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Here is the pertinent portion of that January exchange with Pastor Karl. I asked him the following question: While you went through all that Catholic schooling, were you really taught that Christ is "re-sacrificed at each Mass"? [Pastor Karl] Yes What is your basis for making this erroneous statement? [Pastor Karl] The Catholic Church. Yes, many Catholic theologians state that He is again sacrificed , now in an unbloody manner. Here from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Catholic Faith, with the Nihil Obstat of the RCC... My Response: I find your method of quoting of the Catechism most curious. For example, you did not cite paragraph 1357: "We carry out this command of the Lord by celebrating the memorial of his sacrifice. In so doing, we offer to the Father what he has himself given us: the gifts of his creation, bread and wine which, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the words of Christ, have become the body and blood of Christ. Christ is thus really and mysteriously made present." or 1366: "The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit: [Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper "on the night when he was betrayed," [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit." Even more curious to me is the fact that you omitted the key phrase from your citation of 1364 which reads "the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present". I’m not sure why you left out those parts which make it clear that Christ’s sacrifice was a one-time event that is merely made present again at each Mass, since Christ is not constrained by space and time. This belief is even supported by your own quoting of that portion of 1367 which reads "The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice." You must have the abridged Protestant version..? |
If one is to place faith in Jesus alone- the Jesus of the Bible, whose one sacrifice paid for all sin, for their/redemption/forgiveness/salvation, but then insists that they must belong to a certain fellowship and follow certain rules of conduct to be saved/in the kingdom/etc. then where is their faith really?[Me] If 2x2s are not Christians, what are they?
They have made salvation Jesus plus affiliation with a cetain [sic] group. That is not saving faith in Christ alone, but in a set of beliefs.
Also, only a perfect sacrifice was acceptable to God in payment for our sin. No man could have been as such. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Bible says that no one seeks after God, no not one.
If Jesus was just a man, and really good man, our pattern maker, then he was just an imperfect man and could not have been an acceptable sacrifice to God. Only the God Man ofthe [sic] Bible, born of the Spirit and the Virgin Mary, free from the taint of sinful nature, could have offered Himself as the acceptable sacrifice, able to provide atonement for all sin, pleasing to God.
Couple that with the emphasis on the external, what to wear, what to eat, not to marry, the method over the message, and you have a new group of Pharisees, much like those who [sic] Jesus told did not know the Father. The pharisees were condemned by Him for their emphasis on the external, for not caring for the poor and the outcast.
They must repent of lowering Christ from being fully God to something less, and repent from thinking that their works would gain them any standing/merit/favor from God towards their redemption.
Also Paul tells us that false teachers will come along teaching the kinds of things that this group teaches. We are to test them, proving the teaching as true or false. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.