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More Thoughts on the Eucharistic Presence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
Extract
I am indeed grateful to Professor Mascall and to Fr McCabe for their perceptive and kindly critiques of my article on the eucharistic presence. To answer them adequately would take more room than even the Editor’s generosity would tolerate, so I shall content myself with two things. I shall try to show what I think are the strengths and limitations of their views (in my opinion, although perhaps they will not agree with me, we are closer than might appear). And, in doing this, I shall refer to or cite passages from what I trust is my forthcoming book, In the Breaking of the Bread. In this way I shall at least show that the points they raise have not been neglected by me, whatever may be thought of the answers I offer. References to the articles in New Blackfriars will be by ‘E1, ‘E2’, ‘M’ and ‘H’, with page-numbers. References to the book will be by ‘BB’, followed by chapter and section.
Let me start by stressing that we are all agreed that no human language or philosophical system is capable of expressing the the eucharistic presence adequately. I make the point with some generality and at some length in BB iii, 1. The remarks about ‘amnesia’ and ‘confrontation’ in my article (E2, pp. 406-407) are based on later sections of that chapter, and are consequences of the general thesis that in theology ‘not only is our linguistic medium inadequate; it is inadequate to the task of drawing bounds to its inadequacy’ (BB iii, 1). The Aristotelian (or any other) vocabulary of change needs maltreatment of one sort or another for its eucharistic employment (see M, pp. 542-543; H, pp. 548-551). Where we differ is in our verdict on the particular ‘maltreatment’ that is in question.
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- Copyright © 1973 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
page 171 note 1 E. L. Mascall, ‘Egner on the Eucharistic Presence’, New Blackfriars, December 1972, pp. 539‐546; Herbert McCabe, O.P., “Transubstantiation: A reply to G. Egner”, ibid., pp. 546‐554.
page 171 note 2 G. Egner, ‘Some Thoughts on the Eucharistic Presence’, New Blackfriars, August 1972, pp. 354‐359; September 1972, pp. 399‐408.
page 172 note 1 Am I refusing to say ‘what is supremely real about the consecrated elements is that they are the body and blood of Christ’? I am not. I write the phrase in the text because it situates the eucharistic presence within the ritual context that gives its primary sense. That sense can then entitle us to make the other assertion: but to start from the assertion that the host is the body of Christ is to make the ritual into a devotional adornment of what is essentially a quasi‐physical transformation. See E2, p. 405 and see below, p. 179.
page 176 note 1 To show that my objections to such language are not simply idiosyncratic, I notice that, in the debate between Selvaggi (a Roman Thomist) and Colombo in the fifties, the former accused the latter of a phenomenalistic view of knowledge, and of departing from the notion of substance found in Aquinas (the matter is elaborated in BB i, 5, 6). That terminology of Colombo's should have found its way into the encyclical Mysterium Fidei is lamentable. My ‘dangerous’ at E2, p. 408, refers to that.
page 177 note 1 See the quotation from ST 3. 75. 5 at E2, pp. 405‐406. Not, of course, that Aquinas was the first to write so. We find in the Sentences of Peter Lombard, on which he wrote a commentary, that the appearances survive ‘lest the mind abhor what the eye beholds, for we are not accustomed to eating raw flesh and blood. Since it is not lawful to chew Christ, he gave us his body and blood in a sacrament (mysterio)’, ArSent., dist. 11. Of course, Peter, like Aquinas, would deny that we do to Christ invisibly what we do to meat visibly. But I am concerned with the content and coherence of what they say, and am concerned to mend matters by something more than selective amnesia (see on all this BB iii, 3‐4).
page 178 note 1 One of the theses in my book (BB iii, 3; iv, 1,4; and see E2, p. 406) is that belief is to be discerned in patterns of ritual activity to which I give the name of ‘cultic pictures’. One such ‘picture’ can illustrate this paragraph. The New Missal has a special ‘Eucharistic Preface’ which talks in the eschatological terms I have suggested. For the Missale Romanian, the preface used on such occasions was that of Christmas.
page 179 note 1 Which, once more, is not to say that the eucharistic presence of Christ is to be expounded by asking that question and answering it affirmatively. Isolate the question from ritual activity, and we are back to our armchair physics.
page 179 note 2 One can go to A. E. Housman for an instance of what I have in mind. ‘That Pope was a poet is true; but it is one of those truths which are beloved of liars, because they serve so well the cause of falsehood. That Pope was not a poet is false; but a righteous man, standing in awe of the last judgment and the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, might well prefer to say it’{The Name and Nature of Poetry. Need I say that I dissent from Housman's view of Pope?).
page 179 note 3 He writes there that the denial that the host is bread is the touchstone of Catholic orthodoxy, but that the heart of the teaching is that it is the body of Christ. I note with interest that one friendly dissenter distinguished the two propositions more sharply—a person ‘might go for ten years believing the latter widiout ever explicitly asserting the former’.