“Non-necessity” and “insufficiency” of the notion of “transubstantiation”. ""Post-metaphysical knowledge" The Eucharistic heresy of Andrea Grillo
"There is indeed one universal church of the faithful, outside of which nobody at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance, by God’s power, into his body and blood, so that in order to achieve this mystery of unity we receive from God what he received from us. Nobody can effect this sacrament except a priest who has been properly ordained according to the church’s keys, which Jesus Christ himself gave to the apostles and their successors. But the sacrament of baptism is consecrated in water at the invocation of the undivided Trinity — namely Father, Son and holy Spirit — and brings salvation to both children and adults when it is correctly carried out by anyone in the form laid down by the church. If someone falls into sin after having received baptism, he or she can always be restored through true penitence. For not only virgins and the continent but also married persons find favour with God by right faith and good actions and deserve to attain to eternal blessedness." Final paragraph of Canon I of the Fourth Council of the Lateran
Real Presence and Transubstantiation: Conjectures and Clarifications
(condemned by his own university)
Published on December 17, 2017 in the blog: Come se non
In several interventions, which appeared on mostly anonymous blogs, some of my statements, which I had published in online articles or in comments online, have been systematically misunderstood and overturned, attributing to me opinions and positions that I have never expressed and that are totally foreign to me. I take the opportunity of this writing to illustrate in a broader way my convictions on Eucharistic matters, not only within the classical debate developed by Catholic theology of the last century, but also in relation to new important publications, which have appeared in recent years and deserve the greatest consideration.
a) The dogma of the Real Presence and its explanation
“Transubstantiation is not a dogma and as an explanation it has its limits. For example, it contradicts metaphysics”
This statement of mine, in its brevity, does not intend in any way to deny that the Eucharist realizes the presence of the Lord in his Church, but only wants to distinguish the dogma fidei – that is, the affirmation of the real presence – from its explanation in terms of transubstantiation. A long debate leads to this distinction, which especially in German theology – in particular in J. Auer – has allowed a careful distinction to be made between the “object of faith” and the “theoretical justification of such an object”. Among others, Giuseppe Colombo (Teologia sacramentaria, Milan, Glossa, 1997) also reached this same conclusion, when he affirmed that transubstantiation “is considered…not a truth distinct from the real presence, in the sense of proposing itself as a proper and independent object of the Catholic faith; but more simply as a possible explanation, but in any case not necessary, of the real presence” (194). And he attaches, to illustrate this, the reference to the same CCC 1376, where transubstantiation "is recalled only at the conclusion of the treatise on the real presence ... in truth - if we understand correctly - more along the lines of the explanation of the real presence, than that of the dogma of faith" (195). On the basis of this clarification "the fear or suspicion that there exists a split, clearly unjustifiable in the theological field, between a German or Central European theology legitimately aligned with a position, considered instead 'heretical' by Latin or Southern theology, which continues to believe transubstantiation as a dogma fidei, can vanish" (195). Some have wanted to deduce from my words, completely arbitrarily, that the distinction between dogma and explanation is, simplistically, a denial of dogma. But interpreting distinctions as negations is always a grave error, it is a sign of “apaideusìa”, and there is no need to insist too much on the argumentative fallacy of this arbitrary deduction. The dogma is the real presence of the Lord, which, as the Council of Trent says, “in a fitting and appropriate way” has been called “transubstantiation”. This appellation is therefore possible, legitimate, useful, even recommendable, but in itself it is not necessary. It is not a question of a “definition” of the real presence, but rather of an authoritative but not definitive explanation of it.
