lanciano

Would you eat it?

 THE SO CALLED LANCIANO MIRACLE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME EXAMINED


Background to this article: A few years ago, I answered a challenge in an Irish newspaper to disprove that the consecrated wafer literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ. My reply was that the onus of proof was on the Roman Church, not on those of us who disagree with their doctrine. I pointed out that none of the five senses perceived the consecrated wafer to be anything other than bread. I got two letters sent to my home from people who disagreed with me. The first simply scolded Protestant churches for their unbelief of Roman doctrine. The second was some what different and has led to this short article.The writer sent me a tract entitled "The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano" It may be read word for word on a website promoting the Lanciano incident.

To summarise, a RC monk back in the 8th Century expressed doubt about the reality of the "real" i.e. physical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. During "Holy Mass" after the "twofold consecration" the host or wafer was turned into live flesh and the wine was changed into live blood. This has been preserved now for twelve centuries and when subjected to scientific investigation in 1970-71 and partly again in 1981 the analyses sustained the following conclusions:

* The Flesh is real Flesh.

* The Blood is real Blood.

* The Flesh and the Blood belong to the human species.

* The Flesh consists of the muscolar tissue of the heart.
 
* In the Flesh we see present in section: the myocardium, the endocardium, the vagus nerve and also the left    ventricle of the heart for the large thickness of the myocardium.

* The Flesh is a "HEART" complete in its essential structure.

* The Flesh and the Blood have the same blood-type: AB (Blood-type identical to that which Prof. Baima   Bollone uncovered in the Holy Shroud of Turin).

* In the Blood there were found proteins in the same normal proportions (percentage-wise) as are found in the sero-proteic make-up of the fresh normal blood.

* In the Blood there were also found these minerals: chlorides, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium and calcium.

* The preservation of the Flesh and of the Blood, which were left in their natural state for twelve centuries and exposed to the action of atmospheric and biological agents, remains an extraordinary phenomenon.

The tract concludes with the following words: In conclusion, it may be said that Science, when called upon to testify, has given a certain and thorough response as regards the authenticity of the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano.

The man who sent me this tract in response to my letter to the newspaper obviously feels that it answers my other observation that none of the five senses perceive the wafer to be anything than bread and not the physical flesh of the Son of God. Has he a case? I think not and here, briefly is the recent why.

SCIENCE SHOWS HE DOES NOT HAVE A CASE:

Working on the assumption that this incident is not an elaborate hoax - some of Rome's so called miracles fall into this category - all this case does is show that the wafer became flesh. In the absence either of divine revelation or DNA from the body of the Son of God while He was alive on this earth, the answer is that there is no proof that this is the body of Jesus Christ. No matter who else takes over the case at this point, science with all of its limitations cannot go any further.

SCRIPTURE SHOWS HE DOES NOT HAVE A CASE:

The Bible simply does not teach the Roman doctrine of the Mass. The words of Christ "This is my body" and "This is my blood" are figurative words. Just as when He said; "The field is the world etc.," (Matthew 13:38) or "I am the door..." (John 10:9) It is worth pointing out - as I did in my reply - that the miraculous must always take second place to scripture (Luke 16:31) We test the "miracles" by the scripture and not vice versa.

COMMON SENSE SHOWS HE DOES NOT HAVE A CASE:

All things being equal, all Rome can produce a piece of human flesh. Scientific tests show it to be the muscular tissue of the heart etc., According to RC doctrine, it is to be eaten. Every other mass wafer is (according to Rome) really human flesh - just it isn't as obvious to the eyes or scientific investigation - but it is the same substance after consecration. People are expected to eat it. If you were a Roman Catholic, would you eat it? Why not? Your church puts the following words of Jesus in an Euarcharistic setting. Jesus said "Except ye eat my flesh…you have no life in me." (John 6:53) To take these words symbolically puts you into the Protestant camp. But to follow the teaching of your Church means that if it were placed on your tongue by your priest, then you would be required to eat it i.e. the myocardium, the endocardium, the vagus nerve and also the left ventricle of the heart for the large thickness of the myocardium and all. Does a sickly feeling creep over your stomach as you read these words? It does over mine as I type them. I cannot help think of the words of St Augustine who wisely wrote:

"If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man," says Christ, "and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." [John 6:53] This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us." Christian Doctrine (3:16)

Better still, the word of God itself says:

Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what I say. (1 Corinthians 10:14-15)

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cain

DID CAIN OFFER THE FIRST MASS?

