Catholic Documents on the Transubstantiation

There are probably thousands of pages devoted to the subject. The long article in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia is one useful resource, although quite difficult. The Greater Catechism devotes several sections to the Eucharist; here are several:

1392 — [the Eucharist] "is communion with the flesh and blood of the risen Christ." [As opposed to his mortal flesh and blood; in terms of Aristotelian causation, the flesh of the risen Christ would have differed substantially from the mortal flesh of Jesus, having different (though related) final and formal causes, and hence its efficient and material causes, and thus its substance, were different too — namely, the work of God himself.]

1413 — "The body of Christ is present in a true, real, and substantial manner." [We must go back to Aristotelian concepts of "true" and "real" and, especially, "substantial" to distinguish this kind of presence from a crudely material presence. The purpose here is to affirm a real presence accessible to faith, over against the unbelief that understands the sacraments as merely bread and wine].

The 1965 Encyclical, Mysterium Fidei, by Pope Paul VI is the most recent major church document on the transubstantiation, though we might expect one from Benedict XVI after the present Year of the Eucharist. The encyclical reaffirms the Council of Trent's (1543) assertion that "Christ is really, truly, and substantially contained in the blessed sacrament under the outward appearance of material things." [emphasis added]. NB: For the meaning of "substantially," one needs to keep in mind the definitions of "substance" (ousia) as used by Aristotle; see Liddell Scott Jones, Dictionary of Classical Greek:

Ousia, ii — "being in the abstract, the opposite of non-being" [Arist. Met. 1003b7]
ii. 2 — "essence" [Arist. Met. 1003b7 and other references, as opposed to "accidents"]
ii. 3 — "true nature" [Arist. Met. 1017b22, 1031a1]

The following quotation from the encyclical is representative (note added emphasis and comments within brackets):

"As a result of transubstantiation, the species [i.e., their common nature, including "accidental" material properties] of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new meaning and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they take on a new "reality" [note the quotation marks] which we rightly call ontological [i.e., having to do with their "true being" or "essence."] For now what lies beneath* the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different . . . Once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and wine except for the species — beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in his physical "reality" [again note the quotation marks], corporeally present, although not in a manner in which bodies are in place." [e.g., having extension, quantity, etc.]

* The choice of words here also recalls Luther's doctrine of "consubstantiation."

Charles Duncan ([email protected]) is Professor of Humanities at Clark University in Atlanta, Georgia, and a member of Brookhaven United Methodist church.

"Catholic Documents on the Transubstantiation" Copyright © 2005 Charles Duncan. Used with permission of the author. This article may not be reprinted without the express permission of the author. Other websites are welcome to link to it.