I was a little surprised by all the divisions you mentioned as I had the idea that these rituals were pretty standardized, though I don't know why I should have felt surprise. Divisions happen everywhere.
Have you even bothered to look into the subject of Christian history? You are aware that the Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists and other traditional churches are not the same denomination, but have been separated by various schisms?
The Ecumenical Movement btw seeks to restore unity to Christians, and I support this movement (even if at times, some ecumenical associations like the World Council of Churches come across as frustratingly politicized).
Probably what is more fascinating to me (from the perspective of consistency) is that the ritual works for some people but not for others and it appears this is also based on who is a part of which group.
This is simply because Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants are separated by a schism and each have their own ecclesiology. Protestants tend to adhere variously to an invisible church, local church or branch ecclesiology, Catholics, to an ecclesiology centered around the Roman bishop, and the Orthodox, to an episcopal ecclesiology focused on a communion of correct worship (Orthodoxy literally means "right glorification.")
You will find on CF.com extremists from all three persuasions, and some who claim affiliation with neither, who would claim persons of another are not saved.
This is not my view, as I have made clear.
To me it sounds rather like saying, "If you leave our group then prayer will no longer work for you" (assuming the Eucharist really is what God expects of his people).
If someone actually
left the Church this is quite a different matter compared to simply not being a member to begin with.
Anyway, after thinking on it a bit, my concern with the rituals in general is that they tend toward erosion of personal accountability, over time, so that "group-think" becomes the standard.
This is of course an invalid concern as even a passing familiarity with sacramental confession would attest.
You were quite certain that the ritual is not just a performance. It seemed you were feeling a bit defensive of my use of the word "ritual" so in response I tried some middle ground by stating that I thought any behavior could become a performance. I guess I wanted you to feel a little more at ease that I wasn't singling out the Eucharist as having some kind of special problem that other rituals do not.
No, rather, I object to your use of "ritual" to refer to liturgy, which would be correct if we were speaking in the Latin tongue, but in English the word has acquired additional implications which distort meaning. The correct word for referring to all forms of worship of the liturgical churches except for personal devotions is liturgy, from the Greek leitourgia, meaning Work of the People.
You said you disagree, but that puts you in a tricky spot. Why would you disagree with such a reasonable statement (i.e. any behavior can become a performance)?
Because this statement is not reasonable.
Is it because you're still feeling defensive of the ritual, or is it because you believe that it is impossible for any person to participate in the Eucharist as part of tradition, or because it's what their family expects, or because it's what they've been told to do by some authority rather than because of any personal conviction that it's what God wants them to do?
No, rather, I reject your initial claim that I "perform a ritual," in the Eucharist. We are going in circles, by the way, which is something I will come to take a dim view of.
Your disagreement effectively lumps all participants (well, those of the correct group) into the "right with God" category without any examination of their personal relationship with God.
No. It would really help if you bothered to study our faith before commenting on it.
The ritual apparently does that en masse and it seems people are taught that the rituals can become a legitimate substitute for deep, personal introspection.
No, rather, this would be the congregational absolution we commonly see in lieu of confession in Protestanr churches.
To me, that is super dangerous, spiritually.
Probably, but your criticism does not apply to
us.
That's how it comes across to me. Are you really saying you've never had any experience with people who perform the rituals as a substitute for personal examination of their own spiritual walk?
It would be of mutual benefit if you were to refrain from putting words in my mouth.
I know I've experienced people who feel that way about things like water baptism,
Water baptism is a new birth, although it does not remove from competent faithful the requirement to examine one's cons
LOL.
Jesus teaches us that giving alms can be helpful provided we do not do it for reasons of self-promotion.
Because a ritual is an observance, then by definition it is observable.
This is by definition a non-sequitur and a red herring, since we do not observe passively the liturgy.
This is especially true if the claim is that the bread changes into literal flesh. And one of my continuing frustrations with this topic is that there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the word "literal" regarding the change (e.g. your comment regarding DNA).
