PROCESSING/JOURNALING A HERMITAGE-LIKE RETREAT

One can see how this teaches without words, the Church's belief in the Real Presence leading to most Catholics at the time believing in Transubstantiation:

And one can understand why 70% of Catholics no longer believe in Transubstantiation after experiencing this:

I just listened to a marvelous more than an hour long talk/teaching by Bishop Baron on the Most Holy Eucharist.

It was brilliant and showed how belief in the Real Presence which eventually is described at "transubstantiation" developed certainly from Jesus Himself in John's Gospel especially and then carried on from there with the Apostles and the early Church Fathers.

He also describe some in-house heretical teachings in later centuries clearly confronted by the Church to insist upon transubstantiation.

Then in a brilliant way he described the Council of Trent, which Catholics must receive, and how it clarified what the Church's teaching is concerning the Most Holy Eucharist compared to the "reformers" versions of it, from Luther, to Calvin to others. Trent reaffirmed the Church true teaching compared to the Protestant Reformers and their adherents as "anathemas" or "be condemned".

In the 1950's more erroneous thoughts or theological positions were being taken which let Pope St. Paul VI to reaffirmed and very directly during Vatican II, Trent's authentic teaching as binding on the nature of the Real Presence in the Consecrated Bread and Wine, Christ's Body and Blood.

Bishop Baron prefaced his teaching by citing the Pew Survey of a couple years ago that said 70% of
Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence as taught by Trent, Vatican II and Pope St. Paul VI and subsequent popes. They believe it to be a symbol, a Protestant ideology which condemns Catholics for holding such a view, according to Trent of course.

In this talk, videoed before about 5,000 priests, religious and catechist, Bishop Baron hope that teaching about the Holy Eucharist and the Real Presence would be a priority as it hasn't be taught or received by 70% of Catholics surveyed.

THAT IS WHERE I BECAME APOPLECTIC!

For centuries, the great poor, uneducated and unwashed masses of the Church (meaning those who were not priests and religious) believed in the real presence because of the manner in which Mass was celebrated and how the laity received Holy Communion, in fear and trembling, with reverence and faith.

Being formed by Trent and its anathemas and the refined Roman Missal, post-Trent--the celebration of the Mass and the manner in which it was done handed on the true faith about not only the Sacrificial aspect of the Mass but the Real Presence.

The law of prayer is the law of belief!  And if prayer is according to the mind of the Church celebrated reverently and with are and by the Book, the law of belief follows.

But the converse is true that if the prayer is celebrated sloppily, with little reverence and particular ways of doing things become codified that eat away at true belief, then belief suffers and dies.

What has led to 70% of Catholics not believing orthodox Catholic teaching on the Eucharist and combined with that in some places only 12% of Catholics attending Mass.

These are the things that accomplished that great feet in only 50 years or so after Vatican II:

1. There was a loss of appreciation for the rubrics of the Mass, that led to sloppy celebrations of it, with many banalities and a horizontal view of the Mass and receiving Holy Communion. Music became associated with fads in music, thus religious words set to secular ditties

2. Priests and parishes became creative with the Liturgy and ceased to read the black and do the red. As varied as are the various parishes even in the same city, so too the Mass in the Ordinary Form. The Ordinary Form Mass, depending on the priest and the place was like "a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." And what you get was the worst choice in that box!

3. Then these things became allowed which collectively have contributed to the loss or orthodox Catholic Faith and Catholics leaving the Church and becoming nones (moral issues they can't understand and won't believe and are not willing to try being a party of this heterodoxy).

a. Communion standing rather than kneeling--most Catholics when this innovation began view it as less reverent than kneeling and they had a lifetime of kneeling to know what they were talking about

b. Then Communion in the hand which like standing, those Catholics who spent a lifetime receiving on the tongue because of their belief in the Real Presence and spirituality of reverence, perceived receiving in the hand as less reverent.

c. Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion: for those who were the first to experience it, they spent a lifetime receiving Holy Communion from priests who were ordained to consecrate and touch the Sacred Host. Their ordination and the anointing of their hands is what gave them the authority to consecrate and distribute Holy Communion. Having lay people, who took an hour long class on "how to distribute and when to come up, etc) and often chosen not for their holiness of life and fidelity to the Church, but because they were willing to do it and thought it was a very priestly function, caused people to wonder about the Real Presence if its distribution was accomplished by laity in a more casual way and receiving on the run in the hand or tongue.

The loss of reverence or at least the perceived loss of reverence contributes to this loss of faith in the Real Presence as taught by the Church for 2000 years.

If we don't understand that the primary way in which orthodox Catholic Faith is inculcated, by the manner and style of our worship at Mass, no amount of catechesis will remedy the malaise.