With due appreciation, a thank you for the kind invitation extended through the Sept. 9 letter to the editor, “Upset Catholics have other options,” written by a member of the United Methodist Church in Waterville.
The letter writer encourages area Catholics to, in her words, go “church-shopping,” which she says she’s “done several times.” At her church too, she says, one can experience “engaging, meaningful sermons,” “beautiful music,” “a welcoming congregation,” permission to “make the sign of the cross,” “bow before the altar,” “believe what you believe,” listen to “a wonderful choir.” and take “communion.”
However, that communion lacks the Scripture-based teaching that the partaking of the species of the bread and wine be nothing less than the real, actual presence of the true, physical body and blood of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and not merely some symbolic representation, and that transubstantiation can only be confected by the consecrated hands of a validly ordained Catholic priest, made licit by the sacrament of Holy Orders.
It really is as simple as that, in unwavering fidelity. But thanks anyway for the hopefully well-intended, albeit patronizing offer, in a telling quote, “looking from the outside in.”
Max Beichert
Augusta
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