Is the Eucharist cannibalism?

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dzheremi

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Why is that version different from this one? Your’s seems to be quite a bit longer than this version.


I have no idea. The version I posted comes from copticchurch.net, a Coptic Orthodox website. I can't vouch for what New Advent has or why it is the way it is.
 
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Xeno.of.athens

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If I may ask, why did you choose Roman Catholicism? Was it the result of studying its authenticity or was it the result of blind faith in what someone told you?
A far more profound reason was behind it, the local Catholic Church was the nearest to my home.
 
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jas3

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The difference in the New Advent/ANF version of the liturgy and the Coptic version seems to be a result of developments sometime around the fifth century. From CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Alexandrine Liturgy :

The Coptic liturgies​


After the Monophysite schism the Copts composed a number of liturgies in their own language. Three of these became the most important and are still used: those of St. Cyril, St. Gregory (of Nazianzus), and St. Basil. They differ only in the Anaphoras which are joined to a common Preparation and Mass of the Catechumens. The Anaphora of St. Cyril, also called that of St. Mark, together with the part of the liturgy that is common to all, corresponds exactly to the Greek St. Mark. When it was translated into Coptic a great part of the formulas, such as the Trisagion, the deacon's litany, said at the beginning of the Mass of the Faithful, nearly all the short greetings like eirene pasin ano hymon tas kardias ta hagia tois hagiois, and everything said by the people had already become universally known in Greek. These parts were then left in that language, and they are still written or printed in Greek, although in Coptic characters, throughout the Coptic Liturgy. A few prayers have been added to the original Greek Liturgy, such as a very definite act of faith in the Real Presence said by the priest before his Communion. There are also Greek versions of the other two Coptic Anaphoras: those of St. Basil and St. Gregory.
According to the article, the liturgy of St. Mark was originally in Greek, and it was during the process of its translation into Coptic that the prayer in question was added. The Greek version is what the ANF text is based on.
 
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BNR32FAN

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The difference in the New Advent/ANF version of the liturgy and the Coptic version seems to be a result of developments sometime around the fifth century. From CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Alexandrine Liturgy :


According to the article, the liturgy of St. Mark was originally in Greek, and it was during the process of its translation into Coptic that the prayer in question was added. The Greek version is what the ANF text is based on.
Thank you this is what I suspected since the Coptic version was a much newer version. So we don’t have Mark actually saying that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood just that there is the real Spiritual presence of Jesus in the Eucharist which I wouldn’t disagree with at all.
 
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BobRyan

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Cannibalism implies here the actual chewing, swallowing, and metabolizing of flesh and blood either after or during the killing of a human being; at least, if we stick to definition #1.


Catholics do not do any of this in the Eucharist.
I think we can all agree on that point.
 
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jas3

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Thank you this is what I suspected since the Coptic version was a much newer version. So we don’t have Mark actually saying that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood just that there is the real Spiritual presence of Jesus in the Eucharist which I wouldn’t disagree with at all.
There's still an affirmation of the Eucharist being the actual body and blood:
Send down upon us also and upon this bread and upon these chalices Your Holy Spirit, that by His all-powerful and divine influence He may sanctify and consecrate them, and make this bread the body.

The People.

Amen.

The Priest (aloud).

And this cup the blood of the new testament, of the very Lord, and God, and Saviour, and universal King Christ Jesus.
It simply says that the bread and wine are the body and blood. To argue that that, especially in the context of what we know the early church believed, teaches only a spiritual presence seems overly skeptical to me.
 
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Akita Suggagaki

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If I may ask, why did you choose Roman Catholicism? Was it the result of studying its authenticity or was it the result of blind faith in what someone told you?
You didn't ask me but I was baptized into it at one month old. I went to Catholic elementary school grades 1-6.
I went off into Eastern religious studies in college but came back for the love of Christ and His sacraments in spits of all the other stuff that has gone on.

When we talk about transubstantiation we usually don't talk about "substance" so no one really deals with what it might mean.
 
