A few, not all, questions. Is the lack of “Transubstantiation” a reason for empty pews in Catholic Churches? In our decade, what is being taught about the old time “Transubstantiation?” Is Transubstantiation considered a Catholic doctrine? In other words, can moderns alter the meaning just a little in order to meet modern standards?
I am sure that there are more questions to be answered. However, it is important to get to the nitty gritty of Transubstantiation in our Liturgy and Sacraments…in my humble opinion
If you will forgive me, your question is not well formulated
I don’t understand why you are putting the term in quotation marks. Is there a significance you are underscoring that escapes me?
Transubstantiation is a specific term that relates to the Eucharist. I don’t understand how you can imply that the term has any other application or relationship relative to the other sacraments or the liturgy
Assuredly, there is not a “lack of transubstantiation” – it occurs when and where the Eucharist is celebrated
The truth expressed when we say transubstantiation is, assuredly, dogmatic. The word itself, however, cannot exhaustively express the transcendent reality because transubstantiation is a philosophical term being applied to the Eucharist to express the conversion of the elements that occurs
I have been both a parish priest and a professor of liturgy. Theology of the Eucharist was one of my favorite courses on which to lecture
Of course the term was explained to children in my parish, notably in preparing for First Holy Communion – but it was at best a superficial exposure to terminology. A true understanding of the word rests on Aristotelian concepts and Scholastic metaphysics – and one who is not a metaphysician will reach a point where the ability to articulate will begin to fall short
For me the real crisis is not relative to terminology employed today but the underlying crisis in post-Cartesian philosophy. This same crisis is true in the consideration of the fields of Trinitarian theology and Christology. Most people, for example, when they hear the word “Person” receive the term and assimilate it by contrasting it, in terms of epistemology, with empirical psychology and
its concept of “Person” as opposed to the definition derived from Boethius and the understanding of the term by the Fathers of the Church who canonised the expression
persona in Latin and ὑπόστασις and the corresponding term πρόσωπον in Ancient Greek. If your starting point is the modern definition, you will arrive at problematic conclusions. The same is true relative to the employment of philosophical terms and concepts in Eucharistic theology that need be situated upon their proper foundations
The problem with misunderstanding and lack of comprehension was an expressed concern in
Mysterium Fidei by Blessed Paul VI in 1965. He wrote:
*46. To avoid any misunderstanding of this type of presence, which goes beyond the laws of nature and constitutes the greatest miracle of its kind, we have to listen with docility to the voice of the teaching and praying Church. Her voice, which constantly echoes the voice of Christ, assures us that the way in which Christ becomes present in this Sacrament is
through the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, a unique and truly wonderful conversion that the Catholic Church fittingly and properly calls transubstantiation. As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on
this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new “reality” which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which
Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.
- But this is no time for assembling a long list of evidence. Instead, We would rather recall the firmness of faith and complete unanimity that the Church displayed in opposing Berengarius who gave in to certain difficulties raised by human reasoning and first dared to deny the Eucharistic conversion. More than once she threatened to condemn him unless he retracted. Thus it was that Our predecessor, St. Gregory VII, commanded him to swear to the following oath: “I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine that are placed on the altar are, through the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration they are the true body of Christ—which was born of the Virgin and which hung on the Cross as an offering for the salvation of the world—and the true blood of Christ—which flowed from His side—and not just as a sign and by reason of the power of the sacrament, but in the very truth and reality of their substance and in what is proper to their nature.” *
If the underlying philosophy that properly defines substance & accidents is not properly present as foundation, along with a basic understanding of ontology…the comprehension can only suffer and the person will lack the categories to properly assimilate, understand, and be able to articulate this truth of the faith
All I could ever remember was that his name began with B. As I recall from my high school course, it was because of his objections and the command to retract that the depth of transubstantiation was brought to light.