The basic objection to the Catholic doctrine of the real presence is not that it is against Scripture, but that it is against reason. The words of Jesus seem plain enough. "This is my body." This is my blood." "Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life in you." "My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink." When some of his disciples complained, "This is a hard saying; who can accept it?", he didn't explain that he had not been speaking literally in saying he would give his body to eat and his blood to drink. Instead he let them go. As St. John tells us, many left him because they would not accept this teaching...
...If one thinks transubstantiation is repugnant to reason, this may be due to not having understood what substance is, and how it is related to accidents. We can't see a substance or touch it or taste it, so it may seem unreal. Perhaps we tend to think of it as an inert something, having no function except to support the active qualities shown by the senses.
If one thinks transubstantiation is repugnant to reason, this may be due to not having understood what substance is, and how it is related to accidents. We can't see a substance or touch it or taste it, so it may seem unreal. Perhaps we tend to think of it as an inert something, having no function except to support the active qualities shown by the senses. George Berkeley (1685-1753) declared material substance to be a meaningless term. He says: "It neither acts, nor perceives, nor is perceived: for this is all that is meant by saying it is an inert, senseless, unknown substance: which is a definition entirely made up of negatives, excepting only the relative notion of its standing under or supporting." [
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That notion of substance is grotesque, but it does not seem so to an empiricist philosopher because of his reduction of all knowledge to sense knowledge; and it continues to influence some theologians when they think about transubstantiation. That is one reason for the widespread rejection of this dogma, and the substitution of transignification or transfinalization.
The truth is that denial of the reality of substance is a contradiction of common sense. For something must either exist in its own right, such as water, a tree, a cat: or else it must exist in something else, such as color or shape. What "stands on its own feet," as it were, is a substance; what exists in something else is an accident. Denial of substances leaves color, size, weight and so on without a subject of inherence: which implies a color which is not the color of anything, size which is not the size of anything, weight which is not the weight of anything.
The substance is the essence, the nature, of a thing which exists in its own right. It isn't inert, as Berkeley imagined, but dynamic, for it is the source from which all the powers and activities emanate. The accidents depend on it for their existence and their operation.
Take a stone, by way of example. We experience its hardness, its smoothness, its color, its shape. But the substance that has these attributes eludes our observation. Even were we to break the stone in two we wouldn't see the substance; if we broke it into a hundred pieces we would be no more successful. So we might try some scientific tests, but still the results would be in the order of phenomena.
The substance of the stone is material, but it is not sensible. Yet it is not unknown, for its accidents manifest it. From the accidents perceived by sight and the other senses, the intellect gains an insight into the essence (the substance). Therefore words like stone, water, tree, horse have meaning: each brings to mind the thing named, and we have in our intellect the essence of the reality in question, although never perfectly, for no substance can be perfectly understood through abstraction from sense knowledge.
The dogma of transubstantiation teaches that the whole substance of bread is changed into that of Christ's body, and the whole substance of wine into that of his blood, leaving the accidents of bread and wine unaffected. Reason, of course, can't prove that this happens. But it is not evidently against reason either; it is above reason. Our senses, being confined to phenomena, cannot detect the change: we know it only by faith in God's word.
After the priest consecrates the bread and wine, their accidents alone remain, without inhering in any substance. They can't inhere in the bread and wine, for these no longer exist; nor do they inhere in Christ's body and blood, for they are not his accidents. The
Catechism of the Council of Trent says: "… the accidents which present themselves to the eyes or other senses exist in a wonderful and ineffable manner without a subject." [
5] St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that God directly sustains the quantity of bread (or wine) in being, and that the other accidents inhere in the quantity. [
6] For quantity is the fundamental accident: the others, such as color, exist as quantified—as having extension. There is no such thing as a non-extended color...
... A clearer understanding of what God, through his Church, tells us about the Eucharist, and a consideration of the objections to the doctrine, should deepen our faith. Vagueness and perplexity about it are often associated with errors lurking deep in the mind—errors which, if allowed to surface, can bring temptations against faith.
A right understanding will dissipate the errors and show that reason need not be embarrassed by transubstantiation, even though it far transcends reason.
Not only that, but exploration of the doctrine makes it more real to us.
We realize more clearly that the physical body and blood of Jesus Christ are as truly present as they are in heaven, or as they were when he labored in his workshop in Nazareth. While that realization is dominant, every genuflection will be a conscious act of adoration of the Incarnate God; the Consecration will always absorb our attention; we will never want to hurry out of church as soon as Mass is over.
Jesus comes to us physically because of his great love for us. Anyone who loves wants to be physically close to the one who is loved, but it is sometimes impossible. It is not impossible for God. Divine power changes bread and wine into the real body and blood of Christ, and he dwells physically on earth in every tabernacle, and comes physically into us in Holy Communion.
Transubstantiation and Reason
