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MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  May 2004

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION May 2004

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Subject:

Re: abominable heresy of the mass

From:

Dennis Martin <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 24 May 2004 20:23:34 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

One could come at this from several angles. Since you want a relatively
general explanation appropriate to a general course, let me start things
off by mentioning what I think are the two most important areas. Others
who know more than I can correct or complete what I offer.

(1) Idolatrous: if one does not believe that Christ is truly present
after the Consecration, then to adore as God that which is merely bread
and wine would be idolatry. All the Reformers challenged in one way or
another the Catholic belief that the bread and wine cease to be, in
reality (substantially) bread and wine, although Luther did insist that
they truly, really, substantially became the Body and Blood of Christ.
Even he, unless I am mistaken, would have objected to adoration of
Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass. (If anyone can correct me here,
please do). "Sacramentarian" criticism of real presence and assertion
of merely symbolic presence is found in the MIddle Ages (Berengar in the
11thc, though some insist he did not believe in mere symbolic presence
would be an example, but not Ratramnus in the 9thc, despite Zwingli's
claiming that Ratramnus anticipated his position) but picked up steam in
the century or two before the Reformation--it was very strong in the Low
Countries and taken up the Rhine River where Zwingli and the Anabaptists
adopted it--for them, the entire Catholic approach to the Eucharist was
idolatrous.

(2) More significant, in my view, was the rejection--shared without
exception by the Protestant Reformers--of the Catholic understanding of
the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice for sin. This is not a claim to
repeat Christ's sacrifice once for all on the Cross, but to re-present
it. The key point is that the once-for-all sacrifice is somehow made
present and efficacious, objectively, ex opere operato, at each
Eucharistic celebration. This has some ramifications: receiving
Communion is not necessary for the Mass to accomplish its sacramental
efficacy--what counts is the celebration, the actions of taking,
offering, consecrating and the priest's consuming of the elements.
Therefore, being present, observing devoutly, this great drama itself is
salvific. Receiving Communion is even better, of course, but the power
of the sacrament does not depend on reception. Christ himself is both
the offerer (of himself) and the offering (victim), with the priest
acting in the person of Christ.

All the Reformers rejected belief in the Mass as a propitiatory
sacrifice (a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, yes, but not as an
actual propitiation for sin--a _memorial_ of the propitiation on the
Cross, yes--but now they are using "memorial" in a very historicized
way, not in the original sense of _anamnesis_ in which, the very night
thousands of years ago in Egypt is in fact present each year at
Passover--that's the New Testament sense of memorial, modern liturgists
agree). Most of them in one way or another believed the power of the
sacrament was in some sense brought into being by the community's
reception and faith, but they disagreed over the details.

Unless I am mistaken, the Reformers disagreed about a lot of things but
were united in (1) their rejection of episcopacy as apostolic succession
(Church of Sweden, later Church of England, but not the mid-16thc C of
E) and (2) the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass. From a Catholic
perspetive there's a very thorough book on the sacrifice issue in the
Reformatoin by Francis Clark, S.J.

How does this differ from contemporary Episcopalian practice? Well,
that's another topic, but the main point is that Cranmer rejected the
sacrifice of the Mass and real presence, though (cognoscenti please
correct me if I'm wrong here), Henry VIII and others held on to largely
Catholic views on this. With Edward VI Cranmer and the radicals gained
the upper hand so that the mid-century settlement (Thirty-Nine Articles)
would seem, prima facie, to reject both sacrifice and Real Presence.
WIth the early 17thc Laudian re-catholicization and then again with the
19thc Tractarians, an effort was made to read the Thirty-NIne Articles
relatively Protestant statements in a Catholic way. As a result, many
Anglicans (but not the Low Church or Evangelical Anglicans) warmed up to
Real Presence (without necessarily specifying transubstantiation) but
not to the sacrifice of the Mass, though there were always some HIgh
HIgh Church Anglicans who did accept all of the Catholic doctrines,
sacrifice and transubstantiation included. Thus many Episcopalians
today would say they accept Real Presence but avoid being more specific
(no transubstantiation) and often exactly what they mean by it is hard
to say. There have always been strong pockets of Evangelical or Low
Church Episcopalians in the South, but what you have in Mississippi, I
don't know. Often a single parish will have members all across the
spectrum on these matters.

I welcome corrections and expansions to this admittedly very generalized
treatment.

Dennis Martin


>>> [log in to unmask] 05/24/04 5:50 PM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture

Dear listmembers:

I'm frantically cramming Reformation history to teach a class on the
subject for the first time this summer (!) Much is illuminating,
some things are just downright confusing. This afternoon (for the
30th time or so) I've come across sixteenth-century reformers
denouncing the medieval mass as heretical/blasphemous/sacrilegious or
words to that effect. And I don't understand why. I know that
something about the mass as "sacrifice" (a re-enactment of Christ's
sacrifice on the cross?) is involved in this denunciation. But I
don't really have any sense of how the late medieval mass was
different theologically or ecclesiologically from the Episcopalian
eucharist I go to on Sundays---and none of the standard books on the
Reformation are explaining this in terms that make sense to me. I'd
appreciate any help in understanding this, either on- or offlist.

Phyllis

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