I would say yes, Jesus is present in Protestant services. Jesus is present wherever two or three are gathered in His name and He is present when His word is proclaimed and studied.
But what about their Holy Communion? I would say yes, to the extent that they believe He is present. I don't think any Protestants believe in the Sacrificial aspect of their "Lord's Supper." They don't believe in transubstantiation. For most they simply believe "it" is a symbol of the Lord, like a picture of Jesus would be.
Some High Episcopal/Anglican parishes approach our dogma of transubstantiation, but I think they, nonetheless, have a different term.
But less, we forget, for the valid celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you need a valid priest to be the sacramental sign of the one and only High Priest, who is also the Victim in the Holy Sacrifice. That is Jesus Christ, not only High Priest and Victim but also Bridegroom--the Church is His bride.
But you might ask, in the Church there are male and female; how can man/men be brides? Our souls, no matter our physical gender, are feminine to receive the sanctifying and actual graces Jesus gives us as He gives us Himself. In Latin and most Romance languages the term soul "anima" is feminine.The maleness of the ordained priesthood is the proper "matter" for the Sacrament of Holy Orders since Christ is High Priest (not priestess) and Bridegroom, not bride or transgendered.
Anglicans don't have that nor do any other Protestant sects. Only the Eastern Orthodox Churches do.
But their Holy Communion services aren't devoid of the presence of Christ. And perhaps the Catholic Church supplies what is lacking for them?
17 comments:
That first photograph looks identical to the current ordinary form Mass (except for the black vestment, our priests are often in a white alb with stole). The people in the back look like extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist. Whoever said the ordinary form was Protestant hit the nail on the head.
I would say yes, Jesus is present in Protestant services. Jesus is present wherever two or three are gathered in His name and He is present when His word is proclaimed and studied.
No matter what is proclaimed in His name? So you have a protestant get together where the guy up on the stage interprets God's Word to say that it is all about our relationship with Jesus and we don't need a Church. Jesus is present there? Or how bout those I'm ok your ok inter faith get togethers where us Catholics tell the Blessed Mother to stand over there so as to not offend?
How can the Catholic Church "supply" what is lacking for them? This is a sacramental issue, rather than a canonical one.
Except for the fact that the guy in the top photo is wearing black and a tie....it could be any typical Novus Ordo Catholic parish. Show that picture to today’s Catholics and say it’s a picture of Mass, they wouldn’t have a clue.
I assume you're playing some kind of devil's advocate game, since most of the views suggested in this post are so thoroughly protestant, and heretical. E.g.,"to the extent that the believe He is present". Anathema! Makes no different what they falsely believe.
Protestant churches are Trinitarian, they believe the articles of the Creed, and the Catholic Church recognizes protestant Baptisms. Of course, Christ is present in their services and not "to the extent they believe he is." God's Presence is not predicated upon our belief, or lack thereof. I believe that the Catholic Church is God's desired destination for all believers...ecumenicism means that the Church will one day gather all, whether now or at the end of historical time. That is why this puny "ecumenical dialogue" disgusts me so. The Church should speak with authority and from the high ground, expounding the Truth in such a way as to draw the protestant ecumenical communities into her. She should not be compromising her dogma and doctrine in order to cajole protestants into some faux communion. The Church should be tender, but firm...inviting, but not compromising, self-assured, but not condescending. We have a long way to go...Christ have mercy!
Lutherans, at least some parts of that denomination, are said to believe in what is understood to be the doctrine of consubstantiation. Denominationally, they reject this description in favor of what is termed Sacramental Union. This to me is a parsing without a satisfactory remediation. I've read that some Lutherans and Anglicans also believe in Transubstantiation.
It matters not. There was a time when human beings believed that the earth was flat. Their belief did not make it so. Unless you connect a circuit to a power source, no current flows. Only a duly ordained Catholic priest can, with the necessary intent and proper words required, bring about through the Holy grace and Power of God,the transformation of the bread and wine into Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.
The salvation of at least some Protestants is a subject beyond the scope of a mere comment. Some things are mysteries known only to God and to those who are the beneficiaries of His grace and benevolence.
Certainly He above all, who possesses Mercy, Love and Generosity to the highest degree, can bring something good out of an imperfect situation. Our prayers and sacrifices for others do have their good effect.
The Orthodox, having real orders, and real Bishops with actual authority over their particular flock, shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as the other protestant groups.
