One of the most interesting and fruitful developments of Eucharistic theology in the past fifty years or so has been the re-integration of the Mass into the doctrine of the Mystical Body. When Père de la Taille's Mysterium Fidei first came out in 1921, the reactions were shock and amazement that he should speak of the Church offering the sacrifice of the Mass. From the time of Bellarmine onwards it had become common form to say that Christ offered the Mass—of course through the ministry of his priests (with the part of the laity reduced to a hardly visible minimum), and the implication was that the Church as such hardly intervened at all. And it is significant that the content of the liturgy was allowed little or no influence in building up the theology of the Mass. Similarly, Protestant controversy forced the emphasis onto questions concerning the Real Presence (sacramentum-et-res), and the res sacramenti, the ultimate effect (the unification of the Mystical Body, to quote St Thomas), was all but ignored.
