Tarkblog

I’m not going to make any friends with this blog. But, after attending two Catholic weddings in the past two weeks, something jumped out at me.

I’m not a Catholic. I wasn’t brought up with anything to do with Catholicism. I’ve attended many different religious ceremonies, including Catholic mass. I’ve been to more than one Greek Orthodox Easter service, which is probably the most traditional church service you’ll find in the US.

But there’s one major problem I have with this particular religion…

One word: communion. When thinking of this word, most would think about eating a cracker and drinking some wine. But look more closely at the word. “Commune”, as in community. Or communicate. Communion is the act of sharing - in this case, representative of sharing of bread and wine in commemoration of Christ’s last meal.

This sacrament is followed by most Christian churches, even protestant ones. However, one major separation between the protestant and Catholic beliefs of communion is the concept of transubstantiation; that is, Catholics (and Lutherans and some Evangelicals) believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.

I do not believe this. I believe it is a metaphor. I do not believe that the bread physically manifests itself into the body of Christ - rather, it is described to encompass the thought in your mind that by partaking of the bread, you are strengthening yourself with Christ’s body, a.k.a. the church. It’s symbolic. It’s meaningful. But it’s not real.

I bet if you interviewed some people who call themselves Catholic, they would agree with my viewpoint here. What I’ve always found interesting is that during conversations about the church, on more than one occasion I’ve heard a Catholic person say: “Oh, well, I don’t really believe that” when referring to some specific aspect of the church.

So if you don’t believe it, are you really Catholic? Or are you just performing the ritual of going to church because it’s easier than outwardly talking about what you believe in.

What set my mind off to this was when I heard the priest talk about “two bodies becoming one” as a symbol of marriage. It made me think: are we supposed to also believe that the two bodies physically become one body? Because, I can look at most married couples and tell you that they don’t phyiscally become one body. In most aspects of their life, they are joined together. Spritually, they should be entertwined. But physically, they are still two different people.

I went to a Lutheran easter service once a few years ago. I filled out the guest card, which was probably a bad idea since to this day I continue to receive weekly letters from them. But, on the back of this card was a numbered list of things that you had to believe in to be considered “Lutheran”. It was there to let you know whether you would be okay to receive communion or not. One of them was the belief in transsubstantiation. It put a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, I had partaken in communion many times before - at both Methodist and Baptist services. But sorry, not here, you can’t drink our wine and eat our bread unless you believe these things. I wonder just how many people took communion anyway, regardless of their beliefs. I wonder how many of the church regulars, the ones who go there week in and week out, don’t actually believe some of those things.

Church shouldn’t be about going through the motions. It should be a time of spritual uplifting, learning, and progressing.

So, if you’re Catholic and I offended you, sorry. The point of this blog wasn’t to chastise the church, but to point out that there are plenty of hypocrites on both sides of the altar. Make sure you’re not one of them…okay?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 16th, 2004 at 8:04 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.