View source for Roman Catholicism: Mass

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Mass is the term used of the celebration of the [[Eucharist]] (the Lord's Supper) in the Latin rites of the [[Roman Catholic Church]] and in some [[Anglican]] churches. The word itself is derived from the phrase with which the liturgical celebration concludes in [[Latin]], ''Ite, missa est''. In this phrase, the word ''missa'' is usually explained as late Latin for classical Latin ''missio'', so that the phrase would be literally translated as: "Go, it is the sending".

==Doctrine==

The [[Council of Trent]] reaffirmed the Roman Catholic teaching that the Mass is not just a re-creation or remembrance of the Last Supper, but rather it is the same Sacrifice of Calvary offered in an unbloody manner: "The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different. And since in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner... this sacrifice is truly propitiatory" <ref>Doctrina de ss. Missae sacrificio, c. 2, quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1367</ref>. It is Roman Catholic belief that the wheaten bread and grape wine are in objective reality, not merely symbolically, converted into Christ's body and blood, a conversion referred to as [[transubstantiation]], so that the whole Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity, is truly, really, and substantially contained in the sacrament of the Eucharist.



==Quotes==

==References==

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==Links==
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_%28liturgy%29 Wikipedia - Mass (liturgy)]

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