From John, 6;52-59:
“The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my Flesh is true food,
and my Blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.”
To Catholic Fundamentalists, this passage sums up our belief in Church and Scripture. It also marks the superceding of the First Programming Log by the Second.
Some Fundamentalists have had this powerful passage become their stepping-stone to Catholicism. They happily realize that the only entity that can reasonably claim to still provide the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is the Roman Catholic Church. It’s hard to avoid realizing that The Church has the only hierarchy on earth that connects, in a direct, unbroken line, with Jesus, Peter, and the original Disciples. That living chain, forged by the laying on of Catholic hands in Catholic Churches by successive generations of Catholic Popes, Catholic Bishops, and Catholic Priests, is every age’s most direct connection with the Lamb of God and the rock upon whom He founded His Church.
It is hard for anyone seeking the truth, absent the intentional evasion of its clear meaning, to read and accept that passage at face value without giving at least credence to The Church that has, despite dungeon, fire, and sword, continued to make His Body and Blood available to believers. One would be wrong to say that salvation is currently impossible without that Divine Download provided only by The Roman Catholic Church, but would be even more in error to believe that accepting The Body and Blood at the hands of Her priests does not make the fullest possible salvation more easily obtainable.
We see, within the passage, justification for Catholic Fundamentalism. The Body and Blood of Christ, The Living Program, are provided by The Church. His Body and Blood are the most powerful things with which The Loving Programmer has blessed us, allowing us to download His Divine Program within our own beings.
Making those downloads, aided by The Sacraments, helps us to rewrite, restructure, and restore our own, individual, beloved programs. They help us overwrite our natural vanity with unnatural humility. The Body and Blood help us reprogram our innate inclinations to hate with the awareness that we must love God and the human programs around us. We are able to erase our natural and selfish focus on programmed entities with a greater love for He Who programmed all.
Most important, we see, and may gain salvation by, the Body and Blood of His beloved Son. It is still available in undiminished fullness at the nearest Catholic Church, and opens a door for us to an eternity so filled with joy that we would be foolish not to do everything we can to obtain as much of it as possible.
