Been doing a little bit of reading about the Catholic Church’s doctrine of transubstantiation. According to this teaching, the bread and wine used in the Eucharist at mass are literally transformed into the body & blood of Christ, as per John 6:53-54. This is obviously one of the more “tricky” of the tenets of Catholicism and has caused problems all down the line. The technical definition of it too is really weird, because while they maintain that the transformation is a completely concrete literal one, they say that the actual bread and wine retain their physical characteristics - the term they use is their accidents.

Variations of this theory also exist, since it’s kind of “hard to swallow” rationally. One of the more popular (non-Catholic) ones is that the Eucharist is more of a celebration or commemoration of Christ’s Last Supper. In this, the transformation of the Eucharist is ritual and symbolic, rather than literal. The other version among some Lutheran groups is the idea of Consubstantiation. It seems this is pretty close to the original belief, except that in Consubstantiation, the Eucharist not only literally becomes Christ’s body and blood, but also fully remains as bread & wine at the same time. It certainly seems like splitting hairs, but this is the kind of shit people really like to argue and go to war over, ostensibly.

I like this little rhyme that is credited to Queen Elizabeth I, who lived during an era when there was a whole lot of arguing about this kind of shit:

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

Oh, another term that gets thrown around by more liberal factions of the Catholic Church is transignification, which goes back to the whole commemorative idea:

A modern concept espoused by some Roman Catholic theologians as a rational explanation of the Real Presence of Christ at Mass. The theory is that He doesn’t become substantially present, but that at the words of consecration the elements take on the real significance of Christ, so that He is sacramentally present.

This concept is based on the thought that there are two kinds of presence, local and personal. Jesus is personally, but not locally, present at the Mass. One can be locally present, as when riding on a bus, but ones thoughts can be far away, making him personally not present.

The theory hasn’t been accepted by the Magisterium but is used by progressive priests who are embarrassed by the medieval tone of Transubstantiation.

Oddly enough, bigoted mastermind, Jack Chick actually has a good article on his website about why the doctrine of Transubstantiation goes against the spirit of the Bible passage which it is usually based on. (Too bad he can’t apply this kind of thinking to the rest of the hate that he’s peddling. It’s not written by him though, that’s why.)