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dzheremi

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Thank you this is what I suspected since the Coptic version was a much newer version. So we don’t have Mark actually saying that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood just that there is the real Spiritual presence of Jesus in the Eucharist which I wouldn’t disagree with at all.

The Coptic version is not a "much newer" version, as the relationship between the two is complicated enough as to preclude being able to say that one is definitively much older than the other, as in truth they developed in tandem. The oldest Egyptian anaphora (without respect to later divisions between Christians in Egypt, which would not have happened yet at the time when this anaphora was still in use) is in Greek, but just to illustrate the sort of thing I'm talking about, the relevant article in the Coptic Encyclopedia (written by priest, Biblical scholar, and Benedictine monk Aelred Cody) contains the following insights:

Although both the Coptic Saint Cyril and the Greek Saint Mark contain textual variants peculiar to the one or to the other, both seem to be derived from the same recension of the old Egyptian anaphora, whose earliest textual witnesses are fragments in Greek. A few Coptic fragments in the Sahidic dialect have also been found. The extant witnesses to the text of the present Coptic Saint Cyril, none of them earlier than the twelfth century, are in the Bohairic dialect, but a Greek text apparently meant for occasional use in the Coptic church survives in a few manuscripts, one of which has been published. It is still impossible to say whether the Bohairic version was made from a Greek text or from a Sahidic intermediary. In general, the readings of the early fragments, both Greek and Sahidic, are closer to those of Coptic Saint Cyril than to surviving manuscripts of the Melchite Saint Mark.​
Superficial influence of the Syrian Liturgy of Saint James is less evident in Saint Cyril than in Saint Mark, and the Byzantinizing tendencies that appear in extant manuscripts of the Liturgy of Saint Mark are absent from the Anaphora of Saint Cyril. On the other hand, Coptic Saint Cyril has textual additions of its own that are not found in the anaphoric part of Melchite Saint Mark.​

+++

In other words, they're both derived from what is assumed to be the same original Greek source, but it's not like Greek Mark as served by the Byzantines in Egypt is "the original", whereas Coptic Mark/Cyril is a much later copy of that. So I'm afraid that New Advent containing a digital version of the Greek liturgy as served in Egypt does not explain nor validate your still very wrong assumptions about my Church's liturgy and what it teaches or contains. So again: Yes, the liturgy of St. Mark does very explicitly inculcate and require a physical/non-memorialist understanding of the Eucharist (as the Greeks themselves also have in Egypt, as everywhere, so even if your assumptions were fact, I don't know why you would think that Coptic Mark/Cyril being "much newer" is somehow proof of anything).
 
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The Liturgist

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Ok I thought the discussion was about the Eucharist being the actual body and blood of Christ, not the Spiritual presence of Him. The liturgy of Mark provides evidence of a Spiritual presence not a physical presence.

That’s totally untrue…
 
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The Liturgist

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The Coptic version is not a "much newer" version, as the relationship between the two is complicated enough as to preclude being able to say that one is definitively much older than the other, as in truth they developed in tandem. The oldest Egyptian anaphora (without respect to later divisions between Christians in Egypt, which would not have happened yet at the time when this anaphora was still in use) is in Greek, but just to illustrate the sort of thing I'm talking about, the relevant article in the Coptic Encyclopedia (written by priest, Biblical scholar, and Benedictine monk Aelred Cody) contains the following insights:

