to think that your religion can't be that important to you

[theevildead2]

if you can just "switch to catholicism" when it suits you?

There is a bit on the news at the moment about women maybe being allowed to be bishops. Apparently some of our local priests will be leaving the church if women get this right???

Yes, thank you, veneration is indeed the word. It cause so much trouble because other denominations see no difference between the act of praying and the act of worship. Combine that with pernicious iconoclasm and its a recipe for disaster in any ecumenical discussion.

And Midge is busy being King of the Castle

Edam,

Would Henry, who was proud of his Papal-awarded status as Defender of the Faith, have burnt protestant martyrs?

I think he/They did, before he split with the papacy over the divorce issue.

this has been a fascinating thread & I've learned loads :)

I attend an anglo-catholic church that does still do the seven sacraments (although not always in as "formal" a way as roman catholics, eg you have to ask the priest to do a confession, whereas I think most RC churches have set times every week you can turn up to confess) we venerate the Virgin Mary, we do ashes on Ash Wednesday & do Lent/Advent etc. However we obviously don't do papal authority/infallability.

I personally don't believe in transubstantiation, but I'm sure there may be members of our congregation who do. (We have actually had movement the otherway, where disallusioned RCs have joined our church!)

I've just been trying to get a feel for the number of churches like mine - there are 1600 parishes affiliated to Forward in Faith (which I think is mainly anglo-catholic parishes) and there are roughly 16,000 CofE churches according to their website, so looks like roughly 1 in 10.

I've no urge to jump ship though & I haven't heard talk of anyone in Church considering it ATM, not sure what would happen if we got a female priest or bishop though (we are a "resolution B" parish).

I personally don't have a problem with women priests or bishops, but I do have a problem with the divisions it is causing :(

MaryMungo - thanks for the explanation. I have to say it is all very interesting, even if I do not share these beliefs.

LittleRedDragon - you are right, my DH is not very devout. Actually, he only goes to church for weddings and baptisms and doesn't even bother at Easter. He's more a cultural Orthodox than an actual believer. Regarding children - we have 3. I agreed to allow them to be baptised into his church, as it means very little to me and I reason that a bit of water and oil won't do them any harm. This was however on condition that they not be subjected to any indoctrination. He can explain what they believe in his church (not that he actually seems to know very much!) and I will also explain what I think, and they will be free to make their own choice.

My MIL is not like yours. She pretends devotion when it suits her and to keep up with her SIL, and doesn't bother the rest of the time.

Ah veneration, thank you MaryMungo, I was lost as what to actually call it.

I'm only just catching up with this very interesting thread and have read only about half of it so far.

One thing caught my eye, however, and that is a definition of 'consubstantiation' as 'the symbolic use of bread and wine' in the act of Communion in a church service. (I paraphrase, of course.)

I am pretty sure that in fact 'consubstantiation' means the belief that the body and blood of Christ co-exist with the items of bread and wine during the act of Communion. (The prefix 'con' meaning 'with'.)

The belief that the body and blood are completely absent from the bread and wine - I'm sure that's not 'consubstantiation' - though I don't recall what the actual word is...

IF I remember rightly, Luther argued with Calvin on this point. Luther believed in consubstantiation ('joint presence', for want of a better phrase). Calvin held that there is no trace of the body and blood in the Communion items: these items are purely symbolic/commemorative.

(I stand to be corrected, of course.)

Building on Princess Fiorimonde's point, does anyone know where the idea of transubstantiation or of consubstantiation originated in the first place? Or did Christ at some point say "I will come back in the form of bread and wine"?

Sorry I've been away and attempted to catch up. Tyra, I don't believe you are born gay, I believe it is a choice...and if you read my post properly it said, if my child was gay I would love him, but I wouldn't tolerate his behaviour, anymore than if he was committing any other of the sins. I would pray for him. I don't dislike gays, I dislike their behaviour, same as any other person with any other sin, so let's just get it straight I am not homophobic, I love all people, just not what they do.
Presuming what I think and believe is not very wise...evidently as you have the wrong end of the stick.

Alexis: in the Gospels, at the last supper (the night before the crucifixion), Jesus takes bread, breaks it, and shares it with his disciples. Then he pours a cup of wine and shares that with them too. He says something like: 'This is the bread and blood of the new and everlasting covenant. Do this is memory of me.'

(Covenent here means 'agreement'; in this case signifying a new and everlasting agreement between God/Jesus and his people, replacing/superseding the 'covenant' [agreement] between God and his people in the Old Testament.)

Christians are still fighting over whether Christ's words regarding 'body and blood' are to be taken literally (transubstantiation), or symbolically, or somewhere in between (consubstantiation).

Doh!

"Do this 'in' memory."

Sorry.

And I also, in my haste, got the reported wording wrong.

When Jesus said (holding up the bread, as the Gospel reports): 'This is my body ... ' and then (holding up the wine) 'This is my blood ...' - and also 'Do this in memory of me' -

• did he really mean that when, in future, Christians do this (share bread and wine) in memory of me, this bread is literally my body; this wine is literally my blood?

• or did he mean this symbolically?

(Over the centuries, thousands of people have died in disagreements over this point, so I can only apologise again for the poor phrasing in my previous post.)

alex - I see. I think we'll do the same when/if we have children (ie., let them make up their own minds). I don't think anything else would be right and they'd surely realize quite soon that we believe different things from each other anyway.

Btw, as I understand it a lot of the controversy around the Eucharist and what might be happening there is to do with people's understanding of what matter is (in what we'd think of as the scientific sense), and people's understanding of divinity.

