman in Genesis 3:15 is clearly Eve, and Paul is drawing a parallel between Eve and the woman from whom God's Son was born.

OBJECTOR: How do you know that Paul is saying anything about Mary in Galatians 4:4 beyond the obvious fact that Christ was born from her?

CATHOLIC: Because of what the rest of the verse says. In the first place, the text could be translated "from the woman," even though it lacks the definite article. Greek does not always require the article when it is referring to a specific person. More importantly, Paul emphasizes that Christ came from the woman to show that "we might receive adoption as sons." In Adam and Eve, the human race lost its sonship, and part of Christ's mission was to restore that filial relationship with the Father. By saying that Christ was born "from the woman," Paul is linking both the Son and the woman with Adam and Eve. Christ the Son is obviously linked to Adam. The only woman who could be linked with Eve is Mary. So, Paul is saying that Mary participated in the Redemption by giving birth to Jesus in the opposite but parallel way that Eve participated in the Fall of man into sin. In our view, the Church Fathers were simply drawing out the implications of what Paul was teaching.

No prayers to saints, thank you


FR. MITCHELL PACWA, S.J., undoubtedly has many talents, but, to put it charitably, the ability to accurately exegete Scripture does not, alas, appear to be among them.

In your July issue Fr. Pacwa asserts that the Church does allow "praying to the saints in order to ask for their intercession with the one true God." And he says that Protestants who say the Bible denies this are "incorrect."

Well, the Roman Catholic Church does, indeed, allow prayers to saints. But the Bible does not.

For openers, Fr. Pacwa never says, precisely, who the saints are. The Bible does, however. The Greek word used for "saint" in the New Testament is hagios, which means those set apart, those separate, those who are holy--in other words, all Christians, all those who are saved.

IN FACT, even John A. Hardon, S.J., in his Pocket Catholic Dictionary (Image Books, 1985) says, on page 390, that the word "saints" was "a name given in the New Testament to Christians generally (Col. 1:2) . . . ." This is correct. This is biblical.

To be sure, Fr. Hardon adds that the word "saint" was "early restricted to persons who were eminent for holiness," those "who distinguished themselves by heroic virtue during life and whom the Church honors as saints either by her ordinary universal teaching authority or by a solemn definition called canonization."

But these latter assertions are extrabiblical. No such restricted definition of "saint" is from the Bible. And Fr. Hardon cites no Scripture to support such an expanded definition--though this expanded definition is, again, indeed, the definition of the Roman Catholic Church.

In explaining who the saints are, Fr. Pacwa cites John 6:35, 48, 51, 53-56. But in neither the Protestant Bible nor a Roman Catholic Bible (for example, the St. Joseph Edition of the New American Bible, published by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in 1970) is the word "saint" used in these passages.

Furthermore, Fr. Pacwa says that the book of Revelation (4:10, 5:8, 6:9-11) shows "the saints" doing a number of things. But this is not completely accurate. Revelation 4:10, in the already-mentioned St. Joseph Edition of the New American Bible, makes no mention at all of "saints." What is mentioned are "elders"--from the Greek word presbuteros, which means "aged person." But "saints" are not mentioned. And the words "saints" and "elder" are not synonymous.

IN REVELATION 5:8 (again, in the New American Bible) the word "elders" is mentioned twice, but the word "saint" is not. There is a mention of "the prayers of God's holy people" at the end of this verse. But the allusion is to the prayers "of" these people. No mention is made of any prayers to these people.

And it is here that Fr. Pacwa goes seriously awry.

Fr. Pacwa says that because the saints are alive in heaven, "we believe that we can go to them to intercede for us with God. . . . [T]hey will pray for us in heaven . . . [A] saint in heaven may intercede for other people because he still is a member of the Body of Christ . . . . The Bible encourages Christians to approach the saints in heaven, just as they approach God the Father and Jesus Christ the Lord."

But the Bible does no such thing.

To support his assertions, Fr. Pacwa quotes from Hebrews 12:22-24. But verse 24, again from the New American Bible, refers to Jesus as "the mediator of a new covenant." Note: Christ is called "the" mediator, not a mediator. And in his own words following the citation of Hebrews 12:22-24, Fr. Pacwa also refers to our Lord as "the mediator," not a mediator.

In fact, the only New Testament verses I can find regarding intercession are in Romans 8:26-27, in which "the Spirit" is said to make intercession for us; Romans 8:34, in which "Christ Jesus" is said to intercede for us; and Hebrews_7:25, in which "Jesus" is said to make intercession for "those who approach God through him" (again, all quotations here are from the New American Bible).