Although both the Coptic Saint Cyril and the Greek Saint Mark contain textual variants peculiar to the one or to the other, both seem to be derived from the same recension of the old Egyptian anaphora, whose earliest textual witnesses are fragments in Greek. A few Coptic fragments in the Sahidic dialect have also been found. The extant witnesses to the text of the present Coptic Saint Cyril, none of them earlier than the twelfth century, are in the Bohairic dialect, but a Greek text apparently meant for occasional use in the Coptic church survives in a few manuscripts, one of which has been published. It is still impossible to say whether the Bohairic version was made from a Greek text or from a Sahidic intermediary. In general, the readings of the early fragments, both Greek and Sahidic, are closer to those of Coptic Saint Cyril than to surviving manuscripts of the Melchite Saint Mark.​
Superficial influence of the Syrian Liturgy of Saint James is less evident in Saint Cyril than in Saint Mark, and the Byzantinizing tendencies that appear in extant manuscripts of the Liturgy of Saint Mark are absent from the Anaphora of Saint Cyril. On the other hand, Coptic Saint Cyril has textual additions of its own that are not found in the anaphoric part of Melchite Saint Mark.​

+++

In other words, they're both derived from what is assumed to be the same original Greek source, but it's not like Greek Mark as served by the Byzantines in Egypt is "the original", whereas Coptic Mark/Cyril is a much later copy of that. So I'm afraid that New Advent containing a digital version of the Greek liturgy as served in Egypt does not explain nor validate your still very wrong assumptions about my Church's liturgy and what it teaches or contains. So again: Yes, the liturgy of St. Mark does very explicitly inculcate and require a physical/non-memorialist understanding of the Eucharist (as the Greeks themselves also have in Egypt, as everywhere, so even if your assumptions were fact, I don't know why you would think that Coptic Mark/Cyril being "much newer" is somehow proof of anything).

The version of the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark contained on New Advent is very strange, and they provide no manuscript attestation of it. It is not the current 1893 recension by the Church of Alexandria, and it is also not consistent with the oldest texts (the Strasbourg fragment and St. Serapion), and it is clearly a recent translation as indicated by the lack of second personal pronouns. However, I have no idea why @BNR32FAN thinks it asserts only a spiritual presence, given that it has a very strong, very explicit Epiclesis which is stronger than the Epiclesis in the Byzantine version of the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, and much stronger than the vestigial Epiclesis in the traditional Roman Canon, and in Eucharistic Prayers 1, 2, 3 and 4 from the Novus Ordo Missae (prayer 1 being a simplified version of the Roman canon).
 
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The Liturgist

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For the record, here is the most complete version of the Greek Orthodox Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, as documented (but not revised) by St. Ma
Yes I do believe they all accept the first 19.

We don’t! The Eastern Orthodox only accept the first seven of the Roman Catholic councils, plus a few councils the Catholics reject: the Quinisext Council, also known as the Council of Trullo, an alternate Eighth Ecumenical Council which the Catholics initially agreed to but later rejected (sometimes called the “Photian Synod”), and finally the Council which upheld the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas against those of Barlaam, who quite the Eastern Orthodox in protest and became Roman Catholic.

The Oriental Orthodox only accept the first three, but share in common a rejection of the actual theological errors that the EO rejected at the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth (that is to say, Eutychianism, Monergism, Universalism, Monothelitism, Iconoclasm and the Filioque), but regarding the fourth ecumenical Council in Chalcedon, they could not accept the Tome of Leo due to apparent inconsistency between it and the Christology of St. Cyril of Alexandria, or the deposition of Pope St. Dioscorus of Alexandria, since he had been deceived by Eutyches and when he learned of it, before Chalcedon, he anathematized Eutyches), and unfortunately the sunsequent councils all included a statement expressing approval all of the previois Ecumemical councils
The difference in the New Advent/ANF version of the liturgy and the Coptic version seems to be a result of developments sometime around the fifth century. From CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Alexandrine Liturgy :


According to the article, the liturgy of St. Mark was originally in Greek, and it was during the process of its translation into Coptic that the prayer in question was added. The Greek version is what the ANF text is based on.

I should advise you that the Catholic Encyclopedia was very good in 1911 but it is obsolete now except when it comes to describing the RCC as it was during the Papacy of Pope St. Pius X, and a few other areas where its coverage of history was well informed. When it comes to the Eastern liturgies, it was very good for 1911 but since that time almost everyhting it says about them other than descriptive information about Byzantine Catholic, Armenian, Assyrian and Maronite liturgical books has become dated.