The fruit of the ground?

 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:  But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect... (Genesis 4:5)

We are not told how "the fruit of the ground" was made up into an offering for the Lord. Perhaps it was a nice vegetable display with a few flowers thrown in for good measure. Perhaps not. With some perception, Presbyterian, Henry Cooke, the great Protestant protagonist in Ulster in the 1850's suggests that it came in the form of a wafer made from flour. Obviously no one can be too dogmatic about it, but Cooke had a good point. The shoe certainly fits.

The mass is the central act of worship in the Roman Catholic Church. That, however, does not put it above investigation, but actually demands that it be carefully examined and repudiated if found wanting in the balances of Holy Scripture.

 1) IS JESUS CHRIST REALLY PHYSICALLY PRESENT IN THE BREAD AND WINE OR IS HE ONLY SPIRITUALLY REPRESENTED?

ROME: He is physically present.
"The bread and wine are changed truly, really and substantially into the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, and the bones and sinews of Christ," (Catechism of Council of Trent)

BIBLE: He is spiritually present only.

SOME OBJECTIONS TO ROMAN THEORY:
1) If Christ is actually physically present, then we cannot remember Him as He has bid us to do. You cannot remember one who is actually physically there. You can remember one who is not physically there but who has left tokens that remind us of him.

2) The Lord’s Passover (when the feast was instituted) was itself symbolic. The words of Moses: It (i.e. the lamb) is the Lord’s Passover. No Jew was so irrational as to think that the lamb was transubstantiated into the Lord passing over the houses of the Israelites. The Passover was a figurative feast - likewise the supper which replaced it: "This is my body etc.,"

3) The grammar bears the symbolic sense also. Illustration: You produce a photograph and say, "This is my friend." You point at an outline on a map and say, "This is Ireland." It is not really, actually what you said it was. It is a representation. Likewise when the Bible says: "Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens." (Genesis 49:14) or "I am the door" (John 10:9) then, we understand it figuratively.

4) Did Christ have two bodies in the Upper Room? The one body breaking and distributing the other? Was one body being offered up as a sacrifice that night and the other offered up the next?

5) The purpose of the Lord’s death is given in 1 Corinthians 11:26 i.e. to show forth the Lord’s death. The word translated "show forth" is translated as "preach" elsewhere. By contrast the mass is a virtual re-enactment of the Lord’s death, with different bread and wine being used, different priests at different times and in different places and in different languages etc., all vaining trying to persuade us, contrary to basic grammaer, that it is the one same sacrifice.

6) The Lord’s death is shown "till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26) Surely if the mass is right, then He is come already? If so, has every eye seen Him and the earth wailed because of Him? (Revelation 1:7)

7) The mass wafer even when transubstantiated into the body of Christ soon corrupts. This is contrary to Psalm16:9-11 (quoted in Acts 2:27) which declares that His body would not see corruption.

8) The mass denies our senses since the bread still looks, smells, tastes and feels like bread. Luke speaks of the senses as furnishing infallible proofs (Luke 1:3) Christ Himself appealed to the senses:"Handle me and see" (Luke 24:39) In the only case of true transubstantiation in the NT - wedding feast at Canaan where the water was turned into wine - the senses were appealed to particularly the richness of the taste.

9) A similar passage appears in 2 Samuel 23:25-17 where the water poured out unto the ground before the Lord is called blood. This was figurative language which was put so forcefully to recognise the risks that had been taken to get this water in the first place. No one takes it literally.

10) Christ cannot be bodily in more than one place at once. He cannot be in Heaven at God's right hand and at the same time be elsewhere not only in one place but in many other places. It would not be a true human body if it could.