IN CONCLUSION, Fr. Pacwa, at the end of his article, seems to shift his ground. He asks the question: "Does the Bible say we should approach the saints with our prayers?" And he replies: "Yes, in two places," Revelation 5:8 and Revelation 8:3-4. But these passages allude only to, according to the Bible he quotes, "the prayers of the saints," "the prayers of all the saints," and "prayers of the saints."

Nothing is said in any of these passages about "approaching the saints with our prayers" or praying to the saints to intercede for us with God.

Fr. Pacwa says: "These texts give us a way to understand how the saints offer our prayers for us." He adds: "Because the saints are so close to the fire of God's love and because they stand immediately before him, they can set our prayers on fire with their love and release the powers of our prayers."

But this is adding to the Scripture, which Scripture forbids. This is Phariseeism plain and simple--that is, substituting the words of men for the Word of God.

It's not "the saints" versus "us." No way.

All of us who are Christians are saints. Thus, "our prayers," as Fr. Pacwa puts it, need no saints to get to God.

I repeat: Fr. Pacwa cites no specific Scripture which says that anyone intercedes for us other than "the Spirit" or "Christ Jesus" or "Jesus." If I've missed a specific Scripture, please cite it.



Sorry, but you're wrong


MR. LOFTON, your letter has three difficulties: You do not understand my article in places, you limit your theology to scriptural words without thinking through their ramifications, and you do not have a sufficient Greek and biblical background. As a result you do not understand the saints.

You did not grasp my use of John 6:35, 48, 51, 53-56, where my point was that Christ bestows eternal life on all who eat his flesh and drink his blood. Therefore the redeemed in heaven are alive in Christ, not asleep or dead, as unbelievers would claim. My purpose did not require the text to mention the saints explicitly.

You limit the meaning of "saint" to a term for Christians in general. The Church does not deny this sense; we just do not confine it to Christians living on Earth. A saint who dies in the Lord does not cease to be a saint by entering God's immediate presence.

Further, if Paul asks saints on Earth for intercessory prayer, it is logical to ask the saints already in heaven to continue their intercession.

YOU OBJECT WHEN I call the "elders" of Revelation 4:10, 5:8, 6:9-11 "saints." Why? They are redeemed human souls, since they are in heaven, and therefore holy, since heaven can admit nothing unclean. The elders are saints. Your letter needlessly forces the term "saint" to exclude other meanings, such as "elder" and "spirits of the righteous ones made perfect."

You claim that only Christ and the Holy Spirit make intercession, though 1 Timothy 2:1-2 commands everyone "to make petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings on behalf of all men." Christians on Earth--your "saints"--"pray" (synonymous with "intercede") for one another in 32 New Testament passages.

Christ and the Holy Spirit intercede for us, as the Catholic Church proclaims. The official prayers of the Mass (see a sacramentary, our official Mass book) address the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit at every Mass, including feasts of Mary and the saints. Never do we pray these official prayers in the name of Mary or any other saint.

Since we believe that death brings us to life with Christ, seeing him face to face and becoming like him (1 John 3:2), we still can pray and intercede for others. We are not deprived of that ministry. John saw a vision of the elders and the angels around God's throne offering incense--not ordinary incense, but the prayers of the saints, who, as you must admit, are the Christians on Earth.

You are right. Revelation 5:8 and 8:3-4 do not portray the earthly saints making their petition to the heavenly elders and angels, but that is implied by the text since the heavenly saints and angels have earthly prayers.

I AM NOT ADDING to these passages, as you accuse, but drawing out their logical conclusions. Yes, Scripture forbids us to add to the text, but it does not prohibit us from thinking about the meaning of the text. Your limited interpretation, in fact, detracts from Scripture.

Since you do not know Greek, as the telephone conversation we had demonstrated, you are unaware that the manuscripts of Hebrews 12:24 do not have the definite article "the." They simply read "mediator."

What's more, accusing me of Pharisaism (not "Phariseeism") because I supposedly added to Scripture (which I did not) displays your misinformation about the Pharisees.

The Catholic Church does not force its members to have any particular devotion to the saints. It recommends such devotion on the basis of Scripture and prohibits anyone from condemning proper devotion. Scripture nowhere bans asking the saints in heaven for their prayers--so, please, do not add such a man-made ban.

jakelo wrote:I don't understand. All these things that people are saying about the catholic church, I've never heard or seen in church. Yes I'm Catholic and yes I have submitted myself to Christ and accepted Him as my Lord and Savior (I'm sure all of you have seen my testimony), so I believe myself to be saved. I've never heard these things like:

Mary was born sinless.
Must come to Christ through Mary
Prayers to dead saints.
Transubstantiation (that the bread and wine become the literal body and blood of Christ).
The Mass being necessary for salvation.

None of those have been taught in my church. I don't understand, am I part of a reformed Catholic church or something? The more I read everyone's cases, the more I get confused.