On a further level, the questions that concern the “tension” that the notion of “transubstantiation” registers on the level of “metaphysical thought” must be considered. On this point, in the opinion of Colombo himself, the new problems “arise not from the reality of the mystery of faith, but from the philosophical systematics connected with the idea of substantia” (190). If Thomas had already risked reducing the real Eucharistic presence to the “miracle” of a substance to which the accidents of another are inherent, with the subsequent development of the term “substance” physical and chemical dimensions have been unduly correlated that the original notion had precisely the function of excluding. Thus a notion that wanted to exercise a refined mediation between “realistic excesses” and “symbolistic excesses” seriously risked being confused with one of these excesses. The result is that an undue and uncontrolled use on the theoretical level of the concept of transubstantiation can no longer be fully faithful to the tradition of the Church. b) The different forms of the “presence of the Lord”
“The concentration on the ‘substantial presence under the species’ has profoundly distracted from the other forms of the presence of the Lord, in the Word, in prayer, in the assembly (cf. SC 7);
This second statement must first be contextualized within the re-understanding that the Second Vatican Council proposed of liturgical action as “presence of and to the Lord” (SC 7). The reconsideration of the “different forms of liturgical presence” does not at all have the function of “distracting from the Eucharistic presence”. Rather, it is the exclusive consideration of the “substantial presence” that has been able to distract from the rich articulation of the presence of the Lord, which is a vital requirement of liturgical action and participation in it. Here it must be noted how the understanding of the Eucharist “as liturgy” has profoundly remodeled the relationship between liturgical knowledge and dogmatic knowledge. In this sense, as J. Ratzinger noted in an important essay from the early 1980s (Form and Content of the Eucharistic Celebration, in Id., The Feast of Faith. Essays on Liturgical Theology, Milan, Jaca Book, 1984, 33-48), the Liturgical Movement had above all the merit of having introduced a new meaning of the term form in systematic theology: “liturgy in the modern sense was born with the discovery of this category” (p.34). Liturgy is not the “ceremonial framework of a dogmatic nucleus”, but the “continuation of the priestly exercise of Christ” which offers an “intelligence of the mystery through ritus et preces” (SC 48). In the light of these principles, which the Second Vatican Council profoundly rediscovered and relaunched, the relationship not only between “real presence” and “ritual presence” changes, but a ritual side of the real presence and a real aspect of the ritual presence are discovered. The Lord comes among his own in many ways, which require not simply the “ritus servandus” of a single “formula”, of a single “matter” and of a single “minister”, but rather the community celebration of a ritual form, of a symbolic matter and in an ecclesial dynamic between the celebrating assembly, the ministerial team and the presidency. The development of the “actuosa participatio” was not only the true aim of the liturgical Reform, but also the effective principle of a new theological intelligence. Which requires relocating the “valid form” of the administered Eucharist within the broader horizon of the “ritual form” of the celebrated Eucharist. The same search for a “fundamental form” of the Eucharist, which characterized the research of R. Guardini and J. Jungmann in the 1930s and 1940s – who respectively identified the “banquet” and the “Eucharistic prayer” as objectively new themes for systematic reflection on the Eucharist – attests to a positive and fruitful struggle, which has profoundly recontextualized the “real presence” in relation to the “communion” and the “prayer of Christ and the Church”. Not safeguarding this profound relationship today would mean entrusting the classical categories with a regressive and distracting function, with respect to the evidence laboriously matured in the last century, and from which the ecclesial faith and Christian life draw new fruits of spiritual and pastoral experience. To this must necessarily be added the “greater biblical richness” (SC 51), which has solemnly recovered, even in a Catholic context, a rich liturgy of the Word, which has transformed the “didactic part of the Mass” into a sacramental experience of the presence of the Lord, recognized as the true subject of the proclamation of the Word. The proclaimed Word, the Eucharistic prayer and the rite of communion are thus understood not simply as contexts of the Eucharistic presence, but as qualifying ritual sequences, which can no longer be degraded to a “use of the sacrament”, with respect to which only the consecration would appear to have the dignity of “essence of the sacrament”. In this sense the “substantial presence”, if misunderstood, risks excluding, rather than including and valorizing, the other fundamental experiences of the presence of the Lord. c) The ecclesial body of Christ in relation to the sacramental body of Christ
“The ‘substantial presence under the species’ has reduced the weight of the ‘ecclesial presence’ of the body of Christ, which still remains the primary effect – the res sacramenti – of the Eucharistic celebration”
This third statement becomes fully clear if correlated to the important study by E. Mazza, Continuità e discontinuità. Concezioni medievali dell’eucaristia a confronto con la tradizione dei Padri e della liturgia, Rome, CLV-Ed. Liturgiche, 2001. But before referring to this text, I want to recall, to avoid misunderstandings, a very clear truth, which St. Thomas guards carefully, almost against his own “system”, and that is the difference between the “intermediate effect” and the “principal effect” of the Eucharist.