11) Christ’s body cannot possess opposite properties at the same time. It cannot be glorified in Heaven and at the same time be humbled on earth under the appearance of bread and wine.

12) When a body is in parts, the parts cannot be individually and separately be equal to the whole. Not only is it declared that the body of Christ is complete in each of the millions of wafers handled by the priests of Rome, but if each single wafer was broken into a thousand parts, each single part is declared to be a whole Christ. This cannot be said of a true human body.

13) How can a priest of Rome create out of a piece of bread not only the true physical body, but also His soul and divinity? This makes (to quote St Alphonus de Ligouri) the priest to be greater than the Creator. Surely we have to say of the mass wafer: "For from Israel was it also: the workman made it; therefore it is not God..." (Hosea 8:6)

14) How could Paul say "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." (2 Corinthians 5:16) if His flesh was present there on the altar?

15) Rome refers to the mass as an unbloody sacrifice - surely this is a denial that the wine has turned into blood? A clearer inconsistency would be harder to find.

16) If we are going to take all the language of the words of institution strictly literally, then surely when Jesus said: "This cup is the New Testament in my blood" (Luke 22:20/1 Corinthians 11:25) we mean that it is the cup and not the contents which is the New Testament. If we take a figurative look at the passage, then the cup speaks of the wine which in turn speaks of the blood.

17) The Bible expressly forbids the eating or drinking of blood in the NT: "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well." (Acts 15:28-29)

18) Consider particularly the old style masses (which continued for hundreds of years) and see the priest dressed in a gaudy fashion. See the candles - smell the incense - hear the ringing of the bell etc., observe (as is still the situation) only the priest partaking of the wine. How far removed it is from the simple meal presented in Scripture. One could not be simpler - the other burdened down with many complex rules and regulations etc.,

19) Two of the greatest Cardinals in the RC Church (Cajetan and Bellarmine) both expressly confessed that the doctrine of Transubstantiation was not founded on the word of God, but received from the Church. This means that the words of institution as recorded in the gospel records and 1 Corinthians 11 cannot be taken literally.

20) If the wine turns into the literal blood of Jesus Christ, how is it possible to get drunk if you drink the consecrated wine in excess?

21) The canon law of the Church (Canon of Aelfric 957AD) gives instruction as to what should happen if, through carelessness, a mouse should eat the wafer. Indeed, "Quid comedit mus" (What eateth the mouse?) became quite a debating point in the various schools. Did the wine sanctify the mouse or did the mouse pollute the wine? Canon law also required the priest either to re-swallow a vomited host or at least separate the consecrated species and laid up in a sacred place. Can God be eaten by a mouse or vomited by a priest? The whole thought is revolting and ridiculous - but such are the questions which can be and indeed were raised and answered by the Church as it sought to defend a teaching that is far removed from the simple feast instituted so long ago.

2) IS JESUS REALLY SACRIFICED AT THE LORD’S TABLE?
ROME: Quoting from Catechism of Christian Doctrine: [Catholic Truth Society. Revised: 1985]
Q.274: Is the Blessed Eucharist a Sacrament only?
Ans:- The Blessed Eucharist is not a sacrament only: it is also a sacrifice.
Q. 277: What is the Holy Mass?
Ans:- The Holy Mass is the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, really present on the altar under the appearances of bread and wine, and offered to God for the living and the dead.
Q.275: What is a sacrifice?
Ans:- A sacrifice is the offering of a victim by a priest to God alone…

THE BIBLE: Jesus Christ is not sacrificed at the Lord’s Table.

SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE ROMAN THEORY:
1) The Bible speaks consistently of the sacrifice of Christ being only a one off act: Hebrews 9:27-28/10:10-14/Romans 6:10/1 Peter 3:18. This cannot be if He is being continually offered even now on many Roman altars.

Objection: Rome claims (above catechism Q278 that the mass is the one and same sacrifice as that of the cross i.e. there is only one sacrifice which is still ongoing.
Note: That a different priest takes a different wafer and a different cup of wine and pronounces yet again the words of consecration grammatically means another offering is professedly being made. The semantics say one thing - the reality another.