Surely Jesus is present when 2 or 3 are gathered in His name, that's without question. However, he is not present in their form of Holy Communion, one might call it the Real Absence so to speak.
The Authority comes from Christ Himself, so I would not say that the Catholic Church provides what is lacking...(no apostolic lineage for protestants)....
Any graces that may come from a protestant service are not in the nature of their service itself, where as that would be the case for the Orthodox (having real bishops with real authority, and no canonical excommunication of them)
Did anything good come out of the Reformation? Did the Church need to be reformed? Francis had to rebuild the Church. Was that what was needed but the reform might have been. One that was needed nonetheless?
An NLM article today that could not be more timely and pertinent to this post:
The Priority of Adoration over Communion
http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2017/10/the-priority-of-religion-and-adoration.html#.WduEKzspCNJ
BTW, if Christ is present in some of the sloppy, lazy, silly OF's I have attended, then he can be present in any service...protestant, Catholic, or Wiccan.
I'm amazed how certain progressive liturgists will out of a sense of charity refuse to say that Lutherans believe errors about the Eucharist (even though Lutherans explicitly reject Trent's declarations on the Eucharist which were reaffirmed by Paul VI as permanently binding after Vatican II), but have no problem disparaging the extraordinary form of the roman rite as abrogated unreformed clerical sacred drama which teaches errors about the nature of the church.
"some of the sloppy, lazy, silly OF's I have attended . . . "
Really? Though I've not attended an OF Sunday Mass since Summorum Pontificum, I attended them most Sundays in the preceding 40 years--in numerous parishes, diocese, states, and regions of the country, not a few of them celebrated by pretty mediocre priests, some of them with unfortunate personal proclivities and ones who subsequently left the priesthood.
But I rarely if ever saw an OF Sunday Mass that actually was "sloppy, lazy, silly", though I saw plenty at which behavior of the congregation was questionable.
My point is that constant harping on clown Masses and the like is tantamount to suggesting that if only the Novus Ordo were celebrated well and reverently, then all would be well.
Not so. So far as I know, the Novus Ordo is generally celebrated seriously and fairly well, and can now be judged by its fruits--several generations of Catholics with shallow faith and little knowledge of it, no Catholic identity, essentially just "Protestants who attend Mass on Sunday (at least sometimes).
Henry, I was in no way implying that all would be well if only the OF were celebrated properly. The OF is hopeless and cannot be fixed...dolled up, maybe, but not fixed. I do not agree that the OF is generally celebrated well and seriously. I guess we attend in different places.
Regrettably, the Reformation shifted the focus in Protestantism from the altar to the pulpit---thus Southern Baptist churches without an altar (at best, a table with a Bible and flowers---in front of the pulpit, as if to show what is more important) Anglican and Lutheran churches usually kept their altar in the middle of the sanctuary, but not until perhaps the 1970s did the Episcopal Church embrace the Eucharist as the principal Sunday worship. Fortunately, most Episcopal parishes up here in Atlanta have broken away from the old "Communion once a month" and "Morning Prayer" the other Sundays syndrome. A lot of parishes up here have clergy trained at Sewanee (in Tennessee, near the apex for Interstate 24 crossing Monteagle Mountain), who embrace a more Catholic view of the Eucharist, celebrating it at every Sunday service, and usually with Eucharistic vestments. On the other hand, some southern Episcopal clergy hail from Virginia Seminary in Alexandria, which traditionally has been more low-church/evangelical, who historically were Protestant in their Eucharistic theology, meaning they seldom wore the chasuble. Methodists typically celebrate the Eucharist just once a month (often on the first Sunday of the month), which baffles me---as Acts 2:42 tells us, the apostles shared readings and broke bread on the Lords' Day---which to me does not sound like "do it just the first Sunday of the month." I have seen some Protestant churches where the Eucharist is not observed on Easter Sunday---I mean, if there ought to be any day of the year when it is observed.......
I recently attended celebration of the OF in Amsterdam and Budapest while on vacation. In neither case did I experience a celebration that was sloppy, lazy or silly.
The priest in Amsterdam was, I think, Spanish, and the priest in Budapest was from Ghana.
Fr MJK
Did the Spanish priest celebrate in Dutch, and the Ghanaian priest in Hungarian? In which case you would have been able to join in, being fluent in both languages.
The last time I was in Budapest I sought out a Latin (OF) Mass, which wasn't difficult. Even in Amsterdam it wasn't too much of a problem.
But according to you, Latin is of no use.
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