Catholic Christian worship

The argument

The Liturgy of the Eucharist is the core of the Mass and the heart of Catholic belief. The priest and the participants speak a series of formal prayers, including a communal recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and the entire community watches the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, which believers then receive into their own bodies. This transformation from the simple elements of bread and wine into the physical presence of the divine is called transubstantiation and is a point of mystery and wonder for Catholics.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Other Christian traditions dispute this account of worship. Protestant and Reformed Christians generally reject transubstantiation, holding that the bread and wine remain bread and wine and that Christ is present symbolically or spiritually rather than through a literal change of substance; they argue the doctrine reads a metaphysical transformation into passages meant figuratively and leans on Aristotelian categories of substance and accident foreign to the biblical text. Traditions such as the Quakers dispense with sacramental ritual altogether. On these views the Mass is one tradition's practice rather than the necessary heart of Christian worship as such.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Other Christian traditions centre worship on preaching of the Word, communal fellowship or silent waiting rather than the Mass, so the Eucharistic liturgy is not the necessary heart of Christian worship in general. [Rejecting P2] Protestant and Reformed Christians reject transubstantiation, holding the elements remain bread and wine and that Christ's presence is symbolic or spiritual rather than a literal change of substance.