Why I am a Catholic Part 2: The Church

The flaw with Sola Scriptura

            This blog is the second of 4 blogs about Why I am a Catholic. Over the past two years I have been studying and searching for the truth in Christianity. I have been praying for Jesus to guide and direct my paths and lead me to the truth and a deep relationship with him. I was born and raised a Catholic but decided that I was not going to just be Catholic because that's how I was brought up, I need to find the truth and own it for myself. I started reading the writings of Early Christians, the reformers, Catholic apologetics, Protestant apologetics, and visiting/attending different Christian Church's. With that being said I think my search is over, I think the Catholic faith is the true Church founded by Jesus himself, and below is why.

            The great writer and Christian apologetic GK Chesterton (convert to the Catholic faith) once said "The difficulty of explaining "why I am a Catholic" is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true." I will not cover here all the beliefs and doctrine of the Catholic faith, that would take forever. But I will tackle four of the biggest issues, The Eucharist (is it symbolic or is it Christ's actual flesh and blood), the protestant belief of Sola-Scriptura (that the bible alone is our sole authority), protestant belief in Sola-fide (Faith Alone) and Church’s teaching on Mary.  I will use scripture, the writings of the first Christians, and quotes from converts to the Catholic faith to make my case.

            After studying and researching what the Catholic Church truly teaches I have come to see that Archbishop Fulton Sheen was completely correct when he said "There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be."  I saw a blog titled “Almost not Catholic” and laughed because I came very close to buying into some of the anti-catholic beliefs and propaganda and was myself “almost not Catholic.” Even more so, after reading in depth about why the Church teaches what it teaches I have realized that Sheen was also speaking truly when he said "The Catholic Church is like a lion in a cage. You don't need to defend it; you simply need to open the door." With all this being said I would like to be very clear here, I am not trying to attack or be negative towards any Christian denominations, I am simply stating why it is that I have come to believe in the Catholic faith. I have a great respect for my brothers and sisters in Christ that are not a part of the Catholic Church. I just think there are a lot of misconstrued views of Catholicism and many people don't understand why we believe what we believe. It is my prayer that this will at least allow those who are not Catholic to come to a better understanding and respect for the Catholic faith. This, being the second blog is about Sola Scriptura.                                          

            After spending a lot of time researching the protestant/non-denominational belief of Sola Scriptura (Bible alone) I have found that it just A. Does not make sense and B. that Jesus did not teach it. I will begin with an analogy. Imagine if the founding fathers of the United States of America said that our sole authority would be the Constitution of the United States. We would have complete anarchy because the document is not completely clear on certain issues, cannot speak for itself, and can be interpreted in different ways. The founding fathers realized this and so left us with a government and Supreme Court to interpret the document. If they did not we would not be a united country.  This is exactly the same case with the Bible; the belief in Sola-Scriptura makes every man his own Pope. If you go to a church and do not like what you hear and disagree with the pastor's interpretation of scripture you simply leave that church and go to another one. This is precisely why we have 33,000 protestant denominations and thousands of more non-denominational churches.  These churches differ on a wide variety of beliefs, each basing their beliefs in scripture...but their own interpretation and philosophy of scripture. This is why GK Chesterton said this about his Catholic faith; "I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me."

 Is this what Jesus wanted? Did he simply leave us with the Bible and say figure it out? I just don't believe that a loving God who is all good, all knowing, and all powerful would want that. In John Chapter 17 verse 11 Jesus is praying to our father and says "Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are." Then again in verse 21 "so that they may all be one."  These were the very prayers of the Messiah, Savior, and son of God; would God not answer his prayers? And if he did then why is Christianity so divided and separated.

            I believe Jesus left us with a Church and leader to guide and direct us when he told Peter in Matthew chapter 16 verses 18-19 "You are Peter and upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Notice he didn't say you are Peter and on this rock I will write 1st and 2nd Peter. In fact Jesus hardly ever mentions to His apostles anything about writing. Also notice that our Lord did not say, "I will build My Churches." The Church is His body. Christ can't have many bodies or He would be a physical monstrosity. I believe Peter was the first Pope and that the power granted to him has been passed down through apostolic succession to Pope Benedict, the 265^th.  Many Converts are quick to object and say but Peter was not the first Pope or that Catholics take that verse out of context. However, when I read letters and writings of the first Christians I simply found that they believed he was and that Jesus founded a single Church. (I will list a few quotes below, there are MANY more.) 

