Attacking Transubstantiation

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | May 25, 2010

Good Jesuits must be gritting their teeth as a prominent member of their Order does it again. Fr. Michael Kelly, the Jesuit leader of the Asian Catholic news agency, is uncomfortable with the forthcoming liturgical translations, which more closely match the Latin text and strive for a greater sense of the sacred. Apparently, this led him to remember once again the benefits of translations that are vague, horizontal and banal, namely, that they obscure the Faith. The danger, as Fr. Kelly sees it, is this:

Regrettably, all too frequently, the only Presence focused on is Christ’s presence in the elements of bread and wine. Inadequately described as the change of the “substance” (not the “accidents”) of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, the mystery of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist carries the intellectual baggage of a physics no one accepts. Aristotelian physics makes such nice, however implausible and now unintelligible, distinctions. They are meaningless in the post-Newtonian world of quantum physics, which is the scientific context we live in today.

This is actually fairly funny. First, it is such a blatantly obvious use of the Modernist tactic of indirection. Fr. Kelly doesn’t question the truth of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. No, he is simply concerned that: (a) People pay too much attention to it in relation to other forms of Christ’s presence; and (b) The way the Church explains it is based on Aristotelian physics, which nobody finds intelligible today. It is such a shame. We can envision Fr. Kelly wringing his hands.

By now everybody knows the real issue: Fr. Michael Kelly does not believe that Christ is present body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist. That’s a unique form of Presence (which is why Catholics call it “Real Presence”), unlike all the other forms which are spiritual only, in the same way the Holy Spirit is present to us. There are strong links to the Incarnation in the dogma of the Real Presence. Thus one would not be surprised to hear Fr. Kelly questioning the Incarnation next week, and it probably goes without saying that he interprets the “Resurrection event” as a faith-symbol of the early Church (though why there would have been any faith to symbolize if a real physical resurrection had not occurred is something the Modernists never explain).

But what about this physics stuff? Well, in fact, the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation, including the traditional distinction between substance and accidents, is not based on physics at all, but on metaphysics. It is a distinction in philosophy, not in natural science. As Fr. Kelly would know if he were an educated man, natural science deals only with phenomena—with how things manifest themselves to our senses. Natural science is not at all designed to examine the actual “being” of things, or what we might call their substance. That doesn’t mean natural science can’t give us clues about being from the phenomena that natural things present to our senses. It just means that natural science is confined to the study of phenomena, and nothing more.

But the Church, being more interested in essences (and, as an institution, far better educated than Fr. Kelly), understands that phenomena and being are not identical and that, in particular, phenomena does not exhaust being, any more than the shape of your nose or the sound of your voice captures the essence of what and who you are. So the Church adopts the useful philosophical distinction between substance and accidents to show that the mystery of transubstantiation, while it certainly transcends reason, does not violate reason. Somehow, what the bread IS and what the wine IS has been changed into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, even though their manifestation to our senses (that is, their measurable phenomena) remain unchanged. To put this in the terms that great theologians such as Thomas Aquinas have used, the subtance has changed, but the accidents have not.

This explanation may be incomprehensible to a modern Modernist like Fr. Kelly, though a great many modern physicists have no trouble at all with it. Nor should they, as it contradicts absolutely nothing in their own specialty. But whether or not the explanation is incomprehensible to Fr. Kelly or anyone else, the mystery itself is certainly incomprehensible, and to everyone. That’s why we believe it not based on physics or philosophy but solely on the authority of God revealing, that is, based on the words and actions of Jesus Christ. You may know Jesus as the Incarnate God who proved Himself by rising from the dead. Have I mentioned that Fr. Kelly almost certainly does not?