70 percent of U.S. Catholics don't believe in the Real Presence!?

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WillC

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Does this not scare people? That SO many American Catholics are participating in the Holy Sacrament without believing in what it is? That they are eating and drinking damnation upon themselves!?
  • 1 Corinthians 11:29.
I didn’t believe it until I had a family get together recently. The topic came up, and out of 17 people ONLY me and my cousin who is a flipping Lutheran believed in the Real Presence! A half-way heretic without a proper Eucharist had more honor for the Sacrament than our life long Catholic family!

How does the Church handle this in love?

(The article is on this site, but I can’t post it)
 
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It scared me but I don’t really expect much anymore. I take solace in the fact that God will always keep a remnant, and I hope I can be part of it. Let’s Adore the Eucharist in reparation
 
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Yes it does. I’m afraid for my family too although I can’t really talk with my siblings re religion. I’m more afraid for my nieces and nephew.
 
WillC said:
Does this not scare people? That SO many American Catholics are participating in the Holy Sacrament without believing in what it is? That they are eating and drinking damnation upon themselves!?
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Are you talking about that Pew Survey from a year or two ago?

We’ve discussed that survey around here.

The results are pretty misleading. First of all, they’re counting everyone who calls themselves ‘Catholic’ in their statistics. Remember that this includes not only those who go to Mass weekly, but also those who grew up Catholic but haven’t practiced the faith in decades.

Moreover, the way that they ask the question about the Eucharist is itself misleading. They ask “is the Eucharist a symbol or the Body and Blood of Christ?” The answer is both. So, if they really wanted to ask a good question, they should have asked “is the Eucharist only a symbol?”

I call shenanigans on the whole survey result.
😉
 
I hope so. Like I said, big family gathering and all my family, who attend Mass weekly, dont believe in it.
 
Don’t believe in what? The Real Presence?

Who/what do they think they are receiving at Communion?
 
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They basically all said its just a remebrance of Jesus. Kinda like what most protestants believe.
 
WillC said:
I hope so. Like I said, big family gathering and all my family, who attend Mass weekly, dont believe in it.
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That’s kind of a local result, not a representative survey, don’t you think?

If you were at a big gathering of my family, and you asked the question “who’s the most awesome football team in the world?”, you’d get the unanimous answer “the Pittsburgh Steelers!”. That doesn’t mean that all football fans believe this is true, though, right?

Your family might have experienced the exact same poor catechesis or teaching or preaching or experience as adults.
🤷‍♂️
 
I would chill out. I would guess that if you had polls throughout history you’d get more or less the same results.

When Clovis and the Franks converted, I doubt they had to take a 100-question test on theological niceties. Nor did any converts throughout history.

I sat in on an RCIA class a few years ago because I was investigating people’s reasons for converting. The subject of the Eucharist never came up. Nor did several other obvious “big questions.” And although the presenters said they had been doing this for 20+ years, they seemed surprised by the most obvious questions that I would expect Protestants would ask. (There were about 25 students in the class.)

This was a big issue in the Reformation, but until then I suspect most people didn’t think much about it.

Compare it to quantum physics. Most of us have some vague notion of what it’s all about, but if we were asked specific questions we wouldn’t have a clue. Same with the Eucharist, esp. when some pollster comes along and says you have to check box a, b, c, or d and you’ve never given it much thought. You pick a box, but no one has an in-depth conversation with you about the details.

Ideally, we would have classes in Catholic schools (esp. high schools) that delve into each of these theological questions in depth–why do we believe X and not Y, what is the historical background and historical debates, etc. but as far as I know no one is interested in doing that.
 
It is a ‘local’ result in a sense. However I never knew thats how they felt because I never asked. And for how many U.S. Catholics are no longer Pro-Life, no longer keep marriage sacred, no longer teach their kids homosexuality is not acceptable, and are “Catholic” in name only by attending Mass and not applying one percent of it in their life… I can only assume that not believing in the Real Presence can be right along with it.
 
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Right after He said, “This is My Body, This is My Blood” (not, “this bread is a symbol of my body and this wine a symbol of my blood).
 
I would have to see how the question was worded. I recall one person in a course with me who was quite ready to believe Jesus was fully present in the Host. She balked at the idea that we were eating flesh. In that same couse a priest said, “Jesus is fully present in the Eucharist. But it’s His sacramental presence. The physical Jesus is in Heaven seated at the right hand of the Father.”
 
Do you believe you were ‘looking at Jesus’? Doesn’t the Church hold that the form of bread remains and that therefore you are ‘looking at’ bread and not at the substance, which the Church says ‘is Jesus’? In the same way, when you receive, surely you don’t think you ‘taste’ Jesus?
 
Why on Earth would anyone be Catholic if they did not believe in the real presence?
 
Yep, it is a complex mystery. It is physical body and blood and spiritual soul and divinity. It is remembrance and presence. It is symbol and reality.

Or better, it is presence because it is remembrance, and remembrance because it is presence. Reality because it is symbol, symbol because it is real. We always have to hold all these things together, not try to separate them the way the Pew survey did.
 
According to the Pew Poll, of those who attend Mass at least once a week, 63% believes in the Real Presence. That means that 37% of those who attend Mass once a week don’t believe. That’s still quite disturbing! From the Pew article:
About six-in-ten (63%) of the most observant Catholics — those who attend Mass at least once a week — accept the church’s teaching about transubstantiation. Still, even among this most observant group of Catholics, roughly one-third (37%) don’t believe that the Communion bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ (including 23% who don’t know the church’s teaching and 14% who know the church’s teaching but don’t believe it).
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WillC said:
Does this not scare people?
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Nope!!!

Who conducted the survey?

Who were sampled?

Of those sampled, how often do they attend church?

When was the last time they attended church?

Do they now attend a Protestant church?

Are they married?

Are they single?

Are they young/middle-aged/deat’s door?

Are they in a mixed religion marriage?

Are they Divorced?

Are they a Democrat?

Are they a Republican?

Are they an independent?

Did they go to Catholic schools?

Did they go to public schools?

Do they like their priest?

Do they like the Pope?

What part of the country do they live in?

Cradle Catholic?

Convert?

And Finally, have they ever read John 6:53?

So, do we know who conducted the survey and what their survey bias or oversampling might have been?

When this survey came out a while back, I asked 20 or so people at our church if they believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and to a person they said that they did. None of them were surveyed.

These questions were just off the top of my head. I’m sure that many of you could add to them.

Also, surveys are like polls, people don’t always answer them truthfully.

God Bless,
Thomas
 
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