The “Sacrifice of the Mass”
By C. M. S.
“Rome Never Changes”—No. 11
The “Sacrifice of the Mass”
How important the Roman clergy considers the “sacrifice of the mass” may be judged by the following extracts from a sermon delivered at the eucharistic conference held in Montreal in September, 1910:— The sacrifice of the mass is the one honor that is worthy of God. The mass is Calvary over again. The mass is the tree of life that stands in the paradise of God. We are glad to have the mass, for we would not forfeit eternal life. What the light and air and sunshine are to the mortal body, that the mass is to our soul. In view of such declarations, and in view of what the Council of Trent has decreed on the subject, we cannot be accused of injustice or exaggeration when we declare that the mass is the true center of Roman Catholic worship. How important the hierarchy considers the mass may be judged by the fact that a great international congress is held in its honor each year in some part of the world, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the aggregate, and honored by the Pope through the attendance of his personal representative. In view of the importance which Rome attaches to the mass, we are warranted in expecting very plain and explicit authority for the institution of such a service. If any such authority exists, we should expect to find it cited in the decree of the council which authorized the establishment of the mass. We search that decree, and in it find that Rome has given her authority for the establishment of the mass. It is contained in the last sentence of chapter 2, session 22, of the Council of Trent, and reads:— Wherefore, not only for the sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities of the faithful who are living, but also for those who are departed in Christ, and who are not as yet fully purified, is it rightly offered, agreeably to a tradition of the apostles.—“Dogmatic Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent,” page 136, authorized translations. What, then, is Rome’s authority for the mass, which is “Calvary over again,” which is “the tree of life that stands in the paradise of God,” without which we would “forfeit eternal life,” which is so important that an international congress is held each year in its honor,—what is the authority upon which it rests?—Tradition; so says the Council of Trent. The council quotes no Scripture for its authorization; it does not quote even the saints, whose writings are at least prolific. There is good reason, of course, why the council did not quote from either of these sources. It could not do so; both are against the idea, as pointed out in previous articles. Upon tradition, and tradition only, rests that service to which all other features of the Roman system are now subsidiary. But could the apostles themselves speak upon this question, they would deny the allegation in emphatic language, as contrary to the most fundamental and most vital principles of the gospel to whose promulgation they gave their lives. Whence did Rome derive the mass, the worship of the wafer? It is not difficult to determine it, for the wafer worship has in it features that explain its origin. In speaking over the wafer the words hoc est enim corpus meum, the priest is believed to create God, and every separate wafer and every separate particle of each wafer is believed to be God. In other words, the creature creates his Creator. In the heathen religion of India we may witness a similar procedure. Concerning this we read:— In India there is a striking analogy in the consecration of their images. On days sacred to a deity, temporary images are provided for use at the festival. These are made of mud from a sacred stream. While in the hands of the workman, they possess no sacred character. When finished, they are taken to the house where the ceremony is to be held, and up to a certain moment are regarded as gayly decorated lumps of mud. On the eve of the festival, the act of life-giving is performed. A priest recites texts, by which an invitation is given to the deity to visit the house and inhabit the image as his temporary dwelling. The eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hands, feet, of the idol are touched in turn, by which, and the repetition of special texts, a notable miracle has been wrought; the image is now supposed to be a living god. Only Brahmans may approach it; and their services are necessary to present the gifts which the family wish to offer. When the worship is over, a reverse process is gone through. The deity is thanked for his presence, and dismissed, and the image is thrown into the river from which it came. The noticeable feature of the transaction is that by the repetition of a formula, and the performance of a certain ritual, the mud is made divine and becomes a proper object of adoration. Legends are not lacking to show how want of faith in the supposed miracle has been punished. Some are said to have been struck blind, others killed, for presuming to treat the image as if it were not divine.—“Paganism in the Papal Church,” W. J. Wilkinson, pages 118, 119.9 In a previous article (No. 8) the derivation of the “unbloody” feature of the “sacrifice of the mass” was clearly shown. It was a distinct feature of Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hindu worship. The thin, round wafer was also shown to be a characteristic of heathen religions. The thin, round cake was on all Egyptian altars. “The round disk, so frequent in the sacred emblems of Egypt, symbolized the sun,” says Hislop (“Two Babylons,” page 160). On the “thin, round wafer” used in the “sacrifice of the mass” are three letters “I. H. S.” What do they signify? The priest will tell you they stand for Iesus Hominem Salvator, Jesus the Saviour of men. In the days of the early Christian church, there were many worshippers of Isis in Rome. Let them look upon the thin, round wafer with its three initials, and what do they see there, and how would they read it?—“Isis, Horus, Seb,” which means, “The Mother, the Child, and the Father of the gods;” that is, the Egyptian trinity. Concerning this, Hislop says:— Can the reader imagine that this double sense is accidental?