The “substantial presence” of the body and blood of the Lord remains, in his theological system, an “intermediate effect” with respect to the gift of grace, which is the unity and communion of the Church (S.Th. III, 73, 3, c). The aforementioned study by Enrico Mazza historically explores this fundamental statement, showing how the elaboration of the theory of transubstantiation – which occurs in the apologetic field – represents at the same time the cause and the effect of very complex theological and liturgical developments: starting from the Fathers – first of all from Ambrose and Augustine – and rereading the “Eucharistic theologies” up to St. Thomas, he shows with elegance and competence the transformation of the ways of understanding the way of “being present” of the Lord in the Eucharistic celebration. Thus we are witnessing the discovery of several interesting things:
– first, the concentration of attention on the “consecration alone”, with the progressive loss of the relationship both with the “epiclesis” and with the entire Eucharistic prayer, and with the “rite of communion”. Despite this medieval and modern development, the new understanding of the Eucharistic rite promoted by the Second Vatican Council requires a deepening of Eucharistic theology to fully valorize the “intelligence of the mystery per ritus et preces” (SC 48). This can be based on the conception that the patristic age had of the presence of the Lord: in particular, Mazza proposes a new interpretation of some texts of Ambrose, which orient us to read the “words of the Lord” – when they define bread and wine as “Body of Christ” and “Blood of Christ – as pronounced not at the moment of consecration, but at the moment of communion (see Mazza, Continuità, 11-24).
- Secondly, the accentuation of the intermediate effect to
such an extent with respect to the gift of grace assumes such prominence that
the former effect is considered as "contained" in the sacrament,
while the latter appears as simply "signified" by the sacrament.
Indirectly, the understanding in terms of "transubstantiation" would
favour an imbalance between the Christological dimension and the ecclesial
dimension of the "corpus Christi". This would fundamentally derive from a
"one-sided re-reading" of Ambrose's texts, which would begin with
Pascasion Radbertus and would be completed - albeit unequivocally - with St.
Thomas Aquinas. Enrico Mazza writes: "There was a great
change between the patristic and scholastic eras: in the patristic era the
Eucharist was understood as the sacrament of the unity of the Body of Christ,
while in scholasticism the res is understood as the union of the faithful with
Christ" (Mazza, Continuity, 197)
– thirdly, the development of an understanding of the “essential rite” of the Eucharist, identified with the words of the institution pronounced on the matter by the minister, has risked losing awareness of the integral ritual sequence, which is structured between the “Eucharistic prayer” and the “rite of communion”, actions which in this way are reduced to “uses”, with respect to which the consecration alone would constitute the “essence” of the sacrament: “at the basis of Thomas’s conception there is the distinction between the sacrament and its use. The use consists in the celebration of the sacrament to produce its effect. In this framework of thought, the Last Supper is only the “container”, the “side dish”, that is, the occasion and the environment in which the Eucharist was instituted – that is, the sacrament which was instituted – not the Last Supper of the Lord, which is only the place – the container – of the institution of the Eucharist” (Mazza, Continuità, 211). This scholastic theoretical development would have determined the progressive concentration of the ecclesial gaze – not only theological, but also pastoral and spiritual – only on the words pronounced over the bread and wine at the moment of consecration, delimiting this brief sequence as the decisive point both for the conversion of the bread and wine, and for faith in the real presence. This point of the celebration becomes the “Eucharistic rite” par excellence, and thus the awareness of the plenary sequence is lost, including within it both the entire “Eucharistic prayer” and the full articulation of the “communion rites”. d) Recent studies by young theologians
Having reached this point, I would like to note that the positions expressed by me in recent texts not only derive from “classic” authors, such as G. Colombo and E. Mazza, but also draw from and have matured thanks to very recent doctoral works, in which I have been personally involved, and which show a very fine elaboration of the theological and philosophical questions around the Eucharist and the understanding of the “real presence” through renewed theoretical and liturgical concepts.
