I was born and raised a protestant, but have since adopted a few Catholic beliefs, for example transubstantiation and intercession of the saints. Since I don’t agree with the protestant understanding of communion, I don’t participate anymore, but was wondering:
What do Catholics thinks occurs during protestant communion? Does transubstantiation still occur even though protestants don’t acknowledge it, and would it make a difference if it were wine or grape juice (which all the churches I’ve been involved with have used.) Or is transubstantiation limited to Catholic communion and the protestants are only doing it symbolically.
Also, what if anything does the Catholic church feel about protestants asking for intercession by the saints. Are the saints only open to Catholics, or are they open to other Christians?
There is probably a difference between what Catholics think and what the Catholic Church teaches. Seeing as there usually is. There are significant numbers of observant Catholics in the US anyway, who don’t believe in transubstantiation, which is to me quite strange, but there it is.
This Catholic thinks that Protestant communion is not transubstantiation. The Orthodox churches, yes. Protestants, no. Episcopalians, really not sure.
The saints are open to all beings. That’s what being a saint means, in my opinion. God isn’t Catholic, why should saints be?
I won’t comment on what individual Catholics believe, but the Church’s teaching is that taking communion from other churches is discouraged. It can happen in cases of necessity and so on, such as if you are near death. But, only certain churches have “acceptable” communion practices that will work in cases of necessity. In particular, the Eucharist must have been consecrated in a church that believes in transubstantiation. All others are forbidden. The general overall rationale is that communion is a manifestation of a community of believers and it’s best to stay inside that community, going outside it only just a bit if need be.
Well, the saints are those who the Church believes have shown the depth of their faith through good works or martyrdom, and so, in that sense, the saints are for the most part very, very Catholic. There are some of the Eastern rites that also canonize, but it’s pretty rare in the realm of western Protestantism.
People have gone to the stake arguing for or against transubstantiation, but times have changed. I was raised in the RCC but am a Symbolist, my wife was raised Methodist but is a Transubstantiationist, and the founder of our sect believed in the Real Presence, which is just far enough from Consubstantiation to protect his copyright. Though we aren’t co-communicants with the RCC, when I ushered at Baptisms I’d encourage our Catholic guests to take Communion. It would not turn to ashes on their tongues and I take my berakhahs (berakhim?) where I can get them, and if they go to Hell for it it was their own choice.
Not exactly. Christian doctrine teaches that a “saint” is someone who is together with God in Heaven. Both Roman Catholic and Orthodox doctrine believe that some people lived such exemplary lives that they, in essence, proved their saintliness for all to see. By canonizing those people, the Church declares their sainthood to be a fact.
For non-Catholic Christian sects, it’s a little trickier. Protestants just don’t have the same belief that they can declare things in the same way that Catholics do. However, some Protestant denominations (e.g., Lutherans) are willing to go along with acknowledging those who were canonized before the Big Split proved that the Romans were going down the wrong path, but won’t declare any canonizations thereafter.
Here are a few Lutheran congregations in my neck of the woods:
St. Matthew
St. Mark
St. Luke
St. John (anyone see a pattern here?)
St. Andrew
St. James
St. Martin
St. Paul
St. Phillip
St. Thomas
The Episopalians go even further with St. Albans, St. Timothy, St. Vincent, etc.
No, it doesn’t. Or, strictly speaking, Catholics don’t teach that it does.
One of the points about sacraments, in Catholic theology, is that they are moments of particular grace in which we have an assurance of a visible, material encounter with God. But the reality of God can’t be confined by the decrees of the church. “We can say where God is, but not where he is not”. So, a Protestant Eucharist doesn’t seem to Catholics to be sacramental. But that’s not to say that God couldn’t, and doesn’t, make himself really present in a Protestant eucharist.
In one sense, it wouldn’t make a difference in that, even if wine was used, that wouldn’t be enough to make the event a sacramental one in the Catholic view.
But, yes, so far as the Catholic are concerned wine is necessary. So is bread. One of the points about a sacrament is its physical, material aspect. Given the example and instruction of Jesus (“do this in memory of me”) the matter of the sacrament is the matter he used; bread and wine.
No problem at all. Anyone, Christian or not, can seek the intercession of the saints. In most Protestant traditions they don’t seek the intercession of the saints, since they regard it as inappropriate or erroneous, but that’s a position they have adopted for themselves. Catholics see no reason why non-Catholics shouldn’t seek the intercession of the saints, and no reason why the saints wouldn’t intercede.
And to follow on from that, the implication is that there are many, many more actual saints than there are canonized ones. If you ask me, my grandparents are in Heaven, and are therefore saints. None of them have been canonized, of course, largely because nobody in Rome has ever heard of them, but that’s irrelevant. And, the view goes, if it makes sense to talk to someone, and to ask them to pray for you, when they’re alive, there’s no reason to stop just because they’ve died. That’s all that praying to the saints for intercession means. And it’s expected that people will pray to non-canonized saints: That is, in fact, part of the canonization process.