—Surely not. The very same spirit that converted the festival of the pagan Oannes into the feast of the Christian Joannes, retaining at the same time all its ancient paganism, has skillfully planned the initials I. H. S. to pay the semblance of a tribute to Christianity, while paganism in reality has all the substance of the homage bestowed upon it. When the women of Arabia began to adopt this wafer and offer the “unbloody sacrifice,” all genuine Christians saw at once the real character of their sacrifice. They were treated as heretics, and branded with the name of Collyridians, from the Greek name for the cake which they employed. But Rome saw that the heresy might be turned to account; and therefore, though condemned by the sound portion of the church, the practice of offering and eating this “unbloody sacrifice” was patronized by the Papacy; and now throughout the whole bounds of the Roman communion, it has superseded the simple but most precious sacrament of the supper instituted by our Lord himself.—“Two Babylons,” page 164. These characteristics leave no doubt as to the pagan origin of the mass. If there could be any doubt, it ought to be dispelled upon the instant that one witnesses what is called “the elevation of the host.” In that ceremony there is used a receptacle for the wafer known as the monstrance. It is constructed somewhat in the form of a large candlestick, with a base to keep it upright when unsupported, and a pillar or standard which is grasped by the priest when he “elevates” it before the congregation. Above this pillar is a circular opening covered with glass at the front. The wafer is placed in this receptacle, and there may be seen by the congregation. Around this circular receptacle are many golden rays, radiating apparently from the wafer, as light rays radiate from the sun. When the monstrance containing the wafer (or “host”) is “elevated,” the congregation worship it. This likeness of sun worship is too apparent to be mistaken. The wafer represents the sun, and the encircling halo of rays represent the rays of the sun; and when the people worship that arrangement, they are perpetuating the sun worship of Babylon and of Egypt. There still exists in Upper Egypt, near the small town of Babain, in a grotto, a representation of a sacrifice to the sun. Two priests before the altar are represented in the act of worshiping the blazing sun image. This image is composed of a round face surrounded by sun rays, practically an exact counterpart of the upper portion of the Roman Catholic monstrance with the wafer as the center of the radiating rays. There can be no mistaking the similarity of the two. That which makes the mass particularly repellent to the Christian who understands its origin is the fact that the wafer is declared to be Jesus Christ himself, body, soul, and divinity. Therefore when the wafer is placed within the monstrance and is held up for the adoration of the “faithful,” Jesus Christ is there represented as the center of sun worship; and to him who is acquainted with what sun worship stood for and permitted and encouraged through the centuries, the thought is in the highest degree abhorrent. Sun worship was the very antithesis of all that the Word of God and Jesus Christ stood for. It contradicted God, and put a halo of divinity around that which was most repugnant to God and most destructive to morality. No form of heathen religion was a more revolting insult to the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Yet in the service of the mass the Roman Church puts the modern expression of that ancient idolatry before her congregations as the center and substance of all that is Christian in our day. The mass is made necessary to the complete efficiency of the sacrifice on Calvary, thus making the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary nothing without it; and that wafer, made by human hands, and bearing the initials of the gods of Egypt, and the semblance of the sun image, is made the most present and most potent god of Christendom, to be adored with the highest form of worship. “There is no room left to doubt,” say the Fathers of Trent, “that all the faithful of Christ may, according to the custom ever received in the Catholic Church, render in veneration the worship of latria, which is due to the true God, to this most holy sacrament.”—“Dogmatic Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent,” sess. 13, chap. 5, authorized translations. We therefore hold that the “sacrifice of the mass” is founded on tradition, heathen in its origin, contrary to the Scriptures, subversive of the gospel, a human substitution for the divine plan of salvation, a denial of the efficacy of Christ’s atonement, and a rehabilitation of paganism under Christian names; and that, in giving to the wafer the worship which is due to Almighty God, the Roman Church establishes an idolatrous worship in every church dedicated to her services. In adopting that service, which was unknown to the apostles, or the early Fathers of the Roman Church, and against whose incipient manifestation her canonized saints protested, Rome has changed, and the change amounts to a complete transformation. So great is the change that she denies, even with a curse, what she stood for in the earlier centuries. How true is this to the characteristic of Peter before his conversion, when he denied his Lord with a curse. In like manner declares the Council of Trent:— If any one denieth that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist are contained truly, really, and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that he is only there as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema [accursed]. If any one saith that, in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist, Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is not to be adored with the worship, even external, of latria; . . . or is not to be proposed publicly to the people to be adored, and that the adorers thereof are idolaters; let him be anathema [accursed].—Id., chap. 8, canons 1 and 6, authorized translations. Rome first declares the wafer to be the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and curses him who denies it; and then declares that that wafer is to be worshiped as Christ himself, and curses him who denies that. Her curse must therefore rest upon the Fathers of the church and upon the saints of the church, both of whom have denied every principle involved in the “sacrifice of the mass.” So Rome has not only changed, but has enforced that change with a curse that involves her own spiritual leaders. C. M. S.