Transubstantiation and the Asheville Citizen-Times
by Matthew A. C. Newsome
On December 28, 2001, the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times newspaper published a guest commentary on their OpEd page by Richard Reboulet, entitled, "On the Doctrine of Transubstantiation." While I was surprised to see transubstantiation discussed at all in the local paper, I was even more shocked at the horrible misrepresentation of Catholic history and doctrine contained in this brief article. The following is my response to Mr. Reboulet, which was published in that same paper on January 22, 2001. This incident also was the inspiration for an article on anti-Catholicism in the media.
I write regarding Mr. Reboulet's article on transubstantiation on Dec. 28. His only point, that I could tell, is that the Church is foolish for believing in transubstantiation and that this belief has led to "devastating consequences." I think that the factual errors in Mr. Reboulet's commentary need to be addressed.
He begins by stating that the "Christian Church used the Mass as the centerpiece of religious service for centuries."
By placing this in the past tense he is encouraging the reader to believe a falsehood.
The Catholic Church remains to this day the single largest Christian body, larger than all Protestant sects combined. And for Catholics the mass is still the primary religious service.
Mr. Reboulet would have us believe that for four centuries theologians "scrambled" to explain transubstantiation, until Thomas Aquinas found the answer in the works of the pagan Aristotle.
For one, Aquinas lived during the thirteenth century, not the fifth, so folks would have been "scrambling" for a lot longer than four centuries. Plus, though he wrote about transubstantiation, he did not explain how it happened, any more than we can explain how the Resurrection happened, or the Virgin Birth. We take these mysteries as a matter of our faith.
Mr. Reboulet would also have us believe that Aquinas was "made a saint" by the Church in gratitude for this, and he degrades it by comparing it to "knighthood." A saint is simply a soul in heaven. The Catholic Church declares someone to be a saint when the evidence for that soul being in heaven is overwhelming, as it was quite obviously the case with St. Thomas Aquinas. Anyone who thinks he was not a holy man, as Mr. Reboulet suggests, is invited to read even a brief account of his life. His contributions to the Church cannot be overestimated.
The crux of Mr. Reboulet's argument is that Galileo, by proclaiming matter to be made of atoms, was in effect proving that transubstantiation could not be true.
Yet the particles that bread and wine are made of have nothing to do with God being able to turn them into His own flesh and blood.
Mr. Reboulet's argument is one of straw.
This is all Mr. Reboulet really has to say on transubstantiation, but no anti-Catholic literature would be complete without a stab at the Church's teaching regarding contraception, which has nothing to do with his main point. He writes, "In its ignorance, the Church decided that the only purpose of sex is procreation, so birth control is immoral."
The truth is that the Church teaches that sex has two main purposes -- creating new life and expression of love.
Just as it would be wrong for a couple who have no love for one another to have sex simply to produce a child, it is also wrong for two people who love each other to have sex for pleasure while unnaturally perverting the act to prevent the possibility of new life.
The truth is that most sexually active people today are interested neither in life nor love, but just in sheer selfish pleasure.
He laments that birth control is still held to be immoral by the Catholic Church, "to the misery of millions," while ignoring that the divorce rate among Catholics is less than half what the national average is, and is almost zero among Catholics who actively participate in Natural Family Planning. Misery, indeed.
Mr. Reboulet ends his column with the less than profound assertion that belief in the Real Presence has led to "devastating consequences, even to this day." I would challenge him to name them. He seems to think there are many.
I would like him to name just one devastating consequence of this belief.
And I would point to the thousands of faithful Christians, pious in their beliefs, loving toward their neighbor, and humble in their service to mankind, who meet their Lord every time they worship together at mass.
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