On the four o'clock hour of the John & Ken Show on KFI on July 16, 2007, attorney John Manly said the following:
"In Catholicism what we were all taught as kids, at the moment of consecration, when the priest holds up the host and the bells ring, that he is in fact Jesus, the theological term for it is Alter Christus."
That is not what Catholicism teaches. A priest never actually becomes Jesus. It is the bread and wine that actually become the body and blood of Christ through a conversion called transubstantiation.
During mass, the priest is in the role of Christ and it is through his words the conversion takes place.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes:
1413 By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity (cf. Council of Trent: DS 1640; 1651).
As far as Manly's silly "alter Christus" reference … The term is found nowhere in the Catechism. The term means "another Christ." It has been said that at ordination, a priest becomes another person, "alter Christus," "signifying" Christ – not actually becoming Christ himself, as Manly states. The key word is "alter" – "another."
And as John Paul II stated in a 1997 address, "St Cyprian rightly said that the Christian, every Christian, is 'another Christ' — Christianus alter Christus" (bold emphasis mine).
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By the way, in the same interview, Manly stated,
"He [Cardinal Mahony] gets to go and put on his $1500 suit, his $1200 pair of shoes, his pointy hat, and run around like a bozo like he always has, telling people he’s gonna send them to heaven. It’s sickening."
Needless to say, Cardinal Mahony knows very well that no one except God himself has the authority to "send" anyone to heaven.
Good … grief. Does Manly have no shame?