Manuel
Belli's text, Caro veritatis cardo. L'interesse della fenomenologia
francese per la teologia dei sacramenti, Milano, Glossa, 2013, where the author
openly and deeply confronts the provocations coming from recent French
phenomenology, understood as a "post-metaphysical knowledge" capable
of mediating faith in the presence of the Lord in a renewed and unexpected way.
2016 saw the
publication of Matthieu Rouillé d'Orfeuil, Lieu, présence, résurrection. Relectures
de phénoménologie eucaristique, Paris, Cerf, 2016, where the author rereads
some cornerstones of the ancient and medieval tradition through concepts
reworked with the help of phenomenological thought. Three categories (place,
presence and resurrection) are rethought in relation to Eucharistic faith and
its contemporary comprehensibility.
Also in 2016, we should finally mention the work of Claudio Ubaldo Cortoni, “Habeas corpus”. The body of Christ from devotion to his humanity to the Eucharistic cult (VIII-XV century), Rome, Studia Anselmiana, 2016, where he proposes an accurate rereading of the Eucharistic tradition, investigating with finesse the correlation between Christological questions and Eucharistic theories, from which the medieval Eucharistic cult would derive significantly.
Finally, I cannot leave out Loris Della Pietra's fine volume, Rituum forma. Theology of the sacraments at the test of ritual form, Padua, EMP- Abbazia S. Giustina, 2012, in which the change in the systematic notion of "form" is accurately thematized, especially during the 20th century, also through a precise investigation of the debate around the "fundamental form of the Eucharist", which involved the thought of Guardini, Jungmann and Ratzinger and which seems very promising for the current debate.
These are four doctoral theses worthy of admiration, which attest to serious research work carried out at the Athenaeum of S. Anselmo and at the Institute of Pastoral Liturgy of Padua, academic environments in which fidelity to tradition seeks to draw both from a rigorous historical excavation of the sources and from an open comparison with the most lively and fruitful currents of contemporary thought. Because fidelity to the Eucharist, as the Angelic Doctor said, always respects its three fundamental meanings of memory of the past of passion, death and resurrection, of present recognition of the gift of grace and of hope-filled foretaste of the definitive fulfillment.
e) In summary
If the elaboration of the notion of “transubstantiation” occurred during a complex confrontation between different components of the medieval Christian tradition and was then used in a difficult crisis in the confrontation of Catholicism with the different forms of “evangelical protest”, it served, at least until the sixteenth century, to wisely mediate between different excesses – realist or symbolist – present not only in the theology of the Eucharist, but also and perhaps above all in Christology. The concept of transubstantiation must therefore be recognized as the fruit of a precious “mediation” to safeguard ecclesial communion. This has however led – even beyond the best intentions – to a strong transcription of the Christian experience into the categories of philosophical, intellectual and metaphysical theory of Greek origin and scholastic elaboration. This has determined a “declination” of the real presence set according to the articulation of being as “substance” and as “accident”. This has inevitably introduced a certain overvaluation of the invisible (which the intellect accesses with the help of faith) and a certain undervaluation of the visible (which is considered only in its function as element/matter or object of the rubric). That for which the distinction between substance and accidents was conceived – that is, the unity of the real in becoming – obtains in the Eucharistic doctrine an inverted effect – a result of “scission” and “separation” – which is then difficult to remedy. The “essentialization of the presence” in the sole moment of consecration has in fact reduced to “usum” all the rest of the experience of presence, in the Word, in the Eucharistic prayer and in communion. The recovery of these three fundamental dimensions of the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist - as an event of the proclaimed Word, as an event of "ecclesial Eucharistic prayer" and as an "event of communion in the one bread and the one cup - has inevitably weakened and scaled down any claim to identify the "presence" only in the "conversion of substance".