2) Why then did Jesus cry: "It is finished"? (John 19:30) Surely it would have been better to have cried: "It is only beginning!" or cried nothing at all? The RC Douay Version renders it: "It is consummated"

3) Why then does the Bible say: "But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God." (Hebrews 10:12) The word "after" is so significant. It is finished. There can be no "after" in the RC teaching.

4) The offering of Christ upon the Cross was a sin offering. According to Leviticus 6:30 the sin offering was not to be eaten afterwards. The two are not the same.

5) The Lord Jesus used the present tense to describe His body being broken: "Which is broken for you" not shall be i.e. future. This is in line with the one sacrifice which is now finished forever.

6) Why does the Bible say in Hebrews 10:16-18 "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." This language is grossly inconsistent with the teaching of Rome. Rome would have to contradict the inspired writer and point to the mass and say to the effect that there the writer could find an offering for sin. Both cannot be right. I choose the inspired writer.

3) DOES PARTAKING OF THE LORD’S SUPPER CONVEY SAVING GRACE TO THE PARTICIPANT?
ROME: Same catechism quoted above:
Q.269 Why has Christ given himself to us in the Holy Eucharist?
Ans:- Christ has given Himself to us in the Holy Sacrifice to be the life and food of our souls. ‘He that eateth of me, the same also shall live by me’: ‘He that eateth this bread shall live for ever." (John 6:58-59)

BIBLE: No sacrament can impart eternal life to its participants.
Note: The passage in John 6 has no reference to the Lord’s Supper. If so, then it was instituted about two years earlier than Paul makes out in 1 Corinthians 11:23 i.e. the night in which He was betrayed. The arguments against Christ referring to His flesh and blood being literal may be referred to in the first section.

SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE ROMAN THEORY:
1) What becomes of those who never partook of the sacrament of the mass? The Dying Thief coming immediately to mind.

2) Nowhere in Bible is any sacrament presented as an instrument of salvation, be it baptism or the Lord’s Supper.

OTHER INTERESTING INFORMATION:
The Mass as we know it today was not formally adopted until the 4th Lateran Council in 1215. Arguments that Councils only issued statements when something was challenged is a weak argument. There are plenty of evidences that the Church Fathers did not believe the teaching of the mass e.g. "Jesus made the bread, which He took and distributed to His disciples His body, saying, ‘This is my body’ that is to say, ‘a figure of my body." (St. Tertullian.) Where the Church Fathers sometimes use language like "drinking His blood" or "eating His flesh" (so loved of Roman apologists) consider how we are to interpret such words, as defined by St. Augustine: "For we must not consider in the sacraments what they be, but what they signify. For they be signs of things, being one thing in themselves and yet signifying another thing."

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augustine

ST AUGUSTINE REJECTING THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF JOHN 6:53 WHICH UNDERPINS ROME'S ERROR OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION IN THE MASS

CLICK ON PHOTOGRAPH TO ENLARGE

HISTORICAL NOTE:

St. Augustine shares a strange fate in that he is appealed to with equal fervour by both Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. BH Carroll wrote:

“Everyone ought to read Augustine's confessions. He did not keep on living that life after he was converted; he was one of the greatest preachers that ever lived. What we call Calvinism is the doctrine of Augustine. He saved the church for 300 years from going astray."

Rome elevated him to be one of the very few to carry the title “Doctor of the Church” which makes the statement below all the more worthy of attention.

ST. AUGUSTINE REJECTING THE  LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF JOHN 6:53 ON WHICH THE  ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILDS HER ERRONEOUS TEACHING OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION IN THE MASS

"If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man," says Christ, "and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." [John 6:53] This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us."

(Christian Doctrine 3:16)

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augustine

WHY SAINT AUGUSTINE FLATLY REJECTED THE  ROMAN CATHOLIC INTERPRETATION ON JOHN 6:53 

(ROME'S SO CALLED PROOF TEXT FOR THE MASS)

 "If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man," says Christ, "and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." [John 6:53] This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us." Christian Doctrine (3:16)

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