In this age of Catholic laxity, many have lost sight of the fact that it is a grave (i.e., mortal) sin to skip Mass on Sunday or a holy day of obligation when one is able to attend. But a glance at the liturgical life of the early Christian generations will show us the depth and urgency of Mass obligation.

For about two hundred and fifty years, from Nero to Constantine (c. 64-312 A.D.), taking part in Eucharistic worship was a crime punishable by death. It is true that official persecution of Christians by the state was intermittent. There were periods when the state was preoccupied with other matters and periods when local authorities simply chose to ignore the Christians' existence. But always, a Christian's being apprehended at worship was a capital crime.

During the times when the law against Christian worship was not being enforced, a Christian still might be martyred if someone accused him of being a Christian and he refused to deny it. Hippolytus reports the case of Callistus who brought action to recover payment of a business debt. To avoid paying, his debtors accused Callistus of being a Christian. He was thereupon scourged and condemned to work in the lead mines of Sardinia for the rest of his life. Eusebius tells of a soldier Marinus who was accused of being a Christian by a fellow soldier who envied Marinus's promotion to centurion. Within three hours after the accusation was made, Marinus was put to death (Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy [Westminister: Dacre Press, 1947], 145).

According to Dix, the Roman government had little concern about individual Christian believers. It focused its attack on Christians' expressing their beliefs in corporate worship. When a Christian lapsed under the threat of death, the state probably didn't care whether or not he was sincere. The state knew that apostasy would exclude that Christian from the assembly. And it was the assembly itself that was always the primary target of persecution.

Ironically, the Church and the state were agreed on one point: the basic test for determining if a person were Christian was whether that person shared regularly in the Church's worship. For the state, a person who professed Christian beliefs but did not express them in worship posed no danger. For the Church, beliefs not expressed in regular Eucharistic worship were meaningless.

State and Church were at odds, of course, on the significance of public worship. The state regarded sharing in the Christian assembly as an act of treason, a capital crime. The Church regarded sharing in its worship as "the supreme positive affirmation before God of the Christian life" (Dix, 147).

Vatican II repeatedly sounded this latter theme. "The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows. For the goal of apostolic endeavor is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of his church, to take part in the Sacrifice and to eat the Lord's Supper" (Constitution on the Liturgy 10).

Further: "It is the liturgy through which, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, 'the work of our redemption is accomplished,' and it is through the liturgy, especially, that the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church" (ibid. 2).

In focusing its attack on Christian worship, the Roman state struck especially hard at the clergy. It killed great numbers of them or sentenced them to penal servitude for life. It confiscated property that had been used for Christian worship and sought by all possible means to make it impossible for Christians to assemble in worship.

We can hardly imagine the atmospheres of danger in which ordinary Christians regularly risked their lives to share in the Eucharist. St. Cyprian treats as common the practice of smuggling a priest and a deacon into the prisons to celebrate the Eucharist for confessors about to be executed. In another source, we read about an imprisoned priest, Lucian, who, lying on his back, was being slowly torn apart. He celebrated the Eucharist for the last time, using his chest for an altar, and gave Communion to those lying in the darkness around him (Dix, 152).

At the height of the fiercest persecution under Diocletian (303-313), a congregation in Africa had gone into hiding and was being sought by the authorities. After being deprived of the Eucharist for weeks, they summoned a priest to celebrate, saying they could no longer go on without the Eucharist. They knew they would all be apprehended and put to death. And they were.

Those early Christians, ordinary people like us, did not risk their lives continually to go to worship simply to think about what Jesus had done for them. Nor did they regularly take their lives in their hands simply to receive Holy Communion. They could do both these things in the comparative safety of their homes. In earliest centuries, communicants were allowed to take the Blessed Sacrament to their homes and communicate themselves daily. If authorities discovered that a Christian suspect was carrying what we would call a pyx, with the Blessed Sacrament in it, the death sentence was sure to follow quickly.

What impelled those Christians to risk their lives regularly by sharing in the Eucharist?

They were convinced that only in this corporate action could each Christian receive the fulfillment of his being as a member of Christ's Body. They believed with all their hearts that in the Eucharistic action, "as in no other way," each person could take his part " in that act of sacrificial obedience to the will of God which was consummated on Calvary and which had redeemed the world, including himself."

Ordinary Christians regularly risked their lives by going to worship because they were convinced "there rested on each of the redeemed an absolute necessity so to take his own part in the self-offering of Christ, a necessity more binding even than the instinct of self-preservation. Simply as members of Christ's Body, the Church, all Christians must do this, and they can do it in no other way than that which was the last command of Jesus to his own" (ibid., 152f.; emphasis added).