"Was anything withheld from the knowledge of Peter, who is called ‘the rock on which the Church would be built’ [Matt. 16:18] with the power of ‘loosing and binding in heaven and on earth’ [Matt. 16:19]?" (Demurrer Against the Heretics 22 [A.D. 200]).

“The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ he says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. And to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever things you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth, they shall be loosed also in heaven’ [Matt. 16:18–19]). … On him he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep [John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair, and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were also what Peter was, but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. So too, all are shepherds, and the flock is shown to be one, fed by all the apostles in single-minded accord. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?”
251 A.D. St. Cyprian of Carthage

"There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering"

(Letters 43[40]:5 [A.D. 253]

      Another Reason why I don't accept Sola Scriptura is that well, it contradicts itself. The Bible does not teach that the Bible by itself is our sole authority. The Bible says to "stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Furthermore, the Bible says the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Timothy 3:15). Also the first Christians could not have practiced Sola Scriptura since the New Testament was not compiled for decades after Jesus ascended into heaven, some of the letters were written as late as 80 or 90 AD. Finally, there was no printing press and the majority of people were illiterate. Sola Scriptura was not a practice of the first Christians.       

      Finally there were many other Gospels and letters written that did not make it into the Bible.  How do you know what constitutes the New Testament canon? How do you know for certain that these 27 books here in your New Testament are in fact inspired and should be in the New Testament? And how do you know for certain that maybe some inspired books haven’t been left out of the canon? There is no divinely inspired table of contents that says which books are divinely inspired. While some books and were unanimously supported as the written word of God others were debated, such as Revelations and Jude.  Some books that were kept out some people argued should have been placed in such as Acts of Paul, Shepherd of Hermas and Epistle of Barnabas. The Bible did not just magically appear nor was it magically placed together. As Scott Hahn, the former Presbyterian minister and Catholic Convert stated "Church historians all agree that we got the New Testament from the Council of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397, both of which sent off their judgments to Rome for the Pope's approval" (Hahn). If Church councils and popes do not have the ability to speak infallibly we are left with a fallible list of infallible books. Many Protestants who realized this either have converted or faced with that fact have now stated that the Bible is a fallible list of infallible books (RC Sproul and Dr. John Gerstner are two big name Protestant theologians who hold this belief). This is why the Catholic convert and former Presbyterian minister, Scott Hahn stated that it has to be the Church and the Bible, both, or neither.

            Another Convert to the Catholic faith, Peter Kreeft, who is a Yale graduate and PhD. Professor stated; “I was impressed by the argument that "the Church wrote the Bible:" Christianity was preached by the Church before the New Testament was written—that is simply a historical fact. It is also a fact that the apostles wrote the New Testament and the Church canonized it, deciding which books were divinely inspired. I knew, from logic and common sense, that a cause can never be less than its effect. You can't give what you don't have. If the Church has no divine inspiration and no infallibility, no divine authority, then neither can the New Testament. Protestantism logically entails Modernism. I had to be either a Catholic or a Modernist. That decided it; that was like saying I had to be either a patriot or a traitor.” (Kreeft)

             GK Chesterton put it best when discussing Sola-Scriptura and the Catholic Church. "It knows there were many other Gospels besides the Four Gospels and that the others were only eliminated by the authority of the Catholic Church... It does not, in the conventional phrase, believe what the Bible says, for the simple reason that the Bible does not say anything. You cannot put a book in the witness-box and ask it what it really means. The Fundamentalist controversy itself destroys Fundamentalism. The Bible by itself cannot be a basis of agreement when it is a cause of disagreement; it cannot be the common ground of Christians when some take it allegorically and some literally. The Catholic refers it to something that can say something, to the living, consistent, and continuous mind of which I have spoken; the highest mind of man guided by God."

          These 33,000 different Protestant denominations differ on a wide variety of theological beliefs. And some of them are starting to allow homosexual pastors, abortions; some churches are going as far as to deny the Trinity. This last point I believe is the most important. That, since the reformation Christianity and Protestantism has yet to stop reforming and changing. Christianity is now a movement. The reformers themselves accepted and defended the belief of Mary's perpetual virginity (Ill talk more about this in the blog about Mary). Now all Christian denominations believe Mary had other sons. The reformer Martin Luther stated this several years after the reformation; "This one will not hear of Baptism, and that one denies the sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day: some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: there are as many sects and creeds as there are heads. No yokel is so rude but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet." This is what I mean that there are no longer any absolutes that Christianity is now a movement and nothing is safe. This is what happens when you take away a governing body to interpret scripture.

