Even if one considers only transubstantiation, what I said still stands. The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, though they may be wary of using the term “transubstantiation” due to its Scholastic associations, still believe in substantially (hehe) the same thing: what was formerly bread and wine is now wholly and completely the Body and Blood of Christ, and only appears to be bread and wine; nothing of the original elements remains except for their appearance.
Real Presence is the idea that Christ is really present in the Eucharist. Transubstantiation is the idea that this this is true because every material object derives its being from its Substance (which is what-the-thing-really-is apart from any observable characteristics), and that we percieve objects only through their accidents (that is, their observable characteristics), but that God percieves things in their own being as Sustances, and that in the Eucharist the bread and wine retain their accidents (in other words, all of their material, chemical properties), but that their Substances (which are metaphysical and only perceptable to God) are replaced by the Substance of the body and blood of Christ.
IOW, real presence is an agreed upon phenomenon (by most Christian denominations), while transubstantiation is a very specific theory that explains it based on a medieval Aristotilian understanding of reality.
That’s not quite true. As I meant to imply above, the bread and wine are still made up of the same molecules and the same atoms as before. They not only look the same, they are the same on a physical level. The only thing that has changed is the theoretical underlying Substance. The problem is that today, we all think that the molecules and atoms that make up an object are what the object is–that, for example, a diamond is a diamond because it is composed of carbon atoms aranged in a regular latice structure–and we don’t believe in metaphysical substances. The Aristotelian idea is that a diamond is a diamond because it derives its being from the Substance of diamond, and that its atomic structure is completely irrelevant.
Ahh, I (being raised in the US) keep forgetting the Orthodox groups.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Yes, as I said the two are subtly but distinctly different, thus justifying what I said (modulo the Orthodoxies I always forget).
Yes, I’m sure that the Protestants that I’ve seen were using Bibles and not missals. Missals are not generally used at all in non-liturgical churches - there’s no way to know what’s going to be said or sung next week, much less for an entire year.
Thank GOD! 
I should like to point out that Catholics consider several groups to be a part of the Church. The Orthodox are considered a particular church with real Bishops and real Sacraments, although it appears their representatives on this board consider us the devil incarnate.
The Protestant churches are considered denominitions more or less. I believe all of them with the possible exception of the Anglicans are not considered to have real Bishops and their sacraments are of dubious validity.
The Church does not actually forbid married priests: it simply does not give the sacrament of marriage to those whom recieved Holy orders and vica versa. There are actual ways to get to that position, however, since the church will not invalidate sacraments recieved.
I think this issue has gotten more complex than it needs to be. It’s concentrated on how other denominations and sects are different from Roman Catholic but as I said before that covers a vast spectrum that is not encompassed by the term “protestant.” If you really want to get the waters muddy there is a group calling themselves True Catholic who claim that every pope from John XXIII is a false “anti-pope” and that they are the only true church.
My own R.C. education was cut short after a year of catechsim but would it be fair to say that the primary difference between Roman Catholics and other Christians is that members of the R.C. church recognize John Paul II and his predecessors as the vicars of Christ on earth. I’m not sure of any other aspect that is not shared in common with the R.C. church and at least one other denomination.
No, I’m too close for missals; I’m switching to guns.
Okay, I’m going to hell for that one. Seriously, though. In both churches I attended in my youth (one Methodist, one Episcopal) there were enough copies of the Bible (KJV in the former, RSV in the latter) to go around. There were also enough hymnals for every two or three people to share one, and in the Episcopal church, there was the Book of Common Prayer.
The BCP could definitely be considered a missal. It contains “scripts” for all of the different call-and-response services you can have. For example, there are something like four different versions of the Eucharist. My Episcopal church was the chapel of a boarding school; we all heaved a sigh of relief when the day’s Eucharist was p. 355 (“the short one”). There is also the text of the standard wedding, standard baptisms for adults and children, and a whole raft of blessings, including a blessing for animals (to be used on St. Francis’ Day). Blessing the faculty pets was always a fun service.
