Is the Eucharist cannibalism?

[dzheremi]

People in small groups, such as Jack Chick's group, label Catholics and Orthodox people as pagans. Others in groups of various sizes use more mild language yet send missionaries to Catholic and Orthodox lands to convert Catholic and Orthodox Christians to their idea of Christianity, because at heart they are convinced that neither Catholics nor Orthodox people are Christians.

Okay.

Your standard remains steady, others have their own standards and among them are the standards that reject Orthodoxy as something essentially non-Christian

Why does that matter, though? If it doesn't do anything to affect what the standard is (and it doesn't), then who cares what anyone says? Am I supposed to be quaking in my boots because a Jack Chick-type group or a million of them think they can do what the Romans, and later the Chalcedonians, and later the Muslims, and now the western secularists haven't been able to do in 2,000 years of Christianity in my particular Church's homeland? Because I'm not. You seem to be under the impression that it matters a whole lot if one group decides to withdraw the label of 'Christian' from another group. It really doesn't. The vast majority of western Christians who I am around every day (and I am one myself, too) have no idea of anything in the history of Christianity outside of Protestantism and Catholicism, so in that sense I wouldn't expect anything else. That's the result of a collective historical memory of Christianity in a large portion of the western world that essentially hops around from first-century Jerusalem to Augustine, from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, from Thomas Aquinas to the Protestant Reformation, and from the Protestant Reformation to now as though absolutely nothing of interest could've happened in between any of these points if it didn't involve Christianity in Europe. Even huge figures in eastern Christianity like St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Jacob of Serug, or St. Gregory the Illuminator are considered very 'outré' for that very reason, even though in the case of St. Gregory, the place that he illuminated by his preaching is in Europe (well, Armenia is in the Caucasus, which is sort of a grey area to a lot of people, but the country is a member of several European political organizations, such as the Council of Europe and the Assembly of European Regions).

If all this is the case, then what does it even mean to say that such-and-such group doesn't recognize Orthodoxy as Christian? Not really anything, as far as I can tell, because all that is doing is showcasing their own ignorance as though it were a virtue when really it is to their detriment. St. Ephrem, St. Jacob of Serug, St. Gregory, etc. are thus relegated to saints for 'other' people whose Christianity is by default dubious, because people who don't know anything about it assume it's not as good or as pure or whatever as whatever form of Christianity they themselves practice, which was likely born within the last five centuries or so (often on the more recent end of that range).

And for sure, the same thing can be said in a certain way about the very summary I wrote above concerning westerners' own approach to Christian history (as it does not hold for many western Christians; the Anglicans, for instance, have seemingly historically had very friendly relations with Christian churches that are largely non-European that is at least partially rooted in their own interest in those churches' histories, as several 19th century works on the Coptic Orthodox Church and Syriac Orthodox Church can attest), the difference being that I have never heard anyone in my communion try to make the case that such people are therefore not Christian. We don't play the 'so-and-so is not Christian for reasons unrelated to their acceptance of the historical standards of Christian belief and practice' game, I would guess because that's a hard game to play while also recognizing that such standards do, in fact, exist.

and it is the same, or similar, "others" who also label people "wishy washy liberals" even when the people so labelled are not especially "liberal".

I don't know that that's the case. Politically I am probably at least a bit to the left (on some issues, anyway) of several posters who have marked my posts in this thread 'like' or 'agree'. It's just that I refuse to view my religion from the viewpoint of American partisan politics. The first Coptic Orthodox churches in the United States were only established in the 1960s to begin with, and these kinds of divisions don't map on to Egyptian politics very cleanly anyway (what looks very 'conservative' in an American context is 'liberal' in an Egyptian one, because in Egypt the closest analogue to the American 'right-wing' is literally filled with supporters of terrorism against religious minorities in the name of the country's dominant religion and attendant sociopolitical structure).

And then there are the one-issue "others" who pick some touch-stone issue and decide one is not a Christian if one doesn't agree with them on it. So there isn't really an agreed standard among professing Christians.

That's because professing to be a Christian doesn't mean much if it is divorced from the very real standard that our religion already has. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because some percentage of society strangely believes that the Earth is flat, therefore there is no wider consensus that it is round.

Are you thinking of the Germanic tribes that were Arians? You ought to know that they were never Catholic, and their learned their Arianism from the Byzantines - the Byzantines had long periods where Arians Patriarchs occupied the bishop's seat in Constantinople.