           

( I know I am long winded, the 4 paragraphs below written are by GK Chesterton and end this blog perfectly)

"It is this: that at the moment when religion lost touch with Rome, it changed instantly and internally, from top to bottom, in its very substance and the stuff of which it was made. It changed in substance; it did not necessarily change in form or features or externals. It might do the same things; but it could not be the same thing. It might go on saying the same things; but it was not the same thing that was saying them. And in that instant of refusal, his religion became a different religion; a different sort of religion; a different sort of thing. In that instant it began to change; and it has not stopped changing yet. We are all somewhat wearily aware that some modern churchmen call such continuous change progress; as when we remark that a corpse crawling with worms has an increased vitality; or that a snow man slowly turning into a puddle is purifying itself of its accretions. But I am not concerned with this argument here. The point is that a dead man may look like a sleeping man a moment after he is dead, but decomposition has actually begun. The point is that the snow man may in theory be made in the real image of man. Michelangelo made a statue in snow; and it might quite easily have been an exact replica of one of his statues in marble; but it was not in marble. Most probably the snow man has begun to melt almost as soon as it is made. But even if the frost holds, it is still a stuff capable of melting when the frost goes. It seemed to many that Protestantism would long continue to be, in the popular phrase, a perfect frost. But that does not alter the difference between ice and marble; and marble does not melt."

"Now a Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is. And the most striking and outstanding illustration is perhaps to be found in the Catholic view of marriage as compared with the modern theory of divorce; not, it must be noted, the very modern theory of divorce, which is the mere negation of marriage; but even more the slightly less modern and more moderate theory of divorce, which was generally accepted even when I was a boy.

This is the very vital point or test of the question; for it explains the Church's rejection of the moderate as well as the immoderate theory. It illustrates the very fact I am pointing out, that divorce has already turned into something totally different from what was intended, even by those who first proposed it. Already we must think ourselves back into a different world of thought, in order to understand how anybody ever thought it was compatible with Victorian virtue; and many very virtuous Victorians did. But they only tolerated this social solution as an exception; and many other modern social solutions they would not have tolerated at all. But about divorce such liberal Protestants did hold an intermediate view, which was substantially this. They thought the normal necessity and duty of all married people was to remain faithful to their marriage; that this could be demanded of them, like common honesty or any other virtue. But they thought that in some very extreme and extraordinary cases a divorce was allowable. Now, putting aside our own mystical and sacramental doctrine, this was not on the face of it an unreasonable position. It certainly was not meant to be anarchical. But the Catholic Church, standing almost alone, declared that it would in fact lead to an anarchical position; and the Catholic Church was right....The Church was right to refuse even the exception. The world has admitted the exception; and the exception has become the rule."

"But in the conditions of modern mental anarchy, neither that nor any other ideal is safe. Just as Protestants appealed from priests to the Bible, and did not realize that the Bible also could be questioned, so republicans appealed from kings to the people, and did not realize that the people also could be defied. There is no end to the dissolution of ideas, the destruction of all tests of truth, that has become possible since men abandoned the attempt to keep a central and civilized Truth, to contain all truths and trace out and refute all errors. Since then, each group has taken one truth at a time and spent the time in turning it into a falsehood. We have had nothing but movements; or in other words, monomanias. But the Church is not a movement but a meeting-place; the trysting-place of all the truths in the world."

Citations:

Below is the article that I cited by Peter Kreeft. Peter Kreeft is a convert to Catholicism from Calvinism. He is a Yale graduate and a PH.D Professor. The article "Hauled Aboard The Ark" is his conversion story to the Catholic faith. Well worth the read!
Hauled Aboard The Ark


The other citation is from Scott Hahn's Book Rome Sweet Home
The GK Chesterton Excerpts are from a collection of his essays that can be found in "The collected Works of GK Chesterton Volume III"

 Why I am a Catholic Part 1:

The Eucharist - Jesus's "Body, blood, Soul and Divinity"

 The great writer and Christian apologetic GK Chesterton (convert to the Catholic faith) once said "The difficulty of explaining "why I am a Catholic" is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true." I will not cover here all the beliefs and doctrine of the Catholic faith, that would take forever. But I will tackle four of the biggest issues, The Eucharist (is it symbolic or is it Christ's actual flesh and blood), the protestant belief of Sola-Scriptura (that the bible alone is our sole authority), Salvation and the Catholic Church's teaching on Mary.