Keeping in mind that Dix was an Anglican, not a Catholic, note what he says about the Catholic rule of Mass attendance: "That rule of the absolute obligation upon each of the faithful of presence at Sunday Mass under pain of mortal sin, which seems so mechanical and formalist to the Protestant, is something which was burned into the corporate mind of historic Christendom in the centuries between Nero and Diocletian."

But, adds Dix, "It rests upon something evangelical and more profound than historical memories. It [the Mass obligation] expresses as nothing else can the whole New Testament doctrine of redemption, of Jesus, God and Man, as the only savior of mankind, who intends to draw all men unto him by his sacrificial and atoning death, and of the church as the communion of redeemed sinners, the Body of Christ, corporately invested with his own mission of salvation to the world" (ibid., 154).

Now for the doctrine underlying the Church's Mass obligation. Scripture commands us to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13f). A Protestant commentator says this passage means we have been saved, we are being saved, and will finally be saved. Our grave obligation to share in the offering of the holy sacrifice arises out of these facts and especially out of the second: We are being saved.

With regard to the Eucharist, Scripture explains that "as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor. 11:26). The question is, proclaim to whom? The standard Protestant answer is, proclaim to ourselves and to the world. But this is only a by-product of the proclamation intended by Scripture. Our liturgy repeatedly declares that in the Eucharistic offering we are proclaiming the Lord's death—and all that entails—to God the Father.

Why must we proclaim the Lord's death to God the Father? Because "when we proclaim the death of the Lord you [God the Father] continue the work of our redemption" (prayer over the gifts, second Sunday in Ordinary Time; emphasis added). The same declaration occurs in another prayer over the gifts (Votive Mass B for the Holy Eucharist): "For whenever this memorial sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is renewed "(emphasis added; this prayer was previously quoted in the second excerpt from the Constitution on the Liturgy, above).

Now we can begin to understand why the Book of Hebrews often exults over the fact that the work of Christ the high priest is going on right now and will continue to the end of time. Unlike the Levitical priests, whose tenure in office was limited to their adult life, Jesus "holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them" (7:23-25; emphasis added).

Speaking of the will of the Father that the Son came to accomplish, Hebrews explains, "And this will was for us to be holy by the offering of his body made once for all by Jesus Christ" (Heb. 10:10).

The offering made once for all is continually repeated in our behalf by the celebration of the Eucharist, thus continuing the working-out of our redemption. "By virtue of that one single offering, he has achieved the eternal perfection of all whom he is sanctifying.. " Literally, "for by one offering he has perfected in perpetuity the [ones] being sanctified" (10:14; emphasis added). Note the present progressive tense: the process of sanctifying, the process of applying the benefits of Christ's redemption to each of us, is going on right now through the Eucharist.

The benefits of the objective redemption of the whole world wrought by Christ have to be applied to each individual in his unique life situation. It is a continual process of application, not a once-for-all-event. Sharing in Eucharistic worship is the primary means whereby we allow the Holy Spirit to work out our salvation in us.

The Eucharist is a true sacrifice, says the Church's Catechism, "because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the Cross, .. and because it applies its fruit" (1366; emphasis in the original). The Eucharist applies to each repentant worshiper the fruit of Christ's victory on the cross. Again, and in even stronger language, the Catechism asserts, "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being" (1325; emphasis added). Think of that! Through the Eucharist God maintains the very being of the ark of salvation, the Catholic Church.

When we take our part in the Eucharistic action, we allow Jesus to exercise his high priesthood in our behalf by re-presenting his perfect offering of himself to the Father for our salvation. We allow the Holy Spirit to apply to us the salvation won for us on the cross by God the Son. When we share in the Eucharist, we cooperate in the continuing process of our sanctification ("work out your own salvation. . ."). That process is never complete in this life. It must continue until we draw our last breath.

Now back to the original question. Why is it mortal sin, objectively speaking, to choose to stay away from Mass on Sundays or holy days of obligation? The answer is, by that decision, on that occasion, we turn our backs on Christ and on the process of our redemption. We refuse to carry out Christ's command to "do this" for the recalling and receiving of him and his salvation.

The utter folly of what we do by willfully ignoring our Mass obligation is somewhat analogous to a deep-sea diver's putting a crimp in his air line so that no air can come through to keep him alive. By a decision to miss Sunday Mass or a holy day of obligation we suspend the operation of sanctifying grace in our lives. For the sake of our eternal salvation, we must go to confession in true contrition as soon as possible and take the crimp out of our air line, so to speak, allowing sanctifying grace again to flood our souls.

Thinker wrote:Didn't the Catholics or Roman Catholics bring us the The Bible though? If they are not Christian and brought Christianity to us, then why are they not the same as us minus the added things they do?

puritan lad wrote:I'll repeat, the Roman Catholic Church is NOT a Christian Church.