For example, when it comes to the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark / St. Cyril, since that time we have discovered the Strasbourg fragment and also the West became aware of the Syriac Orthodox version of St. Cyril, and the Anaphora from the Euchologion of St. Serapion of Thmuis, the oldest surviving intact liturgical service book (aside from fragments like Strasbourg or liturgies quoted in other works, such as the Anaphora of the Apostles being quo).

In particular there has been much new scholarship on all of the Eastern liturgies.

I recently provided in another thread a bibliography of my works of liturgical scholarship which I would be happy to find for you.
 
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Markie Boy

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For the sake of trying to find a way to be in line with what Jesus taught - If we just at communion said what Jesus did - This is my body.......etc., do this in memory of me. - and refused to define anything more, what would be the problem?

If someone challenged that, the only reply was, We are using His words and not adding to or taking away anything - including extra definitions that people had to agree with.
 
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Valletta

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For the sake of trying to find a way to be in line with what Jesus taught - If we just at communion said what Jesus did - This is my body.......etc., do this in memory of me. - and refused to define anything more, what would be the problem?

If someone challenged that, the only reply was, We are using His words and not adding to or taking away anything - including extra definitions that people had to agree with.
There are a lot of areas of theology that I am not particularly interested in, I just don't worry about the exact definitions nor do you need to. The priest does what Jesus commanded and repeats the words of Jesus at the consecration, and as long as you have faith that Jesus spoke truly about eating His flesh and drinking His blood you sure don't have to be an expert on defining transubstantiation. For example,"transubstantiation" was not defined in the time Jesus walked on earth. As to the dialogue in John 6, Jesus had just performed miracles and then asked his disciples to believe about eating his true flesh and blood, and even after the miracles some found it a "hard saying" and walked away. Those who stayed with Him accepted his words upon faith. That is what is most important. Remember too that we are all different people, and some strive to find theological definitions and answers--we all contribute differently.
 
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BNR32FAN

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The Coptic version is not a "much newer" version, as the relationship between the two is complicated enough as to preclude being able to say that one is definitively much older than the other, as in truth they developed in tandem.
I said that because I noticed the date on that version was 1998 if I’m not mistaken.
 
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dzheremi

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I said that because I noticed the date on that version was 1998 if I’m not mistaken.

:oops:

So you think a copyright date for the specific explanatory version of a liturgical text that is found online at copticchurch.net means that the liturgy that it is describing was authored in that year? Like the Liturgy of St. Mark didn't exist until 1998, or 1911 in the case of Greek Mark as you found it at New Advent? What?

Forgive me, I don't intend to attribute to you thoughts and ideas that you do not have...I just don't know how else to understand what you've written just now in the context of the discussion we've been having. That can't possibly be a serious idea. Please.
 
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That’s totally untrue…
No I do apologize I do see mention of the body and blood farther down in section 14. I must’ve overlooked it before so I do apologize for that. I also see mention of Him being “the spotless Lamb” in section 12. Is this intended to be taken literally as well?
 
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BNR32FAN

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For the record, here is the most complete version of the Greek Orthodox Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, as documented (but not revised) by St. Ma


We don’t! The Eastern Orthodox only accept the first seven of the Roman Catholic councils, plus a few councils the Catholics reject: the Quinisext Council, also known as the Council of Trullo, an alternate Eighth Ecumenical Council which the Catholics initially agreed to but later rejected (sometimes called the “Photian Synod”), and finally the Council which upheld the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas against those of Barlaam, who quite the Eastern Orthodox in protest and became Roman Catholic.

