Transubstantiation and the Real Presence

A PEW survey made public in August 2019 reported that only 63% of Catholics who attend Mass weekly believe that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ and only 58% know the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation.[i] The use of the term “actual” presence, rather than the common term “real” presence, likely resulted in the low number of those who claimed belief in Christ’s special presence in the Communion bread and wine. A CARA poll in 2008 had found that 91% of weekly Mass-going Catholics believed in the real presence.[ii]

The PEW survey elicited diverse responses in the Catholic media.[iii] Some decried the lack of understanding of the real presence and transubstantiation, equating the two. Others saw no cause for alarm in the response of Church-going Catholics. The Second Vatican Council, while discussing the Eucharist and our relationship to Christ, never used the terms real presence or transubstantiation. A review of the history of describing the special presence of Christ in the Communion bread clarifies the reason for current differences.

Historical Developments

In the institution narratives, Jesus referred to his body “which is given for you” and “the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you . . . for the forgiveness of sins.” Paul in his epistles would see an important effect of receiving the Communion bread as forming worshippers into one body in Christ (1 Cor 10:17; Rom 12:5). From the start there was no separation of the fact of the real presence in the bread and the reason for this presence. But the term transubstantiation focuses only on the fact, and it helps to understand the history of the term.

Throughout the centuries there has been an awareness that Christ’s presence in the Communion bread is more real than in the other sacraments, and there have been various ways of describing the change in the bread. Words used in the early centuries to describe the change included trans-elementation, transformation, transposing, and alteration of the bread into the body of Christ. There were also efforts to emphasize the primary purpose of the presence, as by Pope St. Leo, who is quoted in Vatican II: “The partaking of the body and blood of Christ does nothing other than make us be transformed into that which we consume” (Lumen Gentium, no. 26; cf. also 3, 7, 11).

The earliest evidence of the use of the term transubstantiation is in the 11th century, and it was in widespread use in the Western church by the 12th century. The Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 included a brief reference to transubstantiation. Then a new element entered into the use of the term, with the attempt of Thomas Aquinas to partially explain the presence through the Aristotelian distinction of substance and accidents. This led to increased emphasis on the notion of substance, and how substance might be transformed without affecting the appearance, or “accidents,” of the bread. There followed many disputes, especially at the time of the sixteenth-century Reformation. The Council of Trent responded with the statement that “by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which conversion is, by the holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called Transubstantiation.”[iv] No philosophical explanation of transubstantiation was endorsed and accidents were never mentioned. But this statement of Trent has been a reference point for later teaching, and is included in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 1376).

The results of conversations with Lutheran theologians in 1967, as reported on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website,[v] regards the churches as no longer divided on the question of the Lord’s presence in his supper. But “when Lutheran theologians read contemporary Catholic expositions,[vi] it becomes clear to them that the dogma of transubstantiation intends to affirm the fact of Christ’s presence and of the change which takes place, and is not an attempt to explain how Christ becomes present.” The Lutheran theologians acknowledged that transubstantiation is “a legitimate way of attempting to express the mystery.”[vii]

Attempts are being made to explain the real presence in ways more agreeable to modern science and to other Christian churches. One such attempt is in terms of a “subsidiary form” that has its distinct existence but cannot exist apart from another substance.[viii] This is close to the Lutheran conception that the body and blood of Christ are presented “in, with, and under” the forms of bread and wine. “The bread, while not ceasing to be (chemically) bread has come to inhere, exist, and be held in being within another substance, the risen and glorified body of the Lord.”[ix]

Present and Future

The term transubstantiation has remained contentious in inter-church relations, and never occurs in the documents of Vatican II, which sought to remove unnecessary obstacles to ecumenism. The Council also largely passed over scholastic philosophy and returned to Biblical sources, focusing on the purpose of Christ’s presence in the bread. It emphasized Pauline teaching on the church as the body of Christ, and on our transformation into that body. Its decree on the liturgy observed that “devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 13). The more personal, worshipful reality of Christ’s presence in the bread is recognized in most parishes though holy hours, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and prayer before the tabernacle. But the reality of our being Christ to the world remains the primary purpose of the change in the bread, that we be strengthened by Christ’s self-sacrificing love to become other Christs, “members of his body” (Lumen Gentium, no. 7); “missionary disciples,” as described by Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium, where he adds, including a quote from Pope John Paul II:

The prayerful reading of God’s word and the perpetual adoration of the Eucharist are growing at every level of ecclesial life. Even so, “we must reject the temptation to offer a privatized and individualistic spirituality which ill accords with the demands of charity, to say nothing of the implications of the incarnation.” There is always the risk that some moments of prayer can become an excuse for not offering one’s life in mission; a privatized lifestyle can lead Christians to take refuge in some false forms of spirituality.[x]

The Second Vatican Council is seen as a definitive end to the Counter-Reformation and an effort to bring together all peoples as the new people of God: “Strengthened in Holy Communion by the Body of Christ, they then manifest in a concrete way that unity of the people of God which is suitably signified and wondrously brought about by this most august sacrament” (Lumen Gentium, no. 11). The Council goes on to describe this as the “sacrament of faith where natural elements refined by man are gloriously changed into His Body and Blood, providing a meal of brotherly solidarity and a foretaste of the heavenly banquet” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 38). In such statements as these, along with our ongoing transformation into other Christs as noted above, we find the biblical and ecumenical emphasis recommended by the Second Vatican Council of bishops.

[i]             Gregory A. Smith, “Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that Eucharist is body, blood of Christ,” Fact Tank, PewResearch.org, pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/05/transubstantiation-eucharist-u-s-catholics.

[ii]             Mark M. Gray, Paul M. Perl, “Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice among U.S. Catholics,” (Wash., DC: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 2008), cara.georgetown.edu/sacraments.html.

[iii]         “The Real Presence: What do Catholics believe and how Church can respond.” cruxnow.com/faith/2019/08/the-real-presence-what-do-catholics-believe-and-how-church-can-respond;  “Survey on Catholic belief in the Eucharist prompts calls for better catechesis.” catholicnewsagency.com/news/survey-on-catholic-belief-in-the-eucharist-prompts-calls-for-better-catechesis-96869.

[iv]             Council of Trent, Thirteenth Session, Chapter Four; history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct13.html.

[v]              “The Eucharist,” USCCB, 1967; usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/lutheran/eucharist.cfm.

[vi]             Cf. K. Rahner, “The Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,” Theological Investigations 4 (Baltimore, 1966): 287–311; E. Schillebeeckx, “Christus tegenwoordigheid in de Eucharistie,” Tijdschrift voor Theologie 5 (1965): 136–72.

[vii]  “The Eucharist,” USCCB, 1967.

[viii]           Terence Nichols, “This is My Body,” Commonweal (October 3, 2005); commonwealmagazine.org/%E2%80%98-my-body. He explains: “Aquinas argued that there can be only one substance in a unified body, like an organism. I have argued elsewhere . . . that Aquinas’s thought could be creatively completed by the notion of subsidiary form; that is, a form which is not an accident but also is not a substance, because it does not exist independently. Examples might be a molecule of protein, a blood cell, or the heart, existing in a human body. These have their own formal unity — a unity of both properties and action. They also exist within a larger substance — a body — and cannot exist by themselves apart from it. They are not substances themselves, because they do not exist independently, but exist in another.”

[ix]             Terence Nichols, “This is My Body.”

[x]              Evangelii Gaudium, 262; vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#_ftnref206.  Novo Millennio Ineunte, 52; vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/2001/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20010106_novo-millennio-ineunte.html.