After studying and researching what the Catholic Church truly teaches I have come to see that Archbishop Fulton Sheen was completely correct when he said "There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be."  I saw a blog titled “Almost not Catholic” and laughed to myself because I came very close to buying into some of the anti-catholic beliefs and propaganda and was myself “almost not Catholic.” Even more so, after reading in depth about why the Church teaches what it teaches I have realized that Sheen was also speaking truly when he said "The Catholic Church is like a lion in a cage. You don't need to defend it, you simply need to open the door." 

With all this being said I would like to be very clear hear, I am not trying to attack or be negative towards any Christian denominations, I am simply stating why it is that I have come to believe in the Catholic faith. I have a great respect for my brothers and sisters in Christ that are not a part of the Catholic Church. I just think there are a lot of misconstrued views of Catholicism and many people don't understand why we believe what we believe. I will use scripture, the writings of the first Christians, and quotes from converts to the Catholic faith to make my case. It is my prayer that this will at least allow those who are not Catholic to come to a better understanding and respect for the Catholic faith. 

  I would like to discuss the Eucharist or Communion. Does the bread and wine actually become Jesus Christ's "Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity" as the Catholic Church believes or is it his spiritual presence as Lutherans believe, or is it whatever the person receiving it believes it to be as some Churches teach, or is it purely symbolic as many other Churches believe? This is the problem of Sola Scriptura (The Bible Alone, but I'll talk about this next week) which interpretation is correct. One example of the confusion that followed the reformation is evidenced in Christopher Rasperger’s work published in 1577 titled: 200 Interpretations of the Words: This is My Body. So which definition is the truth? Is there an objective truth? Before I go any further stop reading and open your bible and read John chapter 6 verse 22-70. Seriously stop reading and read those verses. Did you read them? Good. Ok now I know what you're probably thinking, "come on, Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors a lot and this is simply another one. After all Jesus did say "I am the vine," (John 15:5), "I am the door," (John 10:7,9), "I am the good shepherd,"(John 10:11,12), I am the light of the world (John 8:12.) thus when he said "I am the bread of life" (John 6: 35) he was just speaking metaphorically or symbolically." 

This is often an argument presented by Protestants that Jesus wasn't speaking literally. However this argument does not work and here is why. In none of those other cases did the people he was preaching to actually believe he was speaking literally and question how he could actually be a vine or a door or a Sheppard. However in John chapter 6 the Jews listening clearly understood that this time he was not speaking in metaphors and thus asked him "how can this man give us his flesh to eat?"  (John 6:52). Notice in John Chapter 3, when Nicodemus is misunderstanding Jesus teaching on being Born again. He ask "How can I reenter my mothers womb?" In this verse Jesus clarify's his teaching and says "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." Notice in John Chapter 6, Jesus does not clear it up here and say "guys this is just another metaphor or a symbol, you don't actually have to eat my flesh." No Jesus repeats himself even more seriously. "So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. 54 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”   This is NOT the language of a symbol or metaphor. In John 6:50-53 we encounter various forms of the Greek verb phago, “eating.” However, after the Jews begin to express incredulity at the idea of eating Christ’s flesh, the language begins to intensify. In verse 54, John begins to use trogo instead of phago. Trogo is a decidedly more graphic term, meaning “to chew on” or to “gnaw on.” 

Or as Archbishop Sheen put it: “Christ words were too literal, and he cleared up too many false interpretations, for any of His hearers to claim that the Eucharist {OR Body and Blood he would give} was a mere symbol, or that it’s effects depended upon the subjective dispositions of the receiver. It was our Lords method whenever someone misunderstood what He said to correct that [wrong] understanding, as He did when Nicodemus thought “born-again” meant reentering his mothers womb. But whenever someone correctly understood what he said, but found fault with it, He repeated what he said. And in this discourse, our Lord repeated five times what he said about His Body and Blood. The full meaning of these words did not become evident until the night before He died. In His last will and testament, he left that which on dying no other man had been able to leave, namely, His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, for the entire world.”