The Oriental Orthodox only accept the first three, but share in common a rejection of the actual theological errors that the EO rejected at the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth (that is to say, Eutychianism, Monergism, Universalism, Monothelitism, Iconoclasm and the Filioque), but regarding the fourth ecumenical Council in Chalcedon, they could not accept the Tome of Leo due to apparent inconsistency between it and the Christology of St. Cyril of Alexandria, or the deposition of Pope St. Dioscorus of Alexandria, since he had been deceived by Eutyches and when he learned of it, before Chalcedon, he anathematized Eutyches), and unfortunately the sunsequent councils all included a statement expressing approval all of the previois Ecumemical councils


I should advise you that the Catholic Encyclopedia was very good in 1911 but it is obsolete now except when it comes to describing the RCC as it was during the Papacy of Pope St. Pius X, and a few other areas where its coverage of history was well informed. When it comes to the Eastern liturgies, it was very good for 1911 but since that time almost everyhting it says about them other than descriptive information about Byzantine Catholic, Armenian, Assyrian and Maronite liturgical books has become dated.

For example, when it comes to the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark / St. Cyril, since that time we have discovered the Strasbourg fragment and also the West became aware of the Syriac Orthodox version of St. Cyril, and the Anaphora from the Euchologion of St. Serapion of Thmuis, the oldest surviving intact liturgical service book (aside from fragments like Strasbourg or liturgies quoted in other works, such as the Anaphora of the Apostles being quo).

In particular there has been much new scholarship on all of the Eastern liturgies.

I recently provided in another thread a bibliography of my works of liturgical scholarship which I would be happy to find for you.
Again I apologize I’m not familiar with all of the ecumenical councils, the only ones I was aware of that the EOC rejected were Florence and Trent.
 
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BNR32FAN

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:oops:

So you think a copyright date for the specific explanatory version of a liturgical text that is found online at copticchurch.net means that the liturgy that it is describing was authored in that year? Like the Liturgy of St. Mark didn't exist until 1998, or 1911 in the case of Greek Mark as you found it at New Advent? What?

Forgive me, I don't intend to attribute to you thoughts and ideas that you do not have...I just don't know how else to understand what you've written just now in the context of the discussion we've been having. That can't possibly be a serious idea. Please.
No of course not, I just noticed differences in the version I found on NewAdvent and the version the other poster quoted, sorry I don’t recall his name. So I suspected that there might’ve been changes made to the version he cited because of the date that was on it because I thought it might be a version date. All I can do is search for information online I can’t attest to its authenticity, authorship, or date of origin if that information isn’t included in the website. So I apologize if it is an inaccurate version because none of this information was provided.

Edit: ok it was you who originally posted that version. I thought so but just didn’t want to go back and look while I was writing this post.
 
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Ok so after contemplating all of this discussion I need to ask, what are we actually talking about here? I need to clarify, you’re not actually saying that the bread is actual flesh and the wine is not actual blood, am I correct in this? Because if Jesus is actually Spiritually present in the bread and the blood then I can see how the bread is His actual body and the wine is His actual blood since His spirit resides within them. This I can understand, but if we’re saying that the bread is actual meat and the wine is actual blood then I would have to strongly disagree because obviously no one is actually chewing and tasting meat or tasting any actual blood when they receive the Eucharist.
 
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Akita Suggagaki

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Ok so after contemplating all of this discussion I need to ask, what are we actually talking about here? I need to clarify, you’re not actually saying that the bread is actual flesh and the wine is not actual blood, am I correct in this? Because if Jesus is actually Spiritually present in the bread and the blood then I can see how the bread is His actual body and the wine is His actual blood since His spirit resides within them. This I can understand, but if we’re saying that the bread is actual meat and the wine is actual blood then I would have to strongly disagree because obviously no one is actually chewing and tasting meat or tasting any actual blood when they receive the Eucharist.
Right. Cant have it both ways , real body but not cannibalism. But Spiritually present, conceptually transubstantiated. I am not speaking Catholic view here. I think William of Occam tried conceptual interpretation and had to back down. "That said, there is really no question that Ockham supports a view of transubstantiation because it is the determination of the Church, while simultaneously arguing that consubstantiation avoids the numerous philosophical problems that, from his perspective, bedevil transubstantiation."

 
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