No. I'm thinking about Christianity within the Roman Empire (either/whichever side), like I wrote.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

The term “woke“ was used by the left and before them, by certain segments of the African American political community in reaction to the tragic racism that persisted into the 1960s, albeit the specific movements who coined the term woke I regard as less impressive than those following the ideology of the venerable Dr. Martin Luther King, who by virtue of being a slain clergyman killed for promoting Christian values is in my opinion a Protestant Saint, specifically a Heiromartyr.

Quite true, but not anymore. And @MarkRohfrietsch was not using it in a positive sense as his posts indicate. In those posts "woke" and "politically correct" are attitudes to be despised.

As for whether or not political terminology is appropriate in Christian theological discussions, liberal theology and Liberal Christianity and conservative theology and Conservative Christianity exist, and there are forums for both groups on CF.com, and a forum for moderates, and different people have accused me of being liberal and conservative, so naturally I have participated in all three forums and have friends from all three camps. There are also other politically charged theological movements in Christianity, such as Liberation Theology, Queer Theology, Womanist Theology and Dominionism, among others.

I too am accused of both liberalism and conservativism, some see my posts too liberal for them while others see them as too conservative for them, I am neither a conservative nor a liberal as those terms are used in Protestant circles. I am a Catholic, I believe the creeds, I accept the canons of the councils, and I acknowledge the development of doctrine and that historical context needs to be grasped and used to understand ancient documents and documents from a few centuries ago. So in one sense (non-protestant) I am quite conservative and in another sense (non-protestant) I am quite modern, yet not "liberal" as protestants might use the term. And I am most certainly not a Marxist despite @MarkRohfrietsch's post accusing me of being such because I had the temerity to say that there's a slippery slope for those who seek to create a church of "true believers" which ends in narrow bigotry if one allows one's self to slide sufficiently far down the slope.

But since the issue I've dealt with in this thread's recent posts is chiefly the protestant one, by which some conservative groups seek to fix or correct or exclude members of their own churches and non-members who are from other churches that they count as too liberal, labelling them as something along the lines of "wishy-washy-liberals" and also as non-true-believers. The implication of the labels being that such persons are not Christians, because they do not say the shibboleths that the small groups say. I wanted to caution @Markie Boy in the hope of helping him with his stated desire to see Christians join together in some kind of union on some basic issues . So, since this is the issue I am dealing with the other issues you've raised are not encompassed by my previous posts. We can discuss the issues you've raised if you like, maybe in a different thread, since I do want - as far as possible - to keep this thread as close to the original post's proposition as possible.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Why does that matter, though?

It matters because @Markie Boy expressed a laudable desire for union on some basic matters between Christians of every sort and I wanted to caution him about the corrosive tendency of seeking "true believers" by excluding Christians who differ from one's own group's distinctive teachings on matters touching morals, doctrine, and whatever else may be a shibboleth for each group. My motive is to promote goodness and charity between Christians but sometimes people infer incorrect meanings and motives in what they read in a post. This it is that this thread has had a brief interlude into alleged politics and such and replies that seek to correct the incorrect inferences.

 

[The Liturgist]

And @MarkRohfrietsch was not using it in a positive sense as his posts indicate. In those posts "woke" and "politically correct" are attitudes to be despised.

Indeed. And I agree with @MarkRohfrietsch in this respect wholeheartedly. He and I are among the most anti-Woke members of the forum!

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Indeed. And I agree with @MarkRohfrietsch in this respect wholeheartedly. He and I are among the most anti-Woke members of the forum!

One is woke regarding a specific matter because one is aware of its causes and who benefits from it. So, why be anti-woke?

 

[The Liturgist]

One is woke regarding a specific matter because one is aware of its causes and who benefits from it. So, why be anti-woke?

We are opposed to political correctness and what one might call the “Woke movement” in Hollywood, et cetera. Now i don’t want to speak too much for Mark but I do know he and I share a framework of traditional Christian morality to an extreme extent. We have also slowly hammered out our various differences of theological opinion so that most of them no longer exist; one of the very few we still have is over intercessory prayer to saints, but we both believe in venerating saints. Really my friendship with Mark has been one of the best things to happen to me on ChristianForums.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

We are opposed to political correctness and what one might call the “Woke movement” in Hollywood, et cetera. Now i don’t want to speak too much for Mark but I do know he and I share a framework of traditional Christian morality to an extreme extent.

