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Recently, my friend Bishop Robert Barron let his righteous anger fly on his blog concerning the new Pew Research Poll showing that only one third of Catholics believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.\u00a0 He and I were in seminary together, and he certainly deserves the title of Best Catholic Apologist.\u00a0 \u00a0He was right to be angry about the incredible aridity of Catholic Eucharistic belief, but he and other commentators have become incensed over this fact as if it were a new thing.\u00a0 It is not.\u00a0 Catholic belief in the Real Presence in America has not changed in 27 years.\u00a0 Back in 1992, when Gallup took a poll on this very subject, the same percentages were discovered.\u00a0 One third of Catholics believed in the Real\u00a0 Presence and nearly 70% had a heretical view of the Eucharist.\u00a0 I remember that poll clearly as I was working on a Eucharistic talk at the time.\u00a0 I, too, was appalled\u2013decades ago.\u00a0 So this is nothing new.<\/p>\n
That fact\u00a0 shouldn\u2019t lessen our anger, but it should put it in context.\u00a0 Despite everything we Catholic educators, pastoral leaders, and catechists have attempted, even with the introduction and implementation of the Catechism and a new translation of the Mass prayers\u2013Catholics haven\u2019t changed.\u00a0 Most of those who profess the faith are as heretical as Berengar of Tours (who arguably caused all this mess a thousand years ago, deciding that the how of the Real Presence was more important than the fact that there truly was one), the Albigensians, and the Protestant reformers.<\/p>\n
Nothing has happened in the last quarter of a century to lessen Catholic belief in the Eucharist.\u00a0 This fight was lost in the decades of the \u201960\u2019s and \u201970\u2019s.\u00a0 What\u2019s amazing is that a third of Catholics actually still believe what the Church has always taught about the Eucharist.\u00a0 That must be because God is in his heaven holding them in the palm of his hand, because it is not due to anything the Catholic leaders of the Church have done.\u00a0 We are going to have to look back over sixty years to discover what really happened.\u00a0 Catholics today are no less religious than a generation ago. If anger must be expressed, it should not be expressed at them.\u00a0 Most have never possessed the faith they are seemingly accused of rejecting.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m just one priest with a theological degree and a lot of pastoral experience.\u00a0 I guess that qualifies me to offer an intelligent opinion but what follows is just that\u2013an opinion.\u00a0 What do you think?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my take on why the majority of Catholics reject the Eucharistic doctrine of the Church:<\/p>\n
First, no recognition of individual spiritual experience<\/strong>.\u00a0 Most Catholics have difficulty articulating an experience of God in their lives.\u00a0 Many think they have never had such an experience, even if they receive the Eucharist regularly.\u00a0 I maintain they have had such an experience; they just don\u2019t know how to label it.\u00a0 The Church has done a poor job pointing out how to have a relationship with the Divine.\u00a0 Put another way, a lot of modern Catholics would walk right by the Burning Bush, convinced God\u2019s voice was just the whisper of the wind.<\/p>\n Second, the decline in Mass attendance demonstrates most clearly that there is little connection between the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the presence of Christ in a person\u2019s heart<\/strong>.\u00a0 Our Catholic people are not evil.\u00a0 It is inconceivable to me that the many Catholics who prefer soccer, football,sleeping and shopping to Mass are deliberately ignoring God.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Who would pass up a chance to have a heart to heart with Jesus?\u00a0 Most Catholics just don\u2019t believe that the Eucharist gives any special connection with God.<\/p>\n Third, there has been an equivalency promoted both by those in the Church and without, that all religions are basically the same<\/strong>.\u00a0 Want to kill the knowledge of Eucharistic Real Presence?\u00a0 Then promote this idea.\u00a0 The fact is, there is no other religion on earth that proposes a more intimate contact with the Divine than the Catholic Church with its doctrine of the Eucharist.\u00a0 You have to love what St. Augustine proclaimed when he said that ordinary food becomes part of us but when we eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Lord, we become divinized\u2013we are made godly.\u00a0 Like I said, no other religion makes this claim.\u00a0 In fact, so outrageous is our belief that the proponents of Islam would kill us for blasphemy because of our contention that we can be this close to God.