THE CATHOLIC MASS, AN ATTEMPT TO KILL JESUS AGAIN?
The Catholic Church claims that the main thing about the Mass is that it is a
sacrifice. The Church is clear that it does exactly what the sacrifice of Christ
on the Cross for our sins did - paid for them and atoned them and took them
away. The Mass then is a sacrifice to God for sinners to pay for sin. It settles
a debt to divine punitive justice. The Church says that when you are at Mass the
sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary is made fully present so that in a sense you are
on Calvary.
The Church is clear that the Mass is a real sacrifice and is in no way different
(except in the way it looks) from the sacrifice Jesus made of himself on the
cross. The Council of Trent infallibly decreed at Session 22: “If anyone says
that in the Mass a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God or that that
which is to be offered is nothing else but what Christ has given us to eat let
him be accursed” – Canon 1.
“If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is merely a sacrifice of praise
and thanksgiving or that it is a bare remembrance of the sacrifice completed on
the cross but is not a propitiatory sacrifice or that it profits only him who
receives and that it ought not to be offered on behalf of the living and the
dead for sins, sufferings and satisfactions and other necessities let him be
accursed” – Canon 3.
The Mass is supposed to be one and the same sacrifice as the one Christ made
when he became a human sacrifice on the cross of Calvary to pay for our sins to
God. It neither adds to Calvary or takes away from it. It is the sacrifice of
Jesus made present to us on the altar though the bread and wine have not become
the suffering Christ but the resurrected and glorious Jesus. In the Mass, Jesus
is both victim and priest. He offers himself to God and the priest and the
people offer him for he died for them. The Mass is not a new sacrifice of Christ
but the same sacrifice. The sacrifice of Calvary is perpetuated or made present
again to the congregation.
This is Catholic teaching, "God is outside time so the past present and future
are all as one before him. To us they are separate for we live in time. God
doesn’t have time, he has eternity or timelessness. The idea is that God is
outside of time and lives in a present for which there is no past or future. So
all time is present to him and he sees our past and present and future as if
they are all happening at the one time. So the sacrifice of the cross is
happening now for him though it happened in the past for us. With us, things are
past. With God they are ever present "
Most Catholic scholars say that the fact that the sacrifice of the cross is
present in eternity meaning it is happening now in eternity before God is how
the Mass is able to be a sacrifice (page 9-12, The Mass, Sacrifice and
Sacrament).
Catholic scholars say, “Protestants fail to recognise that when God is outside
time all events are present to him. They don’t realise that from the perspective
of eternity the sacrifice of Jesus is always present or happening, so to speak,
before God. Thus they believe like us Catholics that this sacrifice can be
present to us today. The Protestants can’t understand how the Mass could be the
sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and not a new sacrifice when the Bible says that
Jesus died once for all (Hebrews 10), cannot die anymore (Romans 6:9), cannot
suffer anymore (Rev 21:4) but they should. The doctrine of some Protestants that
we try to kill Jesus all over again on the altar and that we repeat Calvary’s
sacrifice is a calumny.”
But they show they don’t believe this at all by saying that the sacrifice is
made present at Mass. How can it be made present when it is present anyway? If
their explanation of how the Mass is the same as Calvary works then the
sacrifice is present even when you are at work or drying the dishes. It is
present wherever God is and God is everywhere.
How can you say the Mass is a real sacrifice when the sacrifice is present at
all times and places anyway? Why not say bingo or a prayer meeting is a real
sacrifice and is the sacrifice of the cross?
The explanation from the perspective of timelessness means there is nothing
unique about the Mass for the sacrifice is happening all the time. Yet the
Church proves it does not believe in the explanation at all when it teaches that
the sacrifice of the cross becomes present when the priest turns the bread and
wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Something sinister is being
covered up which indicates that the Church seeks to hide the fact that she is
trying to murder Jesus as the Jews did, during her Masses.
The explanation that all time is one with God and that all things happen at the
one time for him who lives beyond the past and future is no good to the ordinary
person and indeed to most priests. It is so abstract and strange to them that
they will not absorb it. They will not understand it and suspect that it makes
no sense. As far as they are concerned, Jesus really is being murdered on the
altar afresh. A religion that has sound teaching but which is not able to reach
the people with it as it's too out of sync with their experience that time
passes, is making idolaters of the people. The ordinary Catholic has no idea
what eternity means and thus can only see the Mass as murdering Jesus all over
again rather than making the original murder present. The measure of good
religion is not in its teaching or what it says people must do but in what it
inspires people to do. Catholicism only leads to idolatry and those who like the
Mass are really liking killing Jesus all over again. That is their intention.
The Catholics call their ministers who celebrate the Mass priests in view of the
fact that they are ordained to make the sacrifice present and offer it to God.
