"Mass is the perpetual sacrifice of the New Law, in which Christ offers Himself in an unbloody manner, as He once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the Cross." (Deharbe's Catechism, page 98.) To hear mass, we are witnessing in a sort of "mummyfied" manner, a show at the altar, which is lighted with candles, decorated with flowers, costly images of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saints, holy pictures, relics of the saints, gold or silver ciboriums and ostensoriums, and many other articles of altar and sanctuary use too many to enumerate. During this or other ceremonies, the priest is dressed in a long oriental robe covered with a kimona-style surplice--which is often nearly all costly lace--chasuble, cope, maniple, stole, mitre, and other gaudy-colored, gold-fringed, embroidered pieces of apparel. The mass must be recited in Latin. The priest at the altar with his back to the congregation, recites Latin prayers for from one-half to three-quarters of an hour. During these prayers the act of "transubstantiation" takes place. That is, the changing of the wine and bread into the actual body, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. That is the actual belief of the Roman Catholic adherents, as in the creed of Pope Pius V, it says, "I profess, likewise, that in the Mass there is offered to God a true, proper and propitiatary sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially the Body and Blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood; which conversion the Catholic Church calleth Transubstantiation. I also confess that under either kind alone Christ is received whole and entire, and a true sacrament." (Chamber's Ency., Collier 1890, under Roman Catholic Church.) To receive communion, the sisters in the convents where I have been, marched to the altar by twos, knelt and received the "body of Christ," but never the "blood." No one is allowed any of the wine, or "blood," except the priest or "substitute Christ." If, during this ceremony, a crumb of the "body of Christ" should happen to drop on the communion cloth, that spot must be marked, and after the ceremony is completed, the priest sprinkles some "holy water" on the spot, says a few Latin words, makes a few signs with his "holy hands," then it is purified, and whatever is used in this purification is burned, or sometimes washed. The Corporal, which is a piece of linen used for handling the "body and blood of Christ" in the mass, must always be washed or rinsed by the priest before it goes to the laundry, because the sisters who do the work in the laundries have not "holy hands," and the priest's fingers have been consecrated and are therefore "holy."