<\/p>\n Fourth, by over-intellectualizing the \u201chow\u201d of Eucharistic Real Presence, we have taken all the awe out of it.<\/strong>\u00a0 Transubstantiation is and remains the best explanation of how the bread and wine become Christ, but such an explanation without application to human experience is deadly to the soul.\u00a0 In the first millennium of Christianity, the Church didn\u2019t need to explain how the Eucharist happened; the faithful simply experienced its reality.\u00a0 We need the teaching of transubstantiation to anchor our belief in faith, but we also must recognize and emphasize the experience of God we receive to anchor this teaching in our hearts.<\/p>\n Fifth, Church music sucks<\/strong>.\u00a0 Forgive the vulgarism but it boldly declares the truth.\u00a0 Most priests, bishops and theologians will tell you that nearly every heresy known to humanity has been incarnated in a song written in the past sixty years by a Church musician.\u00a0 Never forget that seventeen hundred years ago, Arius, a priest from Egypt\u2019s Alexandria, used music as propaganda to promote his belief that Jesus wasn\u2019t God.\u00a0 His very popular tune\u2013number one on the Holy 100\u2013was titled \u201cThere Was A Then When He Was Not\u201d.\u00a0 Many Christians humming that ditty apostasized, proclaiming that Jesus was just a superman, not the pre-existent Son of God.\u00a0 If we want people to believe in the Real Presence, we are going to have to sing about it.<\/p>\n Sixth,\u00a0reverence and gesture are essential, but the Traditional Mass is not in order to restore Eucharist fidelity<\/b>.\u00a0 Instead of finding ways of reaching the majority of the people with sacramental truth, some hold on to the notion that if we just abandoned Mass in the vernacular, our sacramental problems would be solved.\u00a0 No doubt the Latin language helped instill a sense of mystery in the faithful, but it will not become the majority\u2019s preference.\u00a0 For a small minority of Catholics, there is a place for the Traditional Latin Mass, but the Novus Ordo<\/em>, (Mass in the Vernacular), is here to stay for most.\u00a0 So are bells, genuflections, incense, candles, vestments, the elevation at the consecration, Eucharistic adoration, Benediction and Eucharistic processions.\u00a0 There are many ways to emphasize reverence toward the Blessed Sacrament that everyone can embrace without reimposing a Mass that only existed for 400 years of the Church\u2019s 2000 year existence.<\/p>\n Ultimately, what is needed is a radical re-orientation of our faith community towards a transcendent Church<\/strong>.\u00a0 That\u2019s a Church based on the experience of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, its belief system explained in orthodox doctrine, but its emphasis based on a relationship with the living God in this world, in our time.\u00a0 I hope to flesh this out in blogs to come.<\/p>\n These are just a few thoughts.\u00a0 Others can add to them.\u00a0 But we cannot let our anger or our disappointment discourage us. If our people cannot point to an experience of God, if they do not long to meet him in a special way at least once a week, if we lose the uniqueness of our faith, then we truly will lose the fight for orthodox belief in the Real Presence of Christ.\u00a0 We are not the Church without Eucharistic Presence of our Lord. It\u2019s how we experience him and the salvation he won for us.\u00a0 I long for the day when we all say again:\u00a0 \u201cI believe, Lord.\u00a0 Help my unbelief.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Recently, my friend Bishop Robert Barron let his righteous anger fly on his blog concerning the new Pew Research Poll showing that only one third of Catholics believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.\u00a0 He and I were in seminary together, and he certainly deserves the title of Best Catholic Apologist.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,52,369,366,372,251,84,213,1],"tags":[384,387,375,381,93,378,390],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-teaching","category-dissent","category-eucharistic-belief","category-mass","category-real-presence","category-religious-leaders","category-ripped-from-the-headlines","category-spirituality","category-uncategorized","tag-catechism","tag-catholics","tag-eucharistic-doctrine","tag-heresy","tag-mass","tag-real-presence","tag-spiritual-experience"],"yoast_head":"\nNo Connection Between Christ In the Eucharist And Christ In The Life Of A Person<\/h2>\n
All Religions Considered The Same<\/h2>\n
Focus Only On The \u201cHow\u201d Of Christ\u2019s Eucharistic Presence Takes Away Awe<\/h2>\n
Church Music \u201cSucks\u201d<\/h2>\n
Emphasis On Restoration Of Traditional Latin Mass Wrong<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Re-establishing Eucharistic Doctrine:\u00a0 Preach A Transcendent Church Focused On Personal Relationship With Christ<\/h2>\n