We earlier established that the bread changes into literal flesh. You confirmed this for me. If the bread changes into the literal flesh of Jesus then it should have the DNA of Jesus.
It is presumptuous to say that after the resurrection, the flesh of our bodies will still have DNA. We do not believe the Eucharist we consume is the deceased body and blood of our Lord, but the resurrected and living body and blood of our Lord.
What is more, even if the flesh of our resurrected bodies still has DNA (which it would not require, by the way, owing to the presumable lack of death and lack of reproduction in the eschaton), it is our view that the perceptual attributes of the Eucharist, what Thomas Aquinas refers to using Aristotleian categories as the "accidents," remain normally unchanged.
If the matter on the plate does not have what makes up the building blocks of flesh (i.e. dna) then it's not flesh.
I don't know if Adam had DNA before the fall, or Jesus still has DNA having risen.
Can we at least agree on that much?
No, for the reasons I outlined.
If (as you say) the change happens when the priest says the words, then verifying the change should be a simple matter of testing the matter on the plate and not even from a scientific point of view where a bunch of callous dudes in lab coats storm the meeting with test tubes.
No, because as I referred to above, we believe in trans-substantiation rather than trans-accidentiation, if I might invoke some thrillingly Thomistic vocabulary.
This is not to rule out an occasional legitimate change in perceptual attributes. In Orthodoxy however, as a rule, we tend to view changes in perceptual attributes during the Eucharist with suspicion. It is canonical that if an Orthodox priest notices the bread taking on a fleshy appearance during the liturgy, he should set it aside and send for a bishop.
It should be obvious and plain to the participants that the change has occurred. Not only would the appearance be altered, but the taste and consistency would be noticeably different.
Again, no, for the reasons cited above. You clearly have not bothered to look into our beliefs on this subject at all. Nor into the beliefs of Lutherans, which are similiar, but slightly different (the "in, with and under" bit).
Instead, the people who support the ritual are (from my perspective) notoriously cagey about how much they're willing to admit regarding the literal change.
This is incorrect. I have laid bare for you the entire theory, including somewhat esoteric details which are not widely discussed.
In a normal exchange I'd imagine a participant to quite plainly say, "Yes, the bread changes into literal flesh. The appearance changes. The texture changes. The consistency changes. The taste changes. I know what bread tastes like and the Eucharist definitely isn't bread; it's the real, literal flesh of Jesus".
Yes, but this is not what we believe. We believe that normally, only the substance changes, while the accidents remain unchanged. There have been miraculous events where the accidents have changed; when this occurs, we (Orthodox) send for a bishop to determine if the change is real, or a demonic deception of some sort. I expect, based on Catholic accounts of Eucharistic miracles, but do not know, that the Catholics would simply assume the legitimacy of such a change automatically, and I have no idea what the Lutherans would do.
But, isn't it Jesus' understanding of what communion should be that we're trying to find?
My considered opinion is that the Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist is the one taught to the holy apostles, based on the NT and extant Patristic writings of the first century.
I talked about Jesus and his disciples living, working, traveling, and sharing together in practical community as what Jesus meant when he held up the bread, said "this is my body" and then shared it around. Their communion clearly wasn't a weekly ritual.
Communion is celebrated daily in the Orthodox and Catholic churches (except on Good Friday etc.). Most established Catholic parishes have daily services; Orthodox parishes, not so much, but in monasteries and large cathedrals, certainly.
Your response is to instead point back to what these various churches do, which leads me back to the concern regarding group-think and just doing what the church tells us to do. It comes across as though Jesus' idea of communion just can't compare to however many years of church tradition.
But this is simply an assumption about what our Lord's teaching of communion was, without regard to anything more than a personal guess as to what the NT means. I am not content with such guesswork; I prefer to base my faith on the praxis of the earliest followers of the Apostles and the continuity of those practices through successive generations. I consider this more compelling than a private opinion regarding the meaning of scripture.