It is not, therefore, a question of denying the secular theological work, which has elaborated and structured the "theory of transubstantiation", but of recontextualizing it within a broader and more complex experience of the Eucharistic event, and according to a new philosophical reflection, in which the use of terms such as substance and accidents has become highly problematic. In a certain sense the Liturgical Movement, the Patristic Movement, the Biblical Movement and the Ecumenical Movement, which have so effectively characterized the theology of the first decades of the twentieth century, have contributed, each for its part, to this recontextualization of the "Eucharistic truth", allowing us to recognize, finally, two “theological limits” of the notion of transubstantiation, alongside those more generally linked to the late-modern cultural transition:
– to express the “real presence” the use of the language of the “conversion of the whole substance” remains legitimate, possible, sometimes even recommendable, but it is not in itself necessary. Not constituting a “truth” different from the “real presence”, it constitutes an authoritative explanation of it, but it is not “other” than the affirmation of the “real presence” of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. It is not a question of believing “other than the presence”, but of entrusting oneself to an authoritative mediation, whose intent is not the testimony of faith, but its explanation.
– to express the “presence of the Lord” in the Eucharistic supper the notion of “transubstantiation” – being concentrated only on a moment of the celebration and considering only a limited sequence of the ritual process – is not sufficient to restore the integrality of the Christological and ecclesial experience that the Eucharistic action establishes.
The affirmation of the “non-necessity” and “insufficiency” of the notion of “transubstantiation” – deduced from the theological references indicated above – does not mean at all and in no way an intention to “deny the real presence”, but rather indicates the task of a “translation of tradition”, through which we can remain faithful to what the pastors and theologians of the 13th and 14th centuries did, several centuries ago: as they translated the “Eucharistic faith in the presence of the Lord” into the relationship between the categories of substance/accidents – faith that for many previous centuries had not been expressed through this terminology – so today we must translate that same faith into new categories, which seek to restore to the integral Eucharistic experience a greater depth of action and a clearer unity of experience. Just as for the ancients the construction of the concept of “transubstantiation” was a slow, gradual and not without effort, so it is and will be for us too the task of its revision and deepening. To outline this objective in a less imprecise final word, I would say that the task of revising the notion of “transubstantiation” must be able to experience the Eucharist not only with the intellect, but also with all the sensitivity and through the magisterium of action: an understanding of the Eucharist entrusted only to the category of “substance” – and therefore inevitably linked to the primacy of the intellect – cannot succeed in fully valorising either the sensitive dimension of the experience, or the original reasons for action with respect to contemplation alone, thus risking reducing the accident to an accidental element, while the original reasons for the same medieval formulation of the notion of transubstantiation know well that in the Eucharist accidents can never be simply accidental. It is precisely this strong limitation, perhaps linked more to the development of the concept than to its original intention, that today determines the need for a precise revision of this "convenient and appropriate way" - but not necessary and not sufficient - of explaining the dogma fidei, which consists in the confession of the presence of the Lord in the Church gathered in assembly for the Eucharistic celebration.
Cathcon: Phenomenology does not the Faith make. This sort of anti-scholastic rhetoric has seen belief in the presence of Christ at Mass in free fall. A Eucharist without real change in the substance is idolatry.
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