HERE IS THE REASON WHY 70% OF CATHOLICS DON’T BELIEVE IN THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST AS HE TEACHES

Father Thomas Reese’s rhetoric in this National Chismatic Reporter article is what has led to the poor state of faith in the Church today. This is 1970’s theology and apologetics that I was taught in a seminary that refused adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as well as Benediction and placed the tabernacle in a side chapel and if anyone went there to pray they were immediately suspect.

My seminary class which was about 60 men in the fall of 1976 was only 23 in 1979 in part due to the progressive theology/ideology of those three years. Imparting this crap on the laity has accomplished the same goal!

Father Reese grow up, wake up and stop this crap. And the problem isn’t just catechesis, it is catechesis of the kind Reese spews wedged in 1970 as well as the entrenched manner in which the Ordinary Form of the Mass is celebrated today:

The Eucharist is about more than Christ becoming present 

Aug 19, 2019

by Thomas Reese, Religion News Service

 

Opinion

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There has been a lot of clerical hand-wringing of late about Catholics who don’t believe what the church teaches about Christ’s presence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. According to the Pew Research Center, only one-third of Catholics agree that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ. Almost 70 percent believe that during Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion "are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ."

This certainly shows a failure in catechetics, [Yes, the kind of catechetics you are about to read!] but I think the church faces a greater problem: Like the Pew Research Center, Catholics have an impoverished idea of what the Eucharist is really all about. [Father Reese, your 1970's mentality about the Most Holy Eucharist is what is impoverished and has impoverished the Faith of Catholics!]

Much of Eucharistic theology — especially the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation — goes back to the 13th century, when people rarely received Communion at Mass. They went to church to adore Christ present in the Eucharist, and the purpose of Mass was to transform the host into the body of Christ so that people could adore him. Devotionally, the Mass was not all that different from Benediction, where the Eucharist is placed in a monstrance to be adored by Catholics. [This 1970's rhetoric I remember well! How bad and evil the 13th Century was for the Most Holy Eucharist! This is right out of the talking points of liberal Catholic liturgists!]

In order to explain how what looked like bread could be the body of Christ, 13th-century theologians used the avant-garde thinking of the time: Aristotelianism. [Yes, more horrors from the 13th century!]

In ancient Greece, Aristotle described reality using concepts of prime matter, substantial forms, substance and accidents. This allowed Catholic theologians using Aristotelian philosophy to explain that the "substance" of the bread was changed into the body of Christ while the "accidents"(appearance) remained the same. Thus, "transubstantiation." Using Aristotelian concepts to explain Catholic mysteries in the 21st century is a fool’s errand. When was the last time you met an Aristotelian outside a Catholic seminary? [Not often, but in my parish yes, but that's the problem!]

I personally find the theology of transubstantiation unintelligible, not because I don’t believe that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, but because I do not believe in prime matter, substantial forms, substance and accidents. I don’t think we have a clue what Jesus meant when he said, "This is my body." I think we should humbly accept it as a mystery and not pretend we understand it. [So, Fr. Reese dosen't believe it so it must not be used!]

In any case, Jesus did not say, "This is my body. Adore me." He said, "Take and eat. This is my body." Only in the early 20th century, with the encouragement of Pope Pius X, did receiving Communion again become common in the Catholic Church. [So let's destroy adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament and we'll get to what Jesus' wants as though Jesus didn't guide the Church to make dogma the dogma of Transubstantiation! This sentence by Reese is the single most devastating piece of evidence as to why we are where we are today in the Church!]

The church also spoke of the Eucharist as making present and effective the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. But even here, the concept of sacrifice was quite limited. Only in a holocaust sacrifice was everything burnt. In most Hebrew sacrifices, some of what was sacrificed was eaten in order to show God’s communion with his people.

At the 2005 synod of bishops on the Eucharist, the bishops were arguing about whether the Eucharist is a sacrifice or a communion. Pope Benedict had to intervene and explain to the bishops that it was both, something the bishops should have learned in their first course on sacramental theology. [By the way, the Baltimore Catechism has separate chapters on the Sacrifice and the Banquet of the Mass. Bring back the Baltimore Catechism for balanced catechesis!]

The context of the Last Supper is also essential to understand what Jesus was instituting. The Last Supper was a Passover meal where Jews remember the Exodus and thank God for his gracious acts toward his people. Here they also renew their covenant with God.

The Mass must therefore be seen as a sacrificial meal where we give thanks to God, especially for the gift of his son; where we renew the new covenant with him; and where we are united with him through Christ.

The Mass is not about adoring Jesus or even praying to Jesus. In the Eucharistic prayer said by the priest at Mass, we pray to the Father through, with and in Christ. We give thanks and praise to God for his wondrous deeds, especially for raising up Jesus as our savior. [Here you go, the apex of 1970's ideology!]

The Eucharistic prayer asks that the Spirit transform us so that we can become like Christ, or as St. Augustine said, that "we become what we receive." Ultimately, the Mass is more about us becoming the body of Christ than it is about the bread becoming the body of Christ. [Yes, 1970's theology the Mass consecrates us, which isn't completely wrong, but no matter how consecrated we are, we are still poor miserable sinners who miss the mark. Jesus never does and when we lose that focus in the Mass and who it is that is Transubstantially present and we can adore and worship, we end up where we are today and with Mass celebrated in the most casual and silly sorts of ways, the horizontal overpowering the vertical!]

The Mass renews the covenant that commits us to follow in Christ’s footsteps in loving our brothers and sisters, especially the poor and the marginalized. The Eucharist is about making us more Christ-like so that we can continue his mission of establishing the kingdom of God, of bringing justice and peace to the world. [Here we go, it is all about US ESTABLISHING GOD'S KINGDOM AND US BRINGING JUSTICE AND PEACE IN THIS WORLD. HAS FATHER REESE ANY CLUE AS TO WHAT WE, MEANING THE HIERARCHY AND THE LOWERARCHY HAVE DONE TO THE CHURCH IN THESE PAST 50 YEARS AND MORE WITH HIS KIND OF IDEOLOGY AND THEOLOGY ROOTED IN THE NARCISSISTIC 1970'S AND WHERE WE ARE gODS?]

Father Reese, it is time for you to retire and to retire your corrupt theology that has done so much damage to the Church's True Faith. But thank you for showing a new generation what truly went wrong in the Church of the 1970's that your generation is trying to regain! Nostalgia for the 1970's is worse than nostalgia for the 13th Century!