Your opinion is impotent.....
I have an opinion also.....you are Blind
Here is a fact, NOT an opinion——-ALL that adhere to catholic doctrine add to Paul’s Gospel Of Grace Plus Nothing.....they Follow a “Perverted Gospel” taught by “ Accursed” Priests ....Don’t take my word for anything. Read Galatians. If you add to the Gospel with the Seven hoops that Catholics insist you must jump through ( infant baptism, confessions of sins before a priest , the taking of the Sacraments , etc ) you are “ Fallen From Grace” ( lets all hope that that does not mean Damnation) and those that Teach it are going to Hell— That is what “ Accursed” means. Sorry—- read Galatians and tell me that I am wrong.....I am waiting.
You're wrong, and present the standard, stupid, hostile (and I would argue Gnostic) perspective of sacramentalism, and haven't a clue what it means.
Ritual and “physicality” were not abolished by the coming of Christ. Quite the contrary: it was the Incarnation that fully established sacramentalism as a principle in the Christian religion.
The latter may be defined as the belief that matter can convey grace. It’s really that simple, at bottom, or in essence. God uses matter both to help us live better lives (sanctification) and to ultimately save us (regeneration and justification), starting with baptism itself.
The atonement or redemption of Christ (His death on the cross for us) was not purely “spiritual.
” It was as physical (“sacramental,” if you will) as it could be, as well as spiritual. Protestants often piously refer to “the Blood of Jesus,” and rightly so (see Rev 5:9; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14; Heb 9:12; 1 Pet 1:2; 1 Jn 1:7; etc.).
This is explicitly sacramental thinking.
Sacramentalism and the Bible
It was the very suffering of Jesus in the flesh, and the voluntary shedding of His own blood, which constituted the crucial, essential aspect of His work as our Redeemer and Savior. One can’t avoid this: “he was bruised for our iniquities” (Is 53:5).
So it is curious that many appear to possess a pronounced hostility to the sacramental belief in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, seeing that it flows so straightforwardly from the Incarnation and the Crucifixion itself. This brings to mind an analogy to the Jewish and Muslim disdain for the Incarnation as an unthinkable (impossible?) task for God to undertake.
They view the Incarnation in the same way a majority of Protestants regard the Eucharist.
For them, God wouldn’t or couldn’t or shouldn’t become a man (such a thought is blasphemous; unthinkable!). For many (not all) Protestants, God wouldn’t or couldn’t or shouldn’t become substantially, physically, sacramentally present under the outward forms of bread and wine.
The dynamic or underlying premise is the same. If Christ could become man, He can surely will to be actually and truly present in what was formerly (and still looks like) bread and wine, once consecrated.
The New Testament is filled with incarnational and sacramental indications: instances of matter conveying grace.
- The Church is the “Body” of Christ (1 Cor 12:27; Eph 1:22-23; 5:30), and marriage (including its physical aspects) is described as a direct parallel to Christ and the Church (Eph 5:22-33; esp. 29-32).
- Jesus even seems to literally equate Himself in some sense with the Church, saying He was “persecuted” by Paul, after the Resurrection (Acts 9:5).
- Not only that; in St. Paul’s teaching, one can find a repeated theme of identifying very graphically and literally with Christ and His sufferings (see: 2 Cor 4:10; Phil 2:17; 3:10; 2 Tim 4:6; and above all, Col 1:24).
Matter conveys grace all over the place in Scripture:
- baptism confers regeneration (Acts 2:38; 22:16; 1 Pet 3:21; cf. Mk 16:16; Rom 6:3-4; 1 Cor 6:11; Titus 3:5).
- Paul’s “handkerchiefs” healed the sick (Acts 19:12),
- as did even Peter’s shadow (Acts 5:15),
- and of course, Jesus’ garment (Matt 9:20-22)
- and saliva mixed with dirt (John 9:5 Markk 8:22-25),
- as well as water from the pool of Siloam (John 9:7).
- anointing with oil for healing is encouraged (Jas 5:14).
- We also observe in Scripture the laying on of hands for the purpose of ordination and commissioning (Acts 6:6; 1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6) to facilitate the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:17-19; 13:3; 19:6),
- and for healing (Mk 6:5; Lk 13:13; Acts 9:17-18). Even under the old covenant, a dead man was raised simply by coming in contact with the bones of the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 13:21) — which is also one of the direct evidences for the Catholic practice of the veneration of relics (itself an extension of the sacramental principle).
Not ‘magic charms’
Sacramentalism is a “product” of the Incarnation, just as the Church also is. But we must also understand that the sacraments are not “magic charms".
Intent, sincerity, motivation, piety, and suchlike are all supremely important in the Catholic life.
A piece of cloth cannot rescind the normal duties of the Catholic life. Nor is God some sort of celestial “vending machine".
” He wants our hearts; he wants us — not meaningless outward obedience without the proper interior motivation, in love, and by His grace. Sacraments help us, but we must do our part, too.
read more here.
Christ didn’t abolish ritual — He perfected it
"...Thus, from its beginning, Protestantism has been preoccupied with what it regards as the depravity of human nature, its radical incapacity for goodness, its reliance on grace as on something which supplants man’s nature rather than penetrates it...
Here we find the cause of Protestantism’s inability to understand the importance of works to salvation, which led Luther to revise Scripture and declare the letter of St. James to be apocryphal. Here also we have the root of Calvin’s notion that some are predestined for heaven and others for hell by nothing but the arbitrary will of God. Nor are we surprised to find Protestant sects which have outlawed the celebration of Christmas itself, distrusting the human values and human joy which Christmas both represents and fulfills. Indeed, from the point of view of nature, Protestantism must be described as a very thin, a very incomplete religion.
By contrast, Catholicism flowers in nature, transforming and elevating not only man himself but man’s culture. The astonishing achievements of Catholic culture over two millennia—in art and literature, sculpture and architecture, education and government, work and play, fast and feast—are one and all rooted in the Incarnational principle. The sense that the human body is itself a repository of grace, a temple of the Holy Spirit, fosters a unique Catholic mode of being in which the mind and spirit are never alone, never cut off. Rather man worships God in his body, and carries all of nature beyond itself in the quest to fulfill the very end of religion, which is for all creation to give glory to God.
Not in the abstract, then, is Catholic salvation worked out, but in the concrete; not in the general, but in the particular. The Catholic vision is not one of being “attached” to Christ, but of “putting on” Christ (Gal 3:27), not one of merely receiving an external gift, but of living the Christ life deep within—so that I live, no not I, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20). Each virtue is cultivated, each habit transformed and elevated, each relationship purified, each work ennobled. And the power for this continuous transformation is nourished—no, actually ingested—and formed into community through the Eucharist, the Word quite literally made Flesh, the Body and Blood really and actually present, not in figure or even in grace alone, but in its very substance.
Every Catholic is called to a life-long process of incorporating (I choose the word advisedly) his whole self, body and soul, into Christ, and not only his self but his loves, his labors, his own small creations, and the entire world over which he has been given dominion. This project, in which no detail is neglected or flattened, and no element lost or discarded, is unique to Catholicism. As I have said, it is a project rooted in the Incarnational principle.
But even the Incarnational principle is not so much explained as demonstrated, not so much taught as lived. It was lived first by Christ Himself, born of Mary and protected by Joseph, in Bethlehem, in a stable, in a manger—and so at length in us.
read more here:
Why Be Catholic? 8: Incarnation
