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Catholicism - An Introduction: Transubstantiation

by Peter Stanford

Catholics differ from other Christians in their belief in transubstantiation: that, at the moment of consecration of the bread and wine during the celebration of the Eucharist (Holy Communion), Jesus’s body and blood are present in more than a symbolic way. ‘The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique,’ the Church’s Catechism instructs. ‘It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.’ Catholics believe that contained in the consecrated bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, as well as his soul and divinity, ‘truly, really and substantially’.

Transubstantiation caused disagreement between the Catholic Church and Protestant rebels (who rejected the belief) in the Reformation debates of the sixteenth century, and it remains a key point of divergence in inter-Church talks to this day. Other Christian faiths tend to emphasize the symbolic nature of the bread and wine in the Eucharist. Catholicism goes considerably further. ‘It is,’ the Catechism points out, ‘presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.’

The Catholic Church does not allow members of other faiths to receive communion at its Eucharistic celebrations, and it discourages Catholics from doing so at those of other Christian denominations.


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