When I was younger, I’d read the Bible in the pews during the sermon, preferring to stick to the first five books of the Old Testament or the first four books of the New, where there were stories and characters I was vaguely familiar with. Although the books about the prophets (Job, Daniel, etc.) are a kick, because it basically consists of a Jewish guy showing up in a city, gets a bunch of dung thrown at him, his life goes to hell, he says “you’re gonna regret this,” maybe he dies, and then SMITE SMITE SMITE everything’s better. Except someone gets a scar or a limp so they remember not to mess with God.
In the Episcopal church, I’d skim the BCP looking for the most absurd rites I could find.
What differentiates Catholics from other Christians?
The guilt.
John Kerry
Is not excommunicated. That takes a formal procedure of a church court or for John Kerry to do a particular act which is defined in church law as incurring an automatic excommunication. No such juridical act has taken place, nor has Kerry committed an act that incurs automatic excommunication.
This rumor of Kerry being excommunicated may come from the church law that states that having or procurring an abortion is such an act (as long as one knows that there is this penalty of automatic excommunication and goes ahead with having or procuring an abortion anyway.) However, the law is silent regarding politicians whose votes allow for abortions to be civilly legal. Therefore, Kerry has not incurred this automatic excommunication.
Or, this rumor may come from Vatican officials and certain U.S. bishops who have called for a general ban of giving communion (which, as others have pointed out, is different from excommunication) to politicians who vote pro-abortion, or who have specifically banned Kerry from receiving communion in their diocese. These bishops have come under intense scrutiny for doing so for two reasons: 1) It looks like they’re involving themselves in partisan politics; and 2) There’s supposed to be several juridical steps taken before issuing such a ban, such as personal correspondence with the person in question – one wonders if such bishops have followed due process in this circumstance.
Anullments
As has been mentioned, and anullment does not speak to the legitimacy of the children. As longs as everyone concerned thought the marriage was valid at the time, then the children were indeed legitimate. However, with the new Code of Canon Law in 1983, legitimacy is a category that is no longer even tracked or cared about in the code.
(I don’t know if Kerry has had an anullment. If his current marriage was ‘in the church’ then he most certainly did have an anullment.)
Difference between Catholics and Protestants
The difficulty with this question is how varying Protestant beliefs are. You name something a Protestant is supposed to believe in (other than core credal statements, which RCs also believe in) and I can name a Protestant denomination that doesn’t believe in that same thing. There are some Protestants who view themselves as full-fledged Roman Catholics in union with the Pope, only that they are reforming RCs. (There’s a tongue in cheek description of some high Anglicans that if you greet them with ‘good day!’ they would have to check with the Pope first before they could respond.)
In the end the best way to define Protestants is from the RC point of view since that’s the thing from which Protestants are protesting. The RC puts self-defining Christians (other than its own) in three categories: 1) Schismatics; 2) Heretics; and 3) Other. Of course, the RC official documents use nicer terms.
Schismatics break away from the RC by not following the Pope’s authority. They are ‘no longer in union with Rome.’ The Orthodox are the most famous of these. The schismatic churches retain validly ordained bishops and clergy who often ordain new validly ordained bishops and clergy and thus perpetuate their schismatic branch of Catholicism. The doctrine of schismatic churches is regarded as continuing to have sound doctrine.
When Martin Luther’s group broke away from the RCC, they looked like they were going to be another schismatic branch. However, they changed the doctrines of sacraments so much, that their doctrine was considered heretical. These are the Protestants, and heretical doctrine is the principle by which they are defined. Since the Protestants changed the theology of Holy Orders (by which bishops and clergy are ‘made’) so much that it was regarded as ‘broke’ by the RCC, then the RCC no longer recognized the validity of the sacramentality of Protestant clergy. Thus, from the RCC perspective, while the Orthodox have valid bishops and priests who ‘do’ valid celebrations of the Eucharist (the Mass), the Protestants do not. However, the RCC still recognizes the validity of Protestant baptism. It regards all Protestants as still being true Christians and part of the mystical body of Christ.
Not so with the third group who belong to ‘ecclesial communions,’ i.e., chuch-like organizations whose theology of Christ and/or baptism is so defective that they are no longer considered truly Christian. Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and Shakers belong to this group.
The Catholic Church and Bibles
The time of lay Catholics being officially discouraged from reading the Bible is over a hundred years old. Though, it takes time for the word to get out. (Pun intended.)