Basically, if the bread and wine literally become Christ's body and blood, why don't they look different? One line of reasoning says, right, that must mean that the outward appearance of things is just an 'accident'; something that isn't crucial to their essential nature. So, it doesn't matter that the bread and wine still look like bread and wine: they're really Christ's body and blood.

Other people say, well, if the bread and wine are really Christ's body, don't we hurt it when we eat it? And does us eating it mean we're destroying and fragmenting Christ's body? If so, that rather challenges the idea of God as all-powerful.

I think people initially took Christ's words ('This is my body' etc.) absolutely literally. But as they thought more about what matter was, and what divinity was, it became harder to justify the implications of that idea.

In the period I study, people are really beginning to be interested what matter is - the same sort of curiosity that leads to research into atoms and molecules and so on. People were also very interested in whether you could turn base metal into gold - or whether you'd just end up with something that looked like gold but retained the essential nature of base metal (it's a similar idea to transubstantiation). So the questions about transubstantiation weren't just religious, they had bearing on how people understood and thought about the whole world.

Whew: hope I'm not rambling as much as it feels like ...

In chapter 6 of the Gospel of John , Jesus is preaching a parable to a crowd that followed him after the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and says "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you....

He goes on to say "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."

At which point the crowd murmured against him, "because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?"

To which Jesus tries to be more clear: "I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

At this point the crowd is still not taking Him seriously, saying "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

At which point Jesus speaks in total bluntness:

" Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever."

At which point the crowd was understandably gobsmacked, and even his disciples were saying "This is an hard saying; who can hear it?"

"When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?...{and f}rom that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him."

Which, of course, was Jesus's cue to say "Hey, come back! I was just being metaphorical"

But what was His response to this exodus? He turned to the twelve, His chosen apostles, and said, "Will ye also go away?" In other words, this was something that was non-negotiable.

And this is why Catholics believe that the Eucharist we receive is truly, essentially, in every way, the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

Although, I've seen that line translated 'For my flesh is true meat, and my blood is true drink' (which is a bit different from 'indeed'). I don't know what the Greek is, but knowing Greek, it is possible the statement comes over rather more strongly in English. Greek is structured io that 'indeed' is a pretty common word, often used rather like 'and' or 'but' in English.

People can argue it both ways.

Here is a short, informative article on different Eucharistic beliefs, if anyone is interested.

Ok, just checked ... it is 'true' in the Greek, which would be more emphatic than 'indeed'.

(I could have checked that before I posted, couldn't I. )

I'm no Greek scholar, but I do know that the usual word for eat is:

φάγω

phagō

fag'-o

A primary verb ; to eat (literally or figuratively): - eat, meat.

Whereas the word for eat used in this passage is:

τρώγω

trōgō

tro'-go

Probably strengthened from a collateral form through the idea of corrosion or wear; or perhaps rather through the idea of a crunching sound; to gnaw or chew, that is, (genitive case) to eat: - eat.

I guess Mumsnet doesn't do greek

LRD - I that true about the issue of the materiality, or otherwise, of the host in the Eucharistic rite being the most important issue (in the medieval period? - I think you're talking about the medieval period?)?

I only have my C20 Anglo-Catholics to look at, and they seem much more interested in the implications wrt time. That is, they were more concerned with the intertwining of the temporal and the eternal in the sacramental. So that would be a big shift.

I'm wondering if Augustine's ponderings on the nature of time would have prefigured that shift ... I wish Buzz would come back ....

No, it doesn't. If you transliterate, the passage is

'he gar saphez mou alethoos estin broosis, kai to haima mou alethoos estin posis'.

word for word: 'For the body of mine true is food, and the blood of mine, true is drink'.

(obviously it'd be 'is true food' and 'is true drink').

But it's difficult because in the context of the whole Bible, so much language clearly is high-flying metaphor, and it's hard to know what is meant to be metaphorical and what isn't.

You might say that if Christ were being literal here, his claim that the Eucharist must be performed 'in remembrance of me' is nonsense.

animula - sorry, I didn't say but yes, I'm looking at medieval England (late medieval, to be exact). It does seem to me that the nature of the sacrament is the big question everyone is interested in - and the only home-grown heresy we've got is based on that question. It does seem there's a big shift between that and the later emphasis on time, doesn't it? I wonder why. Medievals were keen on their Augustine, too ...

We really need Buzz to come and explain it!

LRD - I probably missed it up thread, but what was the home-grown heresy?

And I'd love to hear more about the Cathars too. Partly because I'm a Mary Gentle fan.

(If you have time ...)

It's because every age has its own heresy'du'jour. It gets done to death, until everybody settles into their respective camps at which point they find something new to come to blows over. The reason popular theological discussion can often seem odd these days is that all the really interesting heresies have already been done and people are reduced to making things up, AKA The-Pope-is-Really-a-Ninja-Assassin Syndrome.

The heresy is Lollardy (Wycliffism). Wycliffe was a scholar who eventually went too far and got himself on the wrong side of the authorities. His followers were concerned about several things: amongst those, they wanted people to be able to read the Bible in English, they were uneasy about the use of images and the potential for idolatry in image-worship, and they were uneasy with the idea of Christ being really present during the Eucharist. Obviously there's some cross-over between religious and socio-political issues (for example, the Church wasn't happy with people reading the Bible in English partly because that challenged their authority - their jobs, in effect!).

I'm not so hot on the Cathars as I've not studied them, just come across the odd reference, sorry!

The phrase "in remembrance" does not ipso facto imply metaphorically. I mean, if I emigrated to New Zealand and asked my best friend to feed my Alsatian "in remembrance of me", I'd be pretty pissed to call back six months later and find it starved to death because she used symbolic dog food instead of the real thing....

LRD - why were they uneasy about the reality of the divine in teh host?

(And am enjoying the discussion of remembrance also.)