Political correctness is to refrain from using words and language that is designed to offend one or another minority, so why is it bad?

 

[The Liturgist]

Political correctness is to refrain from using words and language that is designed to offend one or another minority, so why is it bad?

That depends on the so-called minority. For example, I am obviously opposed to the use of racial slurs, but this is not what I mean by political correctness. Rather, I mean that I will not capitulate in my language to avoid offending sexually immoral people who try to claim their perversion should be a protected part of their identity. Sodomy is sin, and is not intrinsic but rather extrinsic to the person, and is inherently disordered, as your church taught and hopefully will continue to teach, the disaster of Fiducia Supplicans notwithstanding.

 

[AlexB23]

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. Though Christ is substantially present—body, blood, soul and divinity—in the Eucharist, the accidents of bread and wine remain. Here it is important to define terms. When the Church teaches the bread and wine at Mass are transubstantiated into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, we have to understand what this means. The word, transubstantiation, literally means “transformation of the substance.” “Substance” refers to that which makes a thing essentially what it is. Thus, “substance” and “essence” are synonyms. For example, man is essentially comprised of body, soul, intellect, and will. If you remove any one of these, he is no longer a human person. The accidents or accidentals would be things like hair color, eye color, size, weight, etc. One can change any of these and there would be no change in the essence or substance of the person.

In the Eucharist, after the priest consecrates the bread and wine and they are, in fact, transubstantiated into the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord, our Lord is then entirely present. Neither bread nor wine remains. However, the accidents of bread and wine (size, weight, taste, texture) do remain. Hence, the essential reason why Catholics are not guilty of cannibalism is the fact that we do not receive our Lord in a cannibalistic form. We receive him in the form of bread and wine. The two are qualitatively different.

To dive a bit deeper into this, I would suggest there are at least six reasons why the Eucharist and cannibalism are qualitatively, or essentially, different things.

1. In cannibalism, the person consumed is, generally speaking, killed. Jesus is not killed. We receive him in his resurrected body and we do not affect him in the least. In fact, he is not changed in the slightest. He changes us! This is far from cannibalism.
2. In cannibalism, only part of the victim is consumed. One does not eat the bones, sinews, etc. In the Eucharist, we consume every bit of the Lord, eyes, hair, blood, bones, etc. But again, I emphasize that we do so under the appearances of bread and wine. This is essentially different than cannibalism, which leads to our next point:
3. In cannibalism, the accidents of blood and flesh are consumed. One must tear flesh, drink blood, etc. In the Eucharist, we only consume the accidents of bread and wine. This is not cannibalism.
4. In cannibalism, one only consumes a body, not a person. The person and the soul of the victim would have departed. In the Eucharist, we consume the entire person of Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity. One cannot separate Christ’s body from his Divine Person. Thus, this is a spiritual communion as well as a physical consuming. We become one with Christ on a mystical level in this sacrament. This is far from cannibalism.
5. In cannibalism, one only receives temporal nourishment that is fleeting. In the Eucharist, we receive the divine life of God through faith and receiving our Lord well-disposed, i.e. we receive everlasting life (cf. John 6:52-55). This is essentially different than cannibalism.
6. In cannibalism, once one eats the flesh of the victim, it is gone forever. In the Eucharist, we can consume him every day and, as mentioned in #1, we do not change him one bit. He remains the same.

Final Thoughts

One always has to be careful when applying terms and concepts to God. Many people miss the mark with regard to the faith because they make the mistake of applying terms in a human way to God who is infinite. We could speak of Mormons who claim God, the Father, has a physical body because the Scriptures speak of God’s “back parts,” in Exodus, or “the hand of Lord,” the “eyes of the Lord,” etc. You’ve probably heard the classic rejoinder to these Mormon claims: “Psalm 91 refers to God’s ‘feathers and wings’. Does this mean God is some sort of bird?”

The error here, of course, is rooted in interpreting texts that were not intended to be used in a strict, literal sense, as if they were. “Back parts” have to mean “back parts,” right?

When it comes to the Trinity, some who deny this essential teaching will claim Christians are teaching God to be “three beings” because we say God is “three persons.” However, person, as it relates to God, does not mean there are three beings. There is an essential difference between “person” as it relates to God, and “person” as it relates to men and angels.

We could cite a litany of examples containing similar problems.