Cast it that way, and I don’t expect there are very many Protestant denominations that have a problem with it. What they have a problem with is treating saints as though they were mini-gods, with inherent powers of their own. And they have a point: Many Catholics do consider the saints something like that, despite the Church’s teaching to the contrary.
Luther reckoned that the saints could be “honoured” by using them as examples of virtue, by thanking God for the examples that they set us and by imitating their virtues, but I think he stopped short of approving the practice of seeking their intercession. The Anglican XXXIX Articles explicitly condemn the invocation of saints as “repugnant to the word of God”. I’m pretty sure the Calvinist view of the practice was as dim, or dimmer.
So, in terms of their historic positions, the main strands of Protestantism have traditionally rejected invocation of saints pretty firmly. Naming a church after a saint honours the saint, but doesn’t invoke their prayers or intercession, and I’m pretty sure that in mainstream protestant liturgies anything which might look like the invocation of a saint’s intercessory prayer is carefully avoided.
I attend (virtually) one theological college, but go to another bricks and mortar building to use their library. If I am there on a Tuesday, they have a supposedly ecumenical communion service, yet they still manage to do it in such a way that our Catholic friends feel they can’t take part
In the three years I have been visiting, I was only aware of one time where one of the students (Episcopal) managed to organise a Communion that was acceptable to all traditions.
One of the things I am currently in discussions about setting up is a family friendly ecumenical offshoot of the church I am working in. I am trying to do this in such a way that the Catholic families feel they can still come along.
The Episcopalians would fall into the Catholic view I believe. I grew up Episcopalian and was told that are beliefs were a shadowing of sorts to the Catholic religion but in a lighter sense… This is adults explaining to a child the differences way back then so i might be wrong as they might have been wrong.
Nice to meet you guys new here figured i’d start talking
The problem is likely not with the attitudes or actions of your friends in the bricks-and-mortar college; it’s with the Catholics, and their eucharistic understanding.
In the Catholic view, what makes a bunch of people who happen to be Christian into a church, the body of Christ, is a relationship of eucharistic communion. Which, unsurprisingly, tends to be expressed in celebrating the eucharist together.
Which, from the Catholic perspective, makes an ecumenical eucharistic service a sensitive matter. To celebrate the eucharist with somebody is to proclaim that you and he are united in one church. Which looks a bit like either imperialism (claiming all other Christians as Catholics) or falsehood/denial (acting like you have a relationship of communion when, in truth, you don’t).
It’s a bit like the Catholic position on sex, really - very, very good, but not appropriate unless the wider relationship that it points to is real.
Note that none of this has anything to do with whether other Christian traditions have a valid eucharist or not. From the Catholic perspective some do and some don’t but, either way, celebrating a shared eucharist with them isn’t something you do just to express general goodwill and benevolence.
And, therefore, the difficulties Catholics have with participating in a shared eucharist are not necessarily something that the other participants can fix by altering the way they organise or celebrate the eucharist.
From the Catholic perspective? Well, first off, your minister of the sacrament needs to have been commissioned by the church to celebrate the sacrament. He can’t do this simply by virtue of his baptism. He needs to be a validly ordained priest. That leaves out most Protestant ministers.
Secondly, you could wish the words of institution stuck a bit more faithfully to the scriptural sources. And they’re normally located in an institution narrative, recalling the event of the last supper. I suppose the theologians could debate whether the words of institution, without the context of an institution narrative, would be sufficient for a valid sacrament. I suspect the answer is they would.
Thirdly, you’d need to know that the “this stuff” mentioned was bread and wine.
If you’ve got all that, you’re good to go, so far as validity is concerned. Plus, you don’t need the Lord’s Prayer.
Protestants also often do not have a problem referring to the apostles and traditional biblical authors as St. Whoever, so they don’t have a problem with canonization itself.
Also, the teaching in my church is that you can have communion with anything, although grape juice and unleavened bread is preferred. It’s not official to the denomination, but it is often believed. I remember doing it at home with grape soda and chips.
Specially the Jewish ones, such as St Solomon (King), St David (King), St Jeremy (Prophet), St Esther (Queen)…
While canonization processes are specific to a few churches, many which do not currently canonize are perfectly happy to keep those saints which had been canonized before they split; the concept of “a person who serves as an example” is common to many religions (that of deceased people serving as advocate before God less so, but then, monotheism is also not the common trend). Right now I’m sitting in a majority-Lutheran country and every church is named after a Saint.
The 39 Articles reflected the mind of the 16th century Church of England, which was substantially more Calvinist (or more uniformly Calvinist) than it is today, and they’re something short of ‘binding’ today (they were never considered Absolute Truth in the same sense that Catholics and Orthodox view the teachings of their churches, since Anglicans take a weaker view of church authority than those other churches) . Since the mid-19th century, there have been Anglicans and Episcopalians who share something close to the Catholic beliefs about purgatory, confession, etc. and I think there are some who believe in the intercession of saints too. (Though while I know Anglicans who offer intercessory prayer to Mary and the Angels, I don’t think I know personally any who invoke other human saints).
So, berakhot is the plural?