To be Christian, one has to believe that Jesus was who He and His Apostles said he was.
To be Catholic, before you get into issue after issue of its teachings, you have to ascertain if the Eucharist, is the Eucharist.
If it is truly His flesh and blood, then You Have to Be Catholic !
John 6 "For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink........The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give
us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to
you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you
have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has
eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. "
If it is not His flesh and blood, then You Have to abandon the Church!
Here is a video (really starts at 2:50) to help you discern these questions.
This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat
of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If
anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I
will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed
among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up on the last day.
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever
feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the
living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever
feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that
came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died.
Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things
in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not
Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the
true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from
heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us
this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever
comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never
thirst.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am
the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and
they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one
may eat of it and not die.
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked
with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the
words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that
you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose
you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.”
The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women
knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out
drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.
When I break your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread
in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and you
shall eat and not be satisfied.
And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I
have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil
in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and
prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
“Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and
I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send
famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast,
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your
labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat
what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
When Gideon came, behold, a man was telling a dream to his comrade.
And he said, “Behold, I dreamed a dream, and behold, a cake of barley
bread tumbled into the camp of Midian and came to the tent and struck it
so that it fell and turned it upside down, so that the tent lay flat.”
So Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat and
unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket,
and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the
terebinth and presented them.
On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to
break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day,
and he prolonged his speech until midnight.
But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they
said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and
give it to them to eat?”
And you shall know that I am the Lord. For
you have not walked in my statutes, nor obeyed my rules, but have acted
according to the rules of the nations that are around you.”
So King Zedekiah gave orders, and they committed Jeremiah to the
court of the guard. And a loaf of bread was given him daily from the
bakers' street, until all the bread of the city was gone. So Jeremiah
remained in the court of the guard.
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which
you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you
know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word
that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you,
which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being
saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you
believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I
also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the
Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in
accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to
the twelve.
Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one
of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for
he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him.
And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre
and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and
was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is
severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And
his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is
crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord,
help me.”
And the women said, “When we made offerings to the queen of heaven
and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands'
approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and poured out
drink offerings to her?”
And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water
of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your
eyes shall see your Teacher.
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah
and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings
of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord
has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have
rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's
crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” Ah,
sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.
Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The
whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. And when the king came
to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Please let my sister Tamar come and
make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat from her hand.” Then
David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon's house and
prepare food for him.” So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house,
where he was lying down. And she took dough and kneaded it and made
cakes in his sight and baked the cakes. And she took the pan and emptied
it out before him, but he refused to eat. And Amnon said, “Send out
everyone from me.” So everyone went out from him.
Then you shall go on from there farther and come to the oak of
Tabor. Three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you there, one
carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and
another carrying a skin of wine.
And everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him
for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and shall say, “Please put me
in one of the priests' places, that I may eat a morsel of bread.”’”
The people went about and gathered it and ground it in handmills or
beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. And the
taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil.
You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be
waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and
they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the Lord.
Neither shall you offer as the bread of your God any such animals
gotten from a foreigner. Since there is a blemish in them, because of
their mutilation, they will not be accepted for you.”
No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord's food offerings; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God.
They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God. For they offer the Lord's food offerings, the bread of their God; therefore they shall be holy.
And everything on which any part of their carcass falls shall be
unclean. Whether oven or stove, it shall be broken in pieces. They are
unclean and shall remain unclean for you.
“When you bring a grain offering baked in the oven as an offering,
it shall be unleavened loaves of fine flour mixed with oil or unleavened
wafers smeared with oil.
The Nile shall swarm with frogs that shall come up into your house
and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your
servants and your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls.
There were some present at that very time who told him about the
Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he
answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners
than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I
tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those
eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think
that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in
Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise
perish.”
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His
disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to
eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your
disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to
them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry
When I send against you the deadly arrows of famine, arrows for
destruction, which I will send to destroy you, and when I bring more and
more famine upon you and break your supply of bread.
So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house, where he was lying
down. And she took dough and kneaded it and made cakes in his sight and
baked the cakes.
Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves and two skins
of wine and five sheep already prepared and five seahs of parched grain
and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and
laid them on donkeys.
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common
salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend
for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of
joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the
heart.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not
your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no
one may boast.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them
because they are spiritually discerned.
As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to
quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while
the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise
the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on
the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment
on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands
or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
One person esteems one day as better than another, while another
esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own
mind.
Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended
to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending
to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord,
and their sacrifices shall not please him. It shall be like mourners'
bread to them; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall
be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the Lord.
Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the
supply of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with
anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay.
No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say,
“Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I
roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an
abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?”
And distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of
Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a
cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed, each to his
house.
And Jesse said to David his son, “Take for your brothers an ephah
of this parched grain, and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to
the camp to your brothers.
The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in
the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed
himself with his face to the earth and said, “My lords, please turn
aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.
Then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will
spend the night in the town square.” But he pressed them strongly; so
they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast
and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. But before they lay down, the
men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people
to the last man, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, “Where
are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may
know them.”
