ntral for the entire Roman Catholic system because the mass is believed to be a repetition of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. When the bread and wine are transubstantiated, God again becomes flesh and Christ again dies upon the altar. This wonder can be performed only by priests empowered through ordination . . . His first insistence was that the sacrament of the mass must be not magical but mystical . . . He, too, had no mind to subject it to human frailty and would not concede that he had done so by positing the necessity of faith, since faith is itself a gift of God, but this faith is given by God when, where, and to whom he will and even without the sacrament is efficacious; whereas the reverse is not true, that the sacrament is of efficacy without faith. 'I may be wrong on indulgences,' declared Luther, 'but as to the need for faith in the sacraments I will die before I will recant.' This insistence upon faith diminished the role of the priests who may place a wafer in the mouth but
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