I am an elder in the Presbyterian Church. I married into a Roman Catholic family, have attended mass many times, and have some familiarity both with the authority of Scripture and tradition within the Catholic Church. I think that some Catholics don’t have the grasp on Protestant theology that is available to them. Maybe that is because they conclude that Protestants are in error and that their faith is deficient and, hence, not deserving of study. I hear that from my Roman Catholic brother in law frequently (and it doesn’t help your cause).
Mainline Protestants do not adore the bread not because we don’t respect Catholic tradition, but because we have a different understanding of Holy Communion. In contrast to Catholic teaching, John Calvin and John Knox, Reformed/Presbyterian theologians of the 16th Century Reformation, drew from Scripture the understanding that since Christ was no longer physically present on earth, in the Eucharist/Holy Communion/the Lord’s Supper, Christians are lifted spiritually into the presence of Christ in glory, we are seated at Christ’s Banquet Table, and we experience a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, real grace in Christ’s real presence, at a Table Christ has prepared for all of us. At that Table are seated those who have died on earth as well of all those yet to be born into Christ until the end of time. We are fed from a Table, not an Altar, but joined to Christ by Christ’s own invitation to experience Christ’s unmerited grace nonetheless.
So, Presbyterians, at least, accept that Christ is truly present in the Sacrament, but present by a different means. For us, though, the Sacrament cannot be experienced outside the gathering of the faithful in Christ’s name, remembering the sacrifice of the cross and celebrating the good news of the Resurrection. That is why we don’t celebrate private masses, why we are so careful to make Communion accessible to everyone, and why our Table is on the floor rather than on a dais. We light our Paschal candle at Communion to remind communicants of Christ’s presence. We celebrate Communion with simple bread and wine in a simple room, equipped for feeding the poor in spirit.
For us, Communion is community. When I take the bread and the wine, I close my eyes and remember that God loves me in spite of myself. I sometimes hold the hand of the person beside me and picture the faces of those whom I love and have lost to death (two of whom are my wife’s Catholic parents) but not lost to Christ’s Table, and trust that Christ Himself, Who is Love, has accepted us all. Very frequently, I feel a strength and gratitude that it is hard to describe. Maybe your Protestant mother experiences something like that in adoration.
From my perspective, it is perfectly appropriate for a Protestant to choose any form of worship that gives her the sense that she is being drawn closer to Christ, including adoration. Mainline Protestants welcome Catholics to visit our churches (we don’t even care if you only recognize them as “places of worship”). We are not interested in converting you. It is God Who does the converting us in the image of Christ. It is also God who imparts His grace to all of us, Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical, because God’s sacrifice on the cross in Jerusalem in the First Century, breaking into real time as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, shows us precisely how far God will go to love and forgive us, in spite of ourselves and our differences.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! God bless and confirm you in your Catholic faith.
. Anyhow, he has joined me for adoration on multiple occasions, and he loves it.