 Again another chance arrives for Jesus to clear this up, "Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?” (Question: Is this a difficult statement if Jesus is speaking symbolically? No) 61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this shock you? 62 What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life...66.

         "Jesus did not say, “My flesh is of no avail.” He said, “The flesh is of no avail.” There is a rather large difference between the two. No one, it is safe to say, would have believed he meant my flesh avails nothing because he just spent a good portion of this same discourse telling us that his flesh would be “given for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51, cf. 50-58). So to what was he referring?The flesh is a New Testament term often used to describe human nature apart from God’s grace. For example, Christ said to the apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mk 14:38)." (Catholic Answers)

    As Catholic Apologetic Tim Hollingsworth put it; "In spite of Christ's warning, some of his disciples chose to walk away. Christ's warning is no less clear today. "The flesh is of no avail!" Your eyes will see bread. Your tongue will taste wine. Your nose will smell the alcohol. Your intellect cannot grasp what I am about to fully reveal on the night before I am to die for your sins, when I take bread in my sacred hands and break it so that you may always have me present and accessible. Your faculties of reason cannot understand the miracle - the turning of bread and wine into my flesh and blood - that will be performed in every nation, from the rising of the sun to its setting, at the hands of my priests until I come again in glory" (Hollingsworth, 2011). 

            Now here again protestants argue that "the words I have spoken are spirit and life" means that Jesus was speaking symbolically. "Jesus very clearly states that his words (about the Eucharist) are "Spirit and life." The English word spirit comes from the Latin word spiritus which literally means "breath."The word "Spirit" appears in 58 books, 288 chapters, 509 verses and a total of 556 times in the New American Bible.Nowhere in scripture is the word "Spirit" used as a synonym for the word "Symbolic." As John Martignoni of the Bible Christians Society says, we don't pray to the Father, Son and Holy Symbolic" (Hollingsworth, 2011).

            "As a result of this, many disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him" Had these disciples mistaken the meaning of Jesus' words, Jesus would surely have known and corrected them. He didn't. In no other place in scripture do people actually leave Jesus due to some doctrinal teaching. And these weren't just followers who simply were listening to him preach and said alright I am going home. These were his disciples who had left everything and given up everything to follow Him. And now because of this one teaching they decided I am no longer going to follow Him. They had clearly understood his meaning--Jesus' flesh was to be really eaten; His blood to be really drunk.

             That is why when Jesus turns to the original twelve disciples and says "Do you also want to leave?"(what a statement, like saying "hey guys...if you can't accept this you can leave too..because its true.") Peter doesn't respond, "No I get it Jesus, Transubstantiation; the physical elements remain but the substance is changed....makes perfect sense." Peter doesn't pretend to understand the Sacred mystery but he believes none the less and responds with "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

 Another argument that Protestants often make is that in the book of Leviticus God forbids people to drink blood. Leviticus 17:14 says, “Since the life of every living body is its blood, I have told the Israelites: You shall not partake of the blood of any meat. Since the life of every living body is its blood, anyone who partakes of it shall be cut off.”  They say God would be contradicting himself by requiring us to drink His blood. In the Old Testament God makes it clear that we are not to drink blood because it is “the life of every living body.”  So for the exact same reason people were forbidden to drink it in the Old Testament we are now required to drink His Blood in the New Testament, Jesus wants His life inside us! How awesome is that! Christ says in John 6 "So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.”  

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me." the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. - Luke 22: 19-20

Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. - Luke 24:35

 ^(Jesus explained the whole scripture to the disciples but they failed to identify Jesus. Jesus walked with them but they still failed to recognize him. Their eyes were closed even though they heard the word of God and its interpretation from Jesus himself. Jesus walked with them but they were still foolish and ignorant about the person of Jesus. Until He was made “known to them in the breaking of the bread.” The word Known that is used there is the Hebrew word Yada. It’s a personal and intimate knowledge, not to just to know about something or to know a fact but to intimately and personally know something or someone. In the Eucharist we have Yada with Christ.)

Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? - 1 Corinthians 10:16

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock, if anyone hears My voice, and opens the door, I will come into him, and will eat with him, and he with Me. - Revelations 3:20

  

            Further more the early Church fathers supported this belief in the real presence. Here are just a few examples (there are MANY more). This was such a strongly held belief that the first Christians were actually accused of and persecuted for being cannibals because they truly believed the Eucharist was indeed Jesus Christ's Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. St. Ignatius was actually taught by the apostle John and was martyred for his faith in Christ. (Also note the dates when these were written)

"Let that Eucharist be held valid which is offered by the bishop or by the one to whom the bishop has committed this charge. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

- St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans, 7, 110 A.D.

"Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead." - St Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans", paragraph 6. circa 80-110 A.D.

"I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David; and for drink I desire his blood, which is love incorruptible" - St. Ignatius (Letter to the Romans 7:3 [A.D. 110]).

"We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" St. Justin the Martyr (First Apology 66 [A.D. 151]).

“He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be His own Blood, from which He causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, He has established as His own Body, from which He gives increase to our bodies.” - St. Irenaeus 180 A.D.

"The stem of the vine takes root in the earth and eventually bears fruit, and 'the grain of wheat falls into the earth' (Jn. 12:24), dissolves, rises again, multiplied by the all-containing Spirit of God, and finally after skilled processing, is put to human use. These two then receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ."

-St. Irenaeus circa 180 A.D.

"Since Christ Himself has said, "This is My Body" who shall dare to doubt that It is His Body." - St. Cyril of Jerusalem (300 A.D.)"

"Be convinced that this is not what nature has formed, but what the blessing has consecrated. The power of the blessing prevails over that of nature, because by the blessing nature itself is changed. . . . Could not Christ's word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat to give things their original nature than to change their nature." - St. Ambrose (391 A.D.)

"It is not the power of man which makes what is put before us the Body and Blood of Christ, but the power of Christ Himself who was crucified for us. The priest standing there in the place of Christ says these words but their power and grace are from God. 'This is My Body,' he says, and these words transform what lies before him."

-  St. John Chrysostom, "Homilies on the Treachery of Judas" 1,6; d. 407 A.D.:

"I promised you [new Christians], who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table. . . . That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ"  - St. Augustine (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411])

Martin Luther Himself said this about the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. 

        "Who, but the devil, has granted such license of wresting the words of the holy Scripture? Who ever read in the Scriptures, that 'my body' is the same as 'the sign of my body'? or, that 'is' is the same as 'it signifies'? What language in the world ever spoke so? It is only then the devil, that imposes upon us by these fanatical men. Not one of the Fathers of the Church, though so numerous, ever spoke as the Sacramentarians: not one of them ever said, It is only bread and wine; or, the body and blood of Christ is not there present. Surely, it is not credible, nor possible, since they often speak, and repeat their sentiments, that they should never (if they thought so) not so much as once, say, or let slip these words: It is bread only; or the body of Christ is not there, especially it being of great importance, that men should not be deceived. Certainly, in so many Fathers, and in so many writings, the negative might at least be found in one of them, had they thought the body and blood of Christ were not really present: but they are all of them unanimous.”

~Luther’s Collected Works, Wittenburg Edition, no. 7 p, 391

            A protestant historian of the early Church J.N.D. Kelly (Anglican) writes "Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior's Body and Blood." I cannot get over the unanimous testimony of the early Christians.  A convert to the Catholic faith once said; "To be deep in church history is to cease to be protestant."Cardinal Henry Newman after studying the writings and beliefs of the first Christians realized that he could no longer remain Protestant. The early Christians, as a body, believed that the holy mysteries upon the altar did become the flesh and blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  And so do I. The way I see it, Christ loves us too much to say "This is how much I love you, here is a symbol of my love." No, "this is how much I love you, I give you my very self."


I'll close with a line from the Catechism: 

1336. "The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the Passion scandalized them: 'This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?' [Jn 6:60 .] The Eucharist and the Cross are stumbling blocks. It is the same mystery and it never ceases to be an occasion of division.  'Will you also go away?': [Jn 6:67 .] the Lord's question echoes through the ages, as a loving invitation to discover that only he has 'the words of eternal life' [In 6:68.] and that to receive in faith the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself."

If this wasn’t convincing, Scott Hahn’s article; “The Fourth Cup” below is really good! Scott Hahn was a former Presbyterian minister and ardent anti-Catholic who after studying the Church teachings converted to Catholicism. (his testimony can be found in the book, Rome Sweet Home) 

The Fourth Cup - Scott Hahn

Citation:

Tim Hollingworth's blog that I cited a twice:

http://timhollingworth.blogspot.com/2011/01/spirit-and-life-symbolic-communion-or.html