Do Catholics think God owes them a debt? Part 6 of a response to John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

hen John Calvin reach­es the “crown­ing point” of his rant against the “popish Mass,” he becomes tru­ly inco­her­ent. (As though he were not already the source and sum­mit of inco­her­ence.) But here’s Calv­in’s “crown­ing point”: “[T]he sacred Sup­per [i.e., the Eucharist], on which the Lord left the memo­r­i­al of his pas­sion formed and engraved, was tak­en away, hid­den, and destroyed, when the Mass was erect­ed.”

Jeep­ers, it was? So if I am to take Calvin at his plain word here (for why should I not?), the Church has tak­en the Eucharist clean away. The Church has hid­den the Eucharist. The Church has in fact destroyed the Eucharist! We call it “the source and sum­mit of the Chris­t­ian life” (for look you, here are those very words in the Cat­e­chism 1324). We call it “the sum and sum­ma­ry of our faith” (CCC 1327). But accord­ing to Calvin, we destroyed the Eucharist and we’re keep­ing the destruc­tion hid­den away, so no one finds out what the Eucharist even is. St. Cather­ine of Siena nev­er heard of it. #Sad.

But Calvin, as he is wont to do, has bashed us over the head with absurd hyper­bole, only to instant­ly retreat into nuance:

While the sup­per itself is a gift of God, which was to be received with thanks­giv­ing [I pause here to men­tion that “thanks­giv­ing” is, of course, what the word “Eucharist” means.] the sac­ri­fice of the mass pre­tends to give a price to God to be received as sat­is­fac­tion.

I’m already lost. Aren’t sac­ri­fice and thanks­giv­ing the same thing? But allow me to back up yet a while. The Mass is Christ’s aton­ing sac­ri­fice on Cal­vary; they are not two dif­fer­ent things. Calvin does agree that the cru­ci­fix­ion was a sac­ri­fice? Does he not? He says so him­self in §3: Christ “offered him­self in sac­ri­fice.” And he quotes Hebrews 9:26: Christ “put away sin by the sac­ri­fice of him­self.”

Now, I’ve already shown that the Mass is the very same sac­ri­fice as the sac­ri­fice on Cal­vary. The Church affirms this many a time and oft. But if it’s a sac­ri­fice at all, it’s got to be in sat­is­fac­tion for some­thing; and Hebrews 9:26 tells us that it’s a sat­is­fac­tion for sin.

The Mass and Cal­vary are the same: Act­ing in per­sona Christi, the priest offers Christ to the Father as a sat­is­fac­tion for sin. Does Calvin claim that Cal­vary was not a sat­is­fac­tion for sin? Does Calvin claim that the cross was not a sac­ri­fice? That is strange. Let us not repeat our­selves here and say, “Oh, but the Mass is some­thing else”; been there, refut­ed that.

Calvin, how­ev­er, tries to rend the sac­ri­fice of Christ from the gift of God which we are to receive with thanks­giv­ing, as though these things are also dif­fer­ent. But Christ’s self-sac­ri­fice to the Father is God’s gift to us. There’s no dif­fer­ence between the sac­ri­fice and the gift. There’s no dif­fer­ence between sat­is­fac­tion and Eucharist. We don’t go to Mass with deject­ed looks or some­thing because we got a gloomy sac­ri­fice to do, we must make heavy resti­tu­tion. No.

Now, it is a sac­ri­fice. The Cat­e­chism tells us of the Mass:

• 1330: “It com­pletes and sur­pass­es all the sac­ri­fices of the Old Covenant.”
• 1353: It is Christ’s “sac­ri­fice offered on the cross once for all.”
• 1357: It is “the memo­r­i­al of his sac­ri­fice.”
• 1359: It is a “sac­ri­fice of praise in thanks­giv­ing.”

Oh, wait. “Praise in thanks­giv­ing,” did you say? Right. Let me stop on this point. Did you know that the expres­sion “sac­ri­fice of praise” and “sac­ri­fice of thanks­giv­ing” are bib­li­cal? Did Calvin? Watch now:

• Hebrews 13:15: “By him there­fore let us offer the sac­ri­fice of praise to God con­tin­u­al­ly.”

So! Sac­ri­fice is some­thing we’re sup­posed to offer? And we’re sup­posed to do it “con­tin­u­al­ly”? And the sac­ri­fice and the praise are the same thing? Inter­est­ing.

• Psalm 116:17: “I will offer to thee the sac­ri­fice of thanks­giv­ing, and will call upon the name of the Lord.”

Calvin tries very hard to sep­a­rate sac­ri­fice from praise and thanks­giv­ing, but he’s kick­ing against the goads and had bet­ter watch what he’s about lest he wreck his foot. But now let us return to the Cat­e­chism, because it also calls the Eucharist a thanks­giv­ing, again and again:

• 1358. “We must con­sid­er the Eucharist as thanks­giv­ing and praise to the Father.”
• 1359. The Eucharist is a “sac­ri­fice of praise in thanks­giv­ing for the work of cre­ation.”

When Calvin says that the Church has “hid­den” and “destroyed” the Lord’s Sup­per, he means that it has “destroyed” thanks­giv­ing in pref­er­ence to sac­ri­fice. But that’s an odd claim giv­en that the Bible and the Cat­e­chism speak of thanks­giv­ing as sac­ri­fice, and giv­en that the very word “Eucharist” means—no, not sac­ri­fice, but thanks­giv­ing.

“As wide­ly as giv­ing dif­fers from receiv­ing,” Calvin intones, “does sac­ri­fice dif­fer from the sacra­ment of the Sup­per.” No; in fact, sac­ri­fice and thanks­giv­ing are one and the same: The Cat­e­chism tells us this, and the Bible tells us this. Accu­sa­tion is con­fes­sion, and Calvin does more rend­ing than the Church does.

•••

But stay a moment, because now Calvin gets gen­uine­ly weird:

Here­in does the wretched ingrat­i­tude of man appear,– that when the lib­er­al­i­ty of the divine good­ness ought to have been recog­nised, and thanks returned [That’s what the Mass does: rec­og­nize the divine good­ness and give thanks.] he makes God to be his debtor.

Did you fol­low that? Calv­in’s com­plaint hith­er­to has been this: Those poor Catholics think they still have to sac­ri­fice to God. Jesus already did that; why are you still try­ing to make sat­is­fac­tion? #Sad! But now he turns around and says we think God needs to make sat­is­fac­tion to us. Is this coher­ent? Am I miss­ing some­thing? (And peo­ple say Pope Fran­cis is con­fus­ing!)

But if we read fur­ther in the hope that it will abate our per­plex­i­ty, we will be much dis­ap­point­ed, for Calvin helps not at all. Instead he makes a rehash of dumb claims long since refut­ed:

The sacra­ment promised, that by the death of Christ we were not only restored to life once, but con­stant­ly quick­ened, because all the parts of our sal­va­tion were then com­plet­ed. The sac­ri­fice of the mass uses a very dif­fer­ent language—viz. that Christ must be sac­ri­ficed dai­ly, in order that he may lend some­thing to us.

But wait. Stop here. Even if this were true, if God “lends” us “some­thing,” aren’t we sup­posed to pay him back? So that makes us God’s debtor, not God our debtor. Which is it, John­ny?

But Calvin does­n’t help us with our per­plex­i­ty any more now than he has hith­er­to. Rather than do that, he abrupt­ly changes the sub­ject and wax­es bit­ter about pri­vate mass­es. So with his inco­her­ence remain­ing, we can shut the door on Calvin.