If the sacrifice is present already then there are no priests in the Church. A
priest kills the sacrifice. If Catholic priests don't do that then they are not
priests. The Bible never mentions ministerial priests in the New Testament
Church. The research of Father Raymond Brown has shown that the concept of
Christian ministerial priests is unbiblical. Also please read Papal Sin,
Structures of Deceit, Garry Wills, Darton Longman and Todd, London, 2000 which
has some material based on his findings. The Bible merely says that all
believers are priests. The Bible says our sin killed Jesus on the cross and put
him there. He had to suffer to atone for them and wipe them away. Thus we are
all priests for as sinners we kill the victim. Catholic priests are not called
priests in that sense at all.
The Sacrifice of the Mass cannot be unique if the explanation is accepted. It
must be present to God all the time for when God can see the future all time
must make one timeless “moment” in eternity and so we can say at any moment that
it is present and offer it to God. Thus the Mass is always going on and is not
limited to a Catholic Mass. Jesus is offering himself everywhere and at all
times and doing it without priests and altars and bread and wine. This makes it
blasphemous of those Catholics who say we must go to Mass to offer sacrifice for
that is wrong. Yet they must say this for their Church infallibly teaches that
going to a prayer service on Sunday does not fulfil the Sunday obligation to
worship God by offering sacrifice. This can only be fulfilled by going to Mass.
The Church does not oblige you to receive communion every Sunday but it obliges
you to hear Mass for the Mass is the sacrifice of the cross. So it is the
sacrifice that is most important.
Even if the sacrifice were perpetuated only and exclusively at Mass we could
offer it to God without being in the church at all. So though Jesus sits in
Heaven now his passion and death are still real to God and are still present to
him.
Some say that when Mass is celebrated, it is the same sacrifice as Calvary in
the sense that Jesus offers it to God in a retrospective way. So the sacrifice
doesn’t become present but Jesus just offers what he did in the past on the
cross in the Mass. In that case, the Mass is not a sacrifice. They are denying
what the Council of Trent said about the Mass making the sacrifice of Calvary
present. You cannot offer your goat to God in sacrifice and offer it again in a
prayer service a year later and say that it’s the same sacrifice. You are
offering in the prayer service a sacrifice that is in the past and finished.
Sacrifice involves causing suffering and bloodshed and you don’t do that in the
prayer service.
There is only one possibility. We know that the timeless theory is the only way
to explain how the Mass can be the same as Calvary without re-crucifying Jesus
but the Church cannot really believe it for it claims that the Mass is uniquely
sacrificial.
Also, it is Church teaching that the bread becomes the body of Christ when the
priest says, "This is my body." The wine becomes the blood when the priest says.
"This is my blood" a few moments later. The Church teaches that there is NO
sacrifice until the wine is changed! The argument from eternity would mean that
when the bread is changed, the sacrifice is present. The Church does not really
believe the argument - it is covering up an attempt to murder Jesus all over
again.
In Jesus' culture, "Drink my blood" means take my life. Jesus at least with the cup is being metaphorically murdered again at least.
The Protestants are right, the Mass is a NEW sacrifice. It is an attempt to
kill Jesus all over again and shed his blood using bread and wine. The Mass is
not the sacrifice of Calvary but an attempt to repeat Calvary in an invisible
way. The Catholics then are trusting in the wrong sacrifice to take away sins
and so cannot be counted as true Christians. The Mass is evil and is joining
forces with those who put Jesus on the cross. It is extreme blasphemy.
God wrote in the Bible with Paul that if Jesus has not risen from the dead and
saved us we are still in our sins (1 Corinthians 15). This denies that sincerely
repenting and going to God is enough and he will have mercy for if you are
sincerely wrong he will have nothing to do with you. So the wrong sacrifice
means no mercy. Sincerely thinking it is the sacrifice of Christ makes no
difference for if God won’t forgive you for sincerely thinking you are saved he
will make no exceptions.
Priests have a responsibility to know what they mean by offering Mass and
understanding it thoroughly. For any priest to be irresponsible and not bother
means that he doesn’t care if he is trying to kill Jesus again and offer a fake
sacrifice for sin and leave the people in their sins. Responsibility means
trying to do the right thing and taking the consequences so it can’t be any
other way.
The doctrine of the God who is outside time and to whom every moment of time is
just all like its concurrent instead of past and future is stolen from Greek
philosophy. There is no evidence that this is the God of the Bible. Thus
biblically, offering the Mass is attempting to murder Jesus Christ - again!
The Church curses anybody who works out the truth about the Mass. It curses
people over ideas that are incoherent and silly. It will not repent for its
serious insult to them.