Let me just focus for a couple minutes on building bridges between religious faiths. A little personal background, just to flesh out my own background a bit. I have a mixed Catholic-Protestant heritage which early on opened me up to the idea that different people of high morals and deep faith have different perceptions. I presume that made me skeptical of dogmatic religion of any sort.
Then I got involved with the Trappists. First, as a teenager I went to La Trappe in Quebec, etc. Then along came Thomas Merton and his "Seven Storey Mountain". Perhaps you're aware of that book. He was, of course, a Trappist in the Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky (I believe they spell it with that i). Later, I read some of his later works, in which he emphasized such issues as equal rights, peace, economic justice, and respect for other faiths. I believe his last work dealt with Zen Buddhism. In fact, he died while attending a gathering of spiritual leaders of different faiths in Thailand back in 1968.
Merton strove to build bridges among kindres spirits who had different spiritual perspectives. That is difficult to do if one is convinced that 'my' religion in the one and only true one, that all the rest are wrong either substantially or in part, that somehow Catholicism gives one a leg up when it comes to God and the final judgment.
Personally, I enjoy dialoging with informed and kind persons of any and all faiths as there always is more to learn from them. For some years (before retirement) I taught comparative religions in college, and what a wealth of insight one finds in them. I have spent time in India, Japan, Korea and China - plus Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, Russia, etc. - each with rich religious traditions which I sought to explore as time permitted.
Over the years I began to develop an increasing disagreement with the notion that God is properly presented fully only through one faith, be it Catholicism or any other. This sentiment began to seem arrogant and (forgive me) unintelligent in so many ways. Sorry. But that's what happened to me. I still find very much to appreciate in Catholicism, certainly in such arenas as education, medical care, and concern for the poor, but those ironclad, you-must-believe dogmas tend to alienate. Moreover, I find that most Catholics I know - those who think a lot, anyway - insist on thinking independently, usually without exiting the Church. They attend Mass while dissenting on various matters. I find no fault in that as faith, it may be argued, has more to do with a deep emotional commitment than to any doctrines set in stone.
As for Real Presence and Transubstantiation, I have always seen them as two sides to the same coin. All Christians, as far as I know, believe in the real presence not so much as a dogma but as an obvious reality. God is everywhere, here with me as I write this. Not pantheism, just omnipresent growing out of his omnipotence. Believing that the flesh and blood of Jesus, plus his spirit, are more concentrated somehow in a wafer and some wine is difficult for me to imagine, let alone believe. It harkens back to an earlier era when such beliefs were commonplace, to an era when it was not unusual to have valid visions, when demons and ghosts were everywhere, when God sent tornados and hurricanes. when crops failed or illness came because of the work of Satan or punishment from God.
But God bless those who can believe in the Real Presence or Transubstantiation and who find strength and consolation in this belief. Different strokes for different folks. What troubles me isn't difference of opinion but insistence that only one opinion is absolutely, positively, thoroughly and completely right while all other views are not right. Millions of people, including many learned Biblical scholars with all those advanced degrees from Cambridge and Oxford, Harvard, Yale and Princeton. have studied the same texts and come to different conclusions.
One note I want to add. You wrote of Protestant groups that believe in the Real Presence. Again, all Protestants believe in God's eternal and everlasting presence everywhere. But bear in mind that mainline Protestantism by its very nature permits a wide variation in belief. Take Presbyterians or Congregationalists or Methodists. There are evangelical Methodists who stick with what they believe is inerrant scripture. There are liberal Methodists, often sitting alongside them in church, who consider such Biblical stories as Adam and Eve. Noah and the Great Flood, the Tower of Babel, etc., as folklore, legends, and not history. Most Methodists would not have fervent positions. Their founder John Wesley said "think and let think' - and that spirit characterizes much of mainline Protestantism. I find that attractive. Religion should free our minds to soar into the mysterious world of theology, free to tred new and different paths, and not have to recite whatever has been handed down from ancient councils and pontiffs.
On the other hand, for those who want uniformity, who are ready to accept the authority of what they believe is Christ through the tenets of 'his church', who look to the catechism for their articles of faith - pax vobiscum. Peace be with you.
