Originally posted by NeonTetra:
I know different churches with different denominations do this in a slightly varying manner...do tell us about how this sacrament is being celebrated in your local church/parish
As for the local church in which I am worshipping in, we do participate in the
Eucharist weekly, though without the holy wafers as the Bread. What we have is unleavened bread. As a Protestant congregation, we simply subscribe to the doctrine of the Communion as a memorial, instead of the Catholic doctrine of
transubstantation, which devotes to the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Besides, my local church do not take the position of the Eucharist as a
sacrament, but more of an
ordinance, a mere symbol which do not infuse grace into the believer who participates in it.
Personally, I believe the transubstantation doctrine of the Eucharist as closer to the Communion in which the early historical church practised.
Sometimes I am irked by the many anti-Catholic views of my Protestant brethren, who have accused falsely of the claims of the Holy Mother Church, even without doing the necessary homework to justify such a polemic.
Smacking of poor scholarship and anti-intellectualism, we have build caricatures of straw, convenient though they are, and tear them down. But what we tear down, isn't the genuine article, but a misrepresentation. That has been the weakness, a moral flaw, of many a Protestant believer - not only towards Roman Catholicism, but of other religious traditions as well, such as Islam (Christians having gross ideas of what Islam is, which in reality is not).
May God in His mercy forgive us of our hypocrisy and pharisaical attitude. Help us learn to forgive, express charity, and love.