Some Thoughts on the Eucharistic Presence: 1

Extract

One of the words we learned at school about the Eucharist was ‘transubstantiation’ : we were given to understand, quite rightly, that the use of this word marked off Roman Catholic belief here from what had traditionally been Protestantism, and that the Council of Trent had declared the word to be used very suitably by the Church. Another thing we learned at school was that a consecrated host looks like bread, tastes like bread, but is not: we are sometimes told, again quite properly, that this phrase puts into popular form what Trent asserted.

I reject what Trent said. I don’t believe in transubstantiation and I think that a consecrated host is still bread, bread in precisely the way that an unconsecrated host is bread. I want to show you why I hold these views. What I have to say is derived from a book I am writing, and I obviously can do no more than give you a brief glimpse of some of its contents. I have not written my book to deny the eucharistic presence: but I have written it to try to persuade people that the ways we talk about it are misleading and empty; and to suggest some better ways. It will be on the negative part of the book that I shall be dwelling for a good part of the paper, expounding and criticizing first the views found in Trent, then the views found in certain authors today, particularly in Holland. As you will know, one of the many bickerings between the Dutch and the Vatican concerns the eucharistic presence: my contention is that both sides are saying basically the same thing and that both sides are wrong.