Editorial

Our failure to teach the truth about the Eucharist

“If the Eucharist is only a symbol, to hell with it!”

That was author Flannery O’Connor’s famous retort when someone said that the Eucharist is a symbol of Christ’s body and blood. It sounds almost sacrilegious, but that’s how she felt. We Catholics know that the Eucharist is Christ’s body and blood—not a symbol. There’s a huge difference. O’Connor didn’t need a symbol, so to hell with it.

We really didn’t plan to editorialize again about that Pew Research Center’s survey that revealed that 69 percent of Catholics in the U.S. “say they personally believe that during the Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communions ‘are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.’ ” Daniel Conway did so in our Aug. 23 issue, and Greg Erlandson of Catholic News Service wrote about it in our Aug. 30 issue. In addition, almost every other Catholic media outlet has commented on it, to say nothing of all the commentary on social media.

But we also editorialized, more than a year ago, that, in light of the clergy sex‑abuse scandal, we should not think about leaving the Church because we must realize why we are Catholics. And one of the main reasons is because we have the Eucharist. Only in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches can priests, through the power of the Holy Spirit, change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

If Catholics don’t believe that, as that survey seems to indicate, then maybe they don’t have a reason to remain Catholics.

We have reported that Bishop Robert E. Barron was angry when he saw the results of that survey—not at Pew for reporting it, but at those in the Church whose responsibility it is to teach Catholics what the Church believes. “It’s been a massive failure of the Church carrying on its own tradition,” he said.

This is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church. Catholics’ ignorance of that fact surely shows the truth of Bishop Barron’s assertion.

Catholics who don’t know their history don’t realize that many Catholics over the centuries have been put to death because they believed in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

We can understand how people can think that the Church teaches that the Eucharist is only a symbol of Christ’s body and blood. There is no physical change to the bread and wine after the priest consecrates them. They still look and taste as they always did.

And we admit that we don’t know exactly how it happens that the bread and wine is changed into the substance of Christ’s body and blood. That’s what the term “transubstantiation” means, but perhaps that’s too much for most people to understand.

We also admit that trying to explain this to Catholics has been a problem throughout the Church’s history. Jesuit Father Matt Malone, editor of America magazine, wrote in a column that way back in the fifth century, a bishop named Theodore of Mopsuestia felt the need to tell his people: “The Lord did not say: This is a symbol of my body, and this is a symbol of my blood, but rather: This is my body and this is my blood.”

How are Catholics expected to know what the Church teaches about the Eucharist? In our parishes, of course, with priests teaching in our pulpits, teachers teaching in our schools, and volunteers teaching in religious education programs. But polls show that more than half of Catholic millennials say that they go to Mass only a few times a year. And at least one poll showed that 68 percent of Catholic parents do not enroll their child in any formal Catholic religious education program. Sixty-eight percent!

Could there possibly be a connection here?

Unfortunately, we don’t have a solution to this situation. But perhaps that Pew Research survey did the Church a favor by revealing a serious problem and, in so doing, aroused so much commentary. We must find new ways to catechize Catholics about the basic teachings of the Church.

—John F. Fink