When it gets down to brass tacks, the nay-sayers who reject the Eucharist, and most specifically, those who accuse us Catholics of cannibalism because we say we “consume” the Lord in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity, fail to understand what we actually mean by consuming the Lord. They end up objecting just as the unbelieving “Jews” of John 6:52, who said, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

If you are thinking about a cannibalistic blood-meal, he can’t. But if you understand, as Jesus said, “It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail, the words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life,” then you understand. The Eucharist represents a miracle confected by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God can do that.

[Are Catholics Cannibals?]

Man, this thread has kinda gone off the rails, from discussing the Eucharist to "woke movements". Alright, I am taking it back to the original post, and here is my take on this, as I am a Catholic myself.


The question of whether the Eucharist, which is the central sacrament of the Catholic Church representing the body and blood of Christ, can be considered cannibalism is a complex issue that requires an examination of the doctrinal, biblical, and scientific perspectives.

Catholic Doctrinal Analysis:
From a Catholic perspective, the Eucharist is not cannibalism. The Church teaches that during the consecration at Mass, the bread and wine are transformed into the real presence of Christ's body and blood without undergoing any physical change that would involve consumption or harm to human flesh. This transformation is called transubstantiation. The Church holds this belief based on its interpretation of the Scriptures, particularly the words of Jesus at the Last Supper when he said, "This is my body" and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:19-20).

Protestant Biblical Analysis:
The New Testament accounts of the Last Supper indicate that Jesus spoke of his body and blood being given for the salvation of his disciples (1 Corinthians 10:16). However, it is essential to understand that these words were not meant to be taken literally as an invitation to consume human flesh and blood. In the ancient world, the term "body" could refer to a group or community, and "blood" was a symbol of covenant relationship.

Scientific Analysis:
From a scientific perspective, the Eucharist does not contain human flesh or blood, as the elements undergo a transformation during the consecration. There is no biological evidence that the transubstantiation occurs or that the Eucharist contains human remains. Rarely, the Eucharist can transform into actual flesh and blood that is visible with the human eye, known as a Eucharistic miracle. The flesh is of a man who was tortured (Jesus). No modern scientific explanation for these physical transformations exist, so therefore it is supernatural.

Conclusion:
In conclusion, the Catholic belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not cannibalism as it does not involve the consumption of human flesh or blood. The doctrinal, biblical, and scientific analyses all support this understanding.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

That depends on the so-called minority. For example, I am obviously opposed to the use of racial slurs, but this is not what I mean by political correctness. Rather, I mean that I will not capitulate in my language to avoid offending sexually immoral people who try to claim their perversion should be a protected part of their identity. Sodomy is sin, and is not intrinsic but rather extrinsic to the person, and is inherently disordered, as your church taught and hopefully will continue to teach, the disaster of Fiducia Supplicans notwithstanding.

Using language intended to offend is not excused by holding a view that particular behaviours are inherently disordered. Now, in accordance with the topic - calling Catholics cannibals because of Catholic belief about the real presence in the holy eucharist is language intended to offend and is as a consequence politically incorrect. It is a bad thing to do.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Using language intended to offend is not excused by holding a view that particular behaviours are inherently disordered. Now, in accordance with the topic - calling Catholics cannibals because of Catholic belief about the real presence in the holy eucharist is language intended to offend and is as a consequence politically incorrect. It is a bad thing to do.

Wokeness is social justice for militant minorities that result in inequality and social injustice against others by imposing their values upon those who can not in good justice embrace such values that are at odds with Scripture, forbidden by scripture, or abhorrent to natural law.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Wokeness is social justice for militant minorities that result in inequality and social injustice against others by imposing their values upon those who can not in good justice embrace such values that are at odds with Scripture, forbidden by scripture, or abhorrent to natural law.

Being awake to the meaning of and causes of behaviours that various minorities engage in, and which some Christians regard as at odds with scripture, forbidden by scripture, or abhorrent to what some Christians believe to be natural law, is not a good reason to use language designed to offend when engaging in discussion about the topic or with members of the minorities allegedly engaging in these behaviours. What benefit will a Christian receive or what enlightenment will a minority member receive by the use of deliberately offensive language when discussing these matters? How, for example, would a Catholic Christian benefit from having their belief in and reception of the holy eucharist, benefit from having Catholic belief described as cannibalism?

