Re: What do Catholics believe?
Submitted by Heather on February 19 2000 at 22:19:24
In reply to What do Catholics believe? Submitted by Steve on February 19 2000 at 21:40:18
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"As far as I know Catholics believe that Mary is still alive and pray to her. I think theres another dodgy thing they say that when Holy communion is taken the bread turns into Jesus body inside you - trans- something?" 1) I think the part about "Mary is still alive" that you're thinking of is the doctrine of the Assumption, which says that Mary's body was taken to heaven after she died. What Catholics and Orthodox Christians say is that, because of her special position, Mary was the first to undergo the bodily resurrection that all humans are supposed to undergo eventually; thus, she is alive in the sense that all humans will one day be alive. 2) Not only Mary, but anyone who has died, can be prayed to by Catholics and, I believe, Orthodox Christians (Dirk can correct me if I'm wrong). These types of prayers aren't the same types of prayers that are directed toward God, but my Catholic theology would need to be better than it is to explain the whole "intercession" deal. The basic theory behind it, though, is that the communion of saints isn't broken at the time of death, so people on earth can stay in touch with people who have died, by means of prayer. 3) Transubstantiation. And boy, I'm not going to be able to explain this, because it involves hard metaphysics. It's like trying to explain atoms by saying, "Well, you see, there are these wide spaces between each atom," and somebody looks at the table you're pointing to and says, "What wide spaces? I don't see any wide spaces." It's the same deal with transubstantiation. The Catholics aren't saying that the Communion bread is Christ in the physical sense. Rather, the inner reality of the bread (in medieval terminology, the "substance") becomes Christ, in the same way that baptismal water, even though it's physically just water, is supposed to convey grace. This is as opposed to the classic Protestant view, which is that the bread and water are purely symbolic. Here's how the different views translate in practical terms: I attended a Unitarian Christian service once, and after the service was over, the minister asked me whether I'd like to help her finish off the leftover communion wine. A minister or priest from a Catholic-leaning denomination would never do that; once the wine was consecrated, it would be holy wine, regardless of whether everyone in the congregation had left, so it would have to be treated in a special manner. So basically, it's an argument over whether physical objects, once the proper rites have been done, have independent power to confer grace, or whether the power to confer grace exists wholly within the person who is using the objects – that is, whether the objects are purely symbolic. A middle position is possible, of course, but that's one of the big Catholic-Protestant divides. Heather |