There are many religions in the world that promise heaven to people but cannot deliver. They are only satanic deceptions. The issue concerning any church and its practices should be “Is this biblical?”. If a teaching is biblical, it should be embraced. If it is not, it should be rejected. When we see the teachings of Roman Catholicism, it clearly a false gospel, and a close counterfeit for the true Gospel. It belongs to the category of false religion because of what they teach and believe about the Bible and about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

At the heart of Roman Catholicism is this liturgical ritual called the Mass. A Catholic mass is by definition the sacrifice of Christ (Catechism 1322, 1338). They take the bread and the wine, and the priest literally turns that into the body and blood of Jesus. The Baltimore Catechism No.3 says, “Christ gives us His own body and blood in the holy Eucharist first, to be offered as a sacrifice commemorating and renewing for all time the sacrifice of the cross” (Catechism 356). While the Catholic catechisms quote the passages that speak of Christ dying once, they also teach that the priest miraculously transforms the bread and wine into Christ’s real body, and that Jesus is then sacrificed anew.

The magical art of transubstantiation

When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant it. For anyone to add or detract from Christ’s words or finished work is the height of arrogance and the depth of depravity. Christ did not enter heaven to offer himself again and again, like the high priest here on earth who enters the Most Holy Place year after year with the blood of an animal (Heb 9:25). But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins which is never to be repeated, He sat down at the right hand of God (Heb 10:12).

By contrast, Roman Catholicism finds itself in the impossible position of advocating a gospel in which salvation is offered by sacrificing Christ on the alter repeatedly in every mass. Roman Catholicism very much parallel to Judaism, denies the efficacy of Jesus’ finished work on the cross through the practice and observance of the mass where an unbiblical magical art of transubstantiation takes place. According to Rome, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is not sufficient to send the redeemed directly to heaven. Thus, sins that are not properly paid for in this life will be purified after death in Purgatory (Handbook for Today’s Catholic, p47). This teaching of Rome is in direct contrast to biblical teaching about divine forgiveness.

Rome declares curses upon everyone who believes in the sufficiency of Cross

The Council of Trent in its 13th session in October of 1551 promulgated a decree concerning the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist. At the end of the decree was a list of canons providing anathemas for those who would reject the council’s teaching.

Canon 1:  If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ, it says that he is in it only as a sign, a figure or force, let him be anathema.

Canon 2:  If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and denies that wonderful and singular change of the whole substance of the bread into the body and the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the appearances only of bread and wine remaining, which change the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema.

Canon 8:  If anyone says that Christ received and the Eucharist is received spiritually only and not also sacramentally and really, let him be anathema.

Eleven years later, in 1562, the 22nd session of Trent was held. This time the decree publicized was entitled “Doctrine Concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass”, and that says, there is salvation in the Mass!

In as much as this divine sacrifice, which is celebrated in the Mass is contained and emulated in an unbloody manner, the same Christ who once offered himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross. The Holy Council, therefore, teaches that this is truly propitiatory and has this effect. That if we, contrite and penitent, with sincere heart and upright faith, with fear and reverence draw an eye to God, we obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid.

The council added few more pronunciations of anathemas:

Canon 1:  If anyone says that in the Mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God or that to be offered is nothing else than that Christ is given to us to eat, let him be anathema. If anyone says, by those words do this for a remembrance of me, if you say that Christ did not institute the apostles as priests and did not ordain that they and other priests should offer his own body and blood, let him be anathema. If you say that Christ did not institute the priesthood to offer the Mass, you’re anathema.

Canon 3:  If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is one only of praise and thanksgiving, or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross, but not a propitiatory one – if you say there’s no propitiation in the Mass – or that it profits him only who receives and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, punishment, satisfactions and other necessities, let him be anathema.

Canon 4:  If anyone says that by the sacrifice of the Mass a blasphemy is cast upon the most holy sacrifice of Christ – if you say that the Mass is a blasphemy, which we would say – let him be anathema.

Canon 5:  If anyone says that it is a deception to celebrate Masses in honor of the saints and in order to obtain their intersession with God as the church intends, let him be anathema.

Canon 6:  If anyone says that the canon of the Mass contains errors, let him be anathema.

When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. Indeed it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary. While the Blessed Virgin was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priests command.
– “The Faith of Millions” The Credentials of the Catholic Religion, By Rev. John O’Brien

Wow! The priest has the power to go to Heaven and pull Christ down and sacrifice Him again on the altar. What an arrogant, sacrilegious, blasphemous statement! This is clearly demonic teaching. Satan always wanted to pull Christ down from His throne and sit on it. From the beginning of the creation that was his desire -to be like God. He said, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14). God cast Satan down to earth, but he continues his rebellion against Holy God under organized demonic religious systems in this world.

God destroyed the sacrificial system permanently

The Old Testament had a priesthood, an altar, and sacrifices which were only shadows, anticipatory, of the final sacrifice that would come with Christ. He came, He offered that sacrifice, and God sealed that one sacrifice by destroying the temple, by destroying the altar using the Roman army in 70 AD. He removed the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament, and all the records of all the genealogies, of all those in the priestly line, thus ending, permanently, the priesthood. There are no more sacrifices. There are no more altars. And there are no more priests as a special order to offer sacrifices. It all came to an end at the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Any sacrifices being made today are unbiblical and unable to accomplish anything. Any priests today are false claimants to a special priesthood since now we are all priests. We all, who are believers in Jesus Christ, are a royal priesthood. We do not need earthly mediators; we all have immediate access to God. We need to make no sacrifices because there is no temple, there are no altars, there are no sacrifices, and we are not in need of any priests, and any priests of a special order are false pretenders of paganistic religion.

Rome reinvented what God had destroyed

In spite of that, the Roman Catholic system has devised a priesthood, has built an altar in every church on this planet (approx. 1.3 billion as of 2018) and offer sacrifice; Tens of millions of times every day, as if they had reinvented the Levitical priesthood. And they will be doing this until the end of the world. They have re-established what God Himself destroyed, and it is an illegitimate priesthood that mingled with cultic pagan mystery and idolatry.

At the very outset, the Mass is a deception because, there are no more sacrifices, no more altars. There is no more temple in which God dwells, no more tabernacle, and there is no more priesthood. – It is therefore a false sacrifice on a false altar in a false temple by a false priest. At heart, it is a denial of the singular sacrifice of Christ on the cross, because the Mass is an offering of Christ repeatedly by an illegitimate priesthood on an illegitimate altar for a useless and ungodly purpose. There is no salvation in that gruesome ritual of the Catholic Mass.

Reference:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Vatican Publication
Catechism of the Catholic Church by eminent Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and the “Holy See”
Fundamentals of catholic dogma by Ludwig Ott.

Recommended Reading:

The Gospel of Rome: Investigating the Claims of the Roman Catholic Church, Mark Edward Sohmer
The Gospel According to Rome, James G. McCarthy
Explaining the Heresy of Catholicism – John MacArthur