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Being awake to the meaning of and causes of behaviours that various minorities engage in, and which some Christians regard as at odds with scripture, forbidden by scripture, or abhorrent to what some Christians believe to be natural law, is not a good reason to use language designed to offend when engaging in discussion about the topic or with members of the minorities allegedly engaging in these behaviours. What benefit will a Christian receive or what enlightenment will a minority member receive by the use of deliberately offensive language when discussing these matters? How, for example, would a Catholic Christian benefit from having their belief in and reception of the holy eucharist, benefit from having Catholic belief described as cannibalism?

As a confessional Lutheran, I too find this offensive, and both myself and my fellow Lutherans have been accused of the same. If others are so fearful of our theology, maybe it is because they fear being consumed by devout, traditional Christians. Maybe easier to reconcile this to themselves than the concept of enduring eternal fire without being consumed.

 

[Valletta]

The term “woke“ was used by the left and before them, by certain segments of the African American political community in reaction to the tragic racism that persisted into the 1960s, albeit the specific movements who coined the term woke I regard as less impressive than those following the ideology of the venerable Dr. Martin Luther King, who by virtue of being a slain clergyman killed for promoting Christian values is in my opinion a Protestant Saint, specifically a Heiromartyr.

Etymology is interesting, sometimes words even take on opposite meanings over time. But let's stick to the subject.

 

[The Liturgist]

As a confessional Lutheran, I too find this offensive, and both myself and my fellow Lutherans have been accused of the same. If others are so fearful of our theology, maybe it is because they fear being consumed by devout, traditional Christians. Maybe easier to reconcile this to themselves than the concept of enduring eternal fire without being consumed.

Indeed, and its hardly “Woke” to object to the Eucharist being offensively described as cannibalism. On the contrary, “woke” clergy tend to deprecate it or make uncanonical changes, in particular many revisionist left wing clergy object to any references to blood. Indeed there was even some ludicrous commentary to this extent on a UMC blog and in a PCUSA liturgical text if I recall.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Indeed, and its hardly “Woke” to object to the Eucharist being offensively described as cannibalism. On the contrary, “woke” clergy tend to deprecate it or make uncanonical changes, in particular many revisionist left wing clergy object to any references to blood. Indeed there was even some ludicrous commentary to this extent on a UMC blog and in a PCUSA liturgical text if I recall.

It would be un-woke to speak of Catholic belief regarding the holy eucharist as cannibalism, remember that it is the woke person who refrains for the use of deliberately offensive words.

 

[The Liturgist]

People in small groups, such as Jack Chick's group, label Catholics and Orthodox people as pagans. Others in groups of various sizes use more mild language yet send missionaries to Catholic and Orthodox lands to convert Catholic and Orthodox Christians to their idea of Christianity, because at heart they are convinced that neither Catholics nor Orthodox people are Christians.

Well Jack Chick and his followers routinely lie, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, they believe total falsehoods, about Roman Catholicism and other topics. There is so much hatred in those Jack Chick tracts it is reminiscent of the Westboro Baptist cult. So we really shouldn’t pay them any attention. Its better to focus on our own salvation.

 

[The Liturgist]

It would be un-woke to speak of Catholic belief regarding the holy eucharist as cannibalism, remember that it is the woke person who refrains for the use of deliberately offensive words.

That’s a bit of a misconception. Woke refers to a set of liberal cultural values which are held in opposition to Christianity; it is not mere courtesy or politeness, but rather the embrace of anti-Christian ideas such as the denial that God has created us male and female, and the embrace of transexuality and other perverse activity. So I have to categorically reject your assessment as to what is “woke” in this concept.

The most “woke” “Eucharist” I am aware of are those services patterned after the extremely offensive “Reimagining” conference of the WCC in the early 1990s, where a “Eucharist” of milk and honey was served in direct violation of the canon law of the early church, which explicitly forbids doing that (or for that matter including fish in the Eucharist, or substituting water for wine as is the custom of the Mormons of today and the Hydroparastae of yesterday).

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

God has created us male and female

Did God create hermaphrodites too?

 

[The Liturgist]

Did God create hermaphrodites too?

There really isn’t such a thing as a hermaphrodite per se; there are some people who have birth defects that have caused them to have ambiguous genitatlia, and this is extremely unfortunate, but it can be treated in some cases, although in some cases they are infertile. But in any case, whether or not someone is male or female is certain, and can be absolutely determined through genetics. You either have a Y chromosome or you don’t. At any rate, this tangent is rather gross and off-topic, and I am at a loss as to where you are going with it.