Word: communion
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...Roman Catholic Church urges its faithful to confess their sins to a priest at least once a year, and insists that they do so before receiving Communion if they have committed a mortal sin. In theory, confession should be a cleansing encounter between the believer and God, during which the priest, acting in God's name, forgives a penitent his sins and advises him on how to lead a more holy life. In crowded urban churches-or even outside them, as at the outdoor confessionals sometimes seen in such traditionally Catholic countries as Poland-confession is often a mechanical...
...Anglican plain chant as his starting point. The flowing Gregorian tunes were chanted by a 68-member chorus while Guaraldi improvised back of it with his trio, shifting the mood with the spirit of the prayer. "Lord, Have Mercy" is crisp and plaintive, with a syncopated Latin rhythm; the Communion anthem is a waltzlike blues with a flowing melodic line. The "Theme for Grace" at the Offertory, with a chorus crooning the syllables of "hallelujah," reminded some listeners of mood-setting supper music. "That's the idea," says Episcopal Father Charles Gompertz, who persuaded Guaraldi to undertake the Musical...
Both Protestants and Roman Catholics accept Christ's teaching that "he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life," and most churches celebrate some form of Communion service. There is a wide spectrum of belief about what Christ meant exactly by his words to the Apostles at the Last Supper: "Take, eat; this is my body." Luther taught that the body and blood of Christ are truly present in the consecrated elements but in, with and under rather than in place of the bread and wine.* The 39 Articles of Anglicanism specifically reject transubstantiation...
Roman teaching was slow in taking final form. Early Christians gave little thought as to precisely how Christ was present in the bread and wine they consecrated and consumed at their simple Communion rites. By the 11th century, theologians had begun to use the term transubstantiation, which was eventually defined in the terminology of Aristotelian metaphysics. The medieval Scholastics proposed that at the consecration, the "substance" of the bread and wine became Christ's body; what remained, visible to the senses, were merely "accidents"-the shape and texture of the host, the taste and color of the wine...
...mystery: the faith of the Believing Church, in which the action takes place. Concentration on what happens to the bread itself, says Dutch Capuchin Luchesius Smits, leads to such distortions of piety as the little girl's fear that eating ice cream right after her first Communion would "make Jesus' head cold." Belgian Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx points out that the Aristotelian distinction between sub stance and accident "has been philosophically untenable since Kant...