The Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life“, the Vatican II council tells us (Lumen Gentium). If the Catholic Church, in a particular place, does not sufficiently educate the laity and clergy about what the Eucharist is, then not only is Christianity coming from the wrong way, they are going in the wrong direction.

That’s why it surprises me, to hear Catholics in parish or diocesan positions, and even clergy, expound errors about the Eucharist. The one that seems most common is the belief that following the consecration of the bread and the wine, that the substance of the bread and wine remains alongside the presence of Jesus. That is a belief called consubstantiation.

The Catholic position is one called Transubstantiation, where the whole substance of the bread and of the wine is changed into the substance of the body and blood and soul and divinity of Jesus. Yes, the accidental appearances remain that of bread and wine, but it is, in fact, no longer bread and wine.

My parish priest quoted a survey done in the U.S. where about 30% of Mass going Catholics believed in Consubstantiation. You might think this is great news. But it isn’t, because 60% of them believed that the presence was merely symbolic! Only 10% of the surveyed Catholics believed in Transubstantiation. I don’t think it is too much of a jump to think a similar situation exists here in New Zealand, and that it is the result of confusion and poor catechesis.

“These and similar opinions do great harm to the faith and devotion to the Divine Eucharist. And therefore, so that the hope aroused by the Council, that a flourishing of eucharistic piety which is now pervading the whole Church, be not frustrated by this spread of false opinions”

-Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI

One of the things that doesn’t help are people who say that since Vatican II, we now recognise that Christ’s presence in other ways is just as real as that in the Eucharist. They claim that we are hypocrites for honouring the Eucharist, but not bowing before the presences of Christ in a gathering of Christians. They claim that we shouldn’t adore the Eucharist when we don’t make similar acts of the Word proclaimed. Or they claim that because God is present in his Creation, present everywhere, so why should we spend time in front of the Eucharist? In almost all cases, this attitude doesn’t lead to raising the worship of God present in these things to the level of the Eucharist, but in the abolition of worship of God in the Eucharist altogether.

While it is true that they Church recognises God is present in the Scriptures read aloud, in the sacraments, in the Christian congregation gathered together, in the needy that are helped and in his works of creation…

“These various ways in which Christ is present fill the mind with astonishment and offer the Church a mystery for her contemplation. But there is another way in which Christ is present in His Church, a way that surpasses all the others….This presence is called “real” not to exclude the idea that the others are “real” too, but rather to indicate presence par excellence, because it is substantial and through it Christ becomes present whole and entire, God and man. (41) And so it would be wrong for anyone to try to explain this manner of presence by dreaming up a so-called “pneumatic” nature of the glorious body of Christ that would be present everywhere; or for anyone to limit it to symbolism, as if this most sacred Sacrament were to consist in nothing more than an efficacious sign “of the spiritual presence of Christ and of His intimate union with the faithful, the members of His Mystical Body.”

-Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI

Maybe it would help if someone would put into concepts how Christ is present in each of these ways.  I’m no theologian, but I’ll try to explain what I mean.

For example, in the Word, the presence lasts as long as the Scripture is proclaimed, and is not substantial, and the words and phenomenon of them being spoken exist alongside any presence. So we would have a transitory, non-substantial, contextual*, “con-verbal”**. Similarly the presence in the congregation, is transitory, non-substantial, “con-collective” (The gathering of Christians remains as a reality, along side the presence of God signified in it).

*(suppose there is a languages in which the words from another language that form a passage of Scripture e.g. “Jesus wept” mean something else like “How are you?”, there would not be a presence of God in the Word everytime the people of that nation asked how their friend was, so clearly this kind of presence is contextual).

**(The actual words etc… exist alongside the Logos, rather than the words becoming the Logos).

Okay, that’s just my quick attempt at it, not very exact, nor complete. But basically we need to be defending the Eucharistic presence, teaching it, and making distinctions that people can learn to grasp about the other presences of God so that we all understand properly. In this way we will be coming from the right source, and going to the right summit.