“Martyrs” or deluded victims of religious error?

This past weekend I was watching the local news and I saw the story far below about a large group of Rochester Catholics, led by the area’s bishop, that gathered at a parish in the city to honor the memory of a priest and a nun – George Weinmann, 77, and Lilian Marie McLaughlin, 26, (pictured) – who both perished fifty years ago in February 1967 when they went into the burning church building of a former parish in the area to “rescue” communion wafers.

Yes, you read that correctly.

They died trying to “save” communion wafers.

The Catholic church teaches its priests change bread wafers into the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. Catholics line up at mass to consume the Jesus wafers, believing as they are taught that eating the Jesus wafer confers graces that will enable them to resist sin and merit Heaven. Priests store any leftover Jesus wafers in a locked box called a tabernacle where they are reverenced and worshiped as the physical Son of God. Weinmann and McLaughlin entered the burning church to “rescue” the Jesus wafers aka the Blessed Sacrament from the flames.

Sigh.

I’m saddened for Weinmann and McLaughlin, that they believed the bread wafers were actually Jesus and perished trying to “save” him. I’m saddened for all Roman Catholics, represented by the people who gathered together in this news story, who follow their church’s deadly misinterpretation of John 6 and the Last Supper passages in the Gospels and believe receiving Jesus means literally eating him and then try to obey the Ten Commandments to earn their salvation rather than accepting Jesus as Savior by faith and trusting in Him alone.

So sad.

Service Honors Rochester Fatal Church Fire Victims
http://www.twcnews.com/nys/rochester/news/2017/02/26/service-honors-fatal-church-fire-victims.html