In a three year cycle, over 90% of the gospels is proclaimed aloud in the vernacular at Sunday Masses (at which attendance is mandatory!). So much for hiding the Bible from the laity.
Some Protestant ministers have noted with envy this Catholic procedure for reading the bible at Sunday services. The three year cycle forces Catholic ministers to preach on the entirety of the gospels, and not the same favorite texts which fit into their or the congregation’s personal theology over and over again.
In general, RC ministers will stick to the text of the day and expound on that with only a few, if any, references to other bible passages. And, in general, ministers of certain Protestant denominations make it a regular practice to quote extensively from all over the bible during a single sermon. That’s why in Catholic churches you will find a missalette with the scriptural reading of the day since that’s the only text that will be referenced. Some Protestant churches have bibles in the pews so that the congregation can jump all over to all the passages which the preacher is referencing.
Peace.
e.g. married Anglican-communion priests who switch over to Roman-communion get to keep their marriage.
Actually, the use of missalettes is actively discouraged by the church (although the discouragement is ignored in many parishes).
The original missals contained all the prayers of the Mass for the entire year, in Latin and in the vernacular on facing pages, so that the people could follow the service that the priest was praying (in their own language if/when they did not read Latin). “Popular” missals only carried the Introit, Collect, and other feast-specific prayers for Sundays and feastdays. Among the reforms of Vatican II, the idea was propagated that the people should have their heads up and participate rather than following along silently reading their missals. (And, with the introduction of the three-year Sunday cycle and two-year week-day cycle of readings, the missals would have become enormous.)
The current theology expresses the idea that the people should listen to the word as it is proclaimed (and should listen to the prayers that the priest expresses) while praying aloud a certain limited number of well-known prayers, and, thus, should not be given props to “follow along.” Of course, when the changes were first implemented, so many people were lost (and so much new music was introduced) that many people felt that it was wise to continue to use props to “keep up.” Several publishers cashed in on this feeling by producing miniature missals (missalettes) that containd the songs appropriate to the season along with the text of the Mass with the readings and prayers for the period of a season (Advent, Lent, Christmas, Easter) or the months in which no specific season was celebrated. While tolerated, at first, the various Litugical Commissions have grown increasingly opposed to the use of missalettes.
True. But with the threatened revision of the missal, which will change many of the common parts and responses of the Mass, don’t expect the missalette to go away anytime soon. Also, missalettes are a good idea for the hard of hearing, children, and converts.
Peace.
I do not suggest that missalettes are evil or that they should be abolished. (And I am certainly not optimistic about prying them away from some parishes.) However, the recent revisions to the Order of the Mass make very few changes to the actual prayers recited (the most notable being the recommendation that the Apostle’s Creed be used more frequently while continuing to use the Nicene Creed in regular practice). The majority of the other changes have to do with gestures and attitudes rather than prayers.
I agree that parishes should keep a number on hand for newcomers and the elderly. I tend to side with the Liturgical Commission that their general use should be phased out (while agreeing with your practical observation that, in many places, they will not be).
And some other included churches, such as the Eastern Rite Catholic, can have marrried priests.
The revision of the missal is a two step process. We already have the instruction revised and promulgated (although, in my diocese, the bishop still hasn’t made its promulgation official, and so, it’s as though the revision still doesn’t exist). The instruction has made a few changes in gesture and options as you have mentioned.
In the pipeline is the revision of the texts of the prayers in the sacramentary. Originally, the changes were going to be cosmetic (e.g., a different introduction to each of the memorial acclamations so that everyone would know which acclamation to acclaim; or, the expansion of many of the presider’s prayers).
But with the relatively recent issuance of Liturgiam Authenticam (LA), everything may be different. E.g., there is talk of changing the “And also with you” into “And with your spirit” as a more ‘authentic’ (read ‘overly literal’) translation of ‘et cum spiritu tuo.’ LA is, IMO, a horrible, horrible document filled with awful principles of ‘correct translation’ of the typical edition of the Latin into the vernacular. Basically, it’s the result of ultra right wing conservatives trying to find a way to narrow theological discourse and erase any forms of inclusive language.
This revision of the missal is currently in the slow track, and purposely so. Everyone’s stalling it because it’s wildly unpopular and will be a lame duck document when a new Pope comes along.
Peace.