cessary if this concept were to prevail. This is the type of change the Reformation and Martin Luther wrought. The power of the Roman clergy could not exist if Luther's concepts were to be accepted. Because the principal sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church is the Holy Eucharist of Holy Communion, the fact that Luther was tampering with it could not help but be looked upon by the Roman clergy with great dismay. Luther generated the Protestant belief that this sacrament is a commemoration through which clergy and communicants raise their spirits by symbolic remembrance of Christ's life and death. In contrast, according to the teachings of the Roman Church, Christ's human body and blood are actually present in the consecrated bread and wine. As Bertrand Russell states: "Even more important in the Middle Ages, was transubstantiation; only a priest could perform the miracle of the mass. It was not until the eleventh century in 1079, that the doctrine of transubstantiation became an article of faith, though it had generally been believed for a long time" (Russell 408). As Luther saw it, no sacrament is effective by itself without listening to the Word associated with the sacrament, and the faith that believes in it. There is no magical element to any sacrament, including the doctrine of transubstantiation. Consequently, Luther's teachings on the sacraments took away the power of the priests and the special nature of the Holy Eucharist. The Roman York-7 Catholic mass depends completely on these concepts in order for the Roman Church to sustain its efficacy as the representative of Christ on earth. Paul Tillich states: "From this it followed that transubstantiation was destroyed, because this doctrine makes the bread and wine a piece of divine reality inside the shrine and put on the altar. But such a thing does not occur. The presence of God is not a presence in the sense of an objective presence, at a special place, in a special form; it i...
