The Satanic Attack on the Blessed Sacrament

 Of all the attempts to destroy the Catholic Faith in the 70's and 80's the attacks on the Blessed Sacrament were the most despicable.   For me it began one Saturday morning when parents of the Catholic school my sons were attending, were invited to a meeting to discuss the new catechism my sons were to be taught.    Many things raised my eyebrow but none more than the absence of any teaching on the Eucharist.     Young and immature I nevertheless stood up and told the teachers that without any teaching on the Blessed Sacrament the pupils would lose their catholic faith.   I was ignored of course.   At a First Holy Communion preparation I asked the Catechist if they taught  the Real Presence and her answer was "O they are far too young to understand that".   I did not answer I was so shocked.   Today I am 83 and I still have made no progress in understanding this mystery.   Yet young people do not try to understand, they believe that all things are possible to God as their parents taught them.    The next shock came when in private and not from the altar, it began to circulate in the parish that the Sacred Host was meant to be eaten and not adored,  of course this came from bishops and priests but they did not do the spreading themselves, but stood on the sidelines agreeing with everyone, which is now the mark of a modernist priest.   Indeed I have never read any document that said this, but the arrogance with which it was spread demanded submission and this led to the Tabernacles being removed from the altars  so that the main body of the people would not sit in a pew and adore it.    Of course the priests in commenting had an excuse - it was not liturgically correct.    Why not you might ask, and I did ask and was dismissed as someone telling the priest his job.    But the worst part of the evil was when the Real Presence came under attack.   We should not talk about substance as St Thomas Aquinas did for there is no such thing.   Just accept the Jesus in the Sacrament and do not question how he is present.   Of course all kinds of answers were being put forward one priest claimed it was neither physical nor spiritual presence but something between, and or course the bishops and priests accepted this.    At a later date there was an attack on the Nicene Creed where it said 'consubstantial with the Father', this had to be removed for the people were confused by the word consubstantial.   Now the Nicene Creed came from the Council of Nicea, which met in 325 AD to condemn Arianism, which claimed that Jesus was a divine creation and not originally part of the Godhead.   This was a teaching which was condemned by the Council and every Sunday when we join with each other at Mass to recite the Nicene creed we say "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, CONSUBSTANTIAL with the Father, and through Him ALL THINGS WERE MADE"   In other words Jesus was God the Creator of all things. 

The idea of substance came from the Greek Philosopher Aristotle, but I will not go into that, I will leave it to St Thomas    But where  did this notion come from that we were not meant to adore the Sacred Host.   From the very beginning of the Christian Church as the Protestant Historian HND Kelly tells us, they took a realist attitude and when the Apostles and others said the words of Christ over the bread it became literally his flesh.     Ignatius of Antioch, a contemporary of the Apostles, condemned those who would not take the bread because they did not believe it was the flesh of Jesus.   There was no council or meeting of bishops in the early Christian Church that met to decide what the consecrated bread was, this was a given from the beginning.   Monks and Hermits in those early days also took a host into a cave to worship it, or monks carried the host in their person.   When the Eastern Church broke from Rome in the 7th century, it took all those established Roman doctrines with them, so it had nothing to do with the Middle Ages.

But one last word on false teaching.    Jesus is the Head and Centre of our lives and our Church.   As he himself said "Without me you can do nothing"   Now whereas it is true that as his apostles  Jesus works and spreads the Gospel through us his Community, in that sense we are called the Mystical Body of Christ.   But it makes no sense whatsoever to move the real physical Christ from our presence, and pretend that somehow we do not need Him among us.    If we love Jesus we do not put him in a back room, or a safe, since he is only meant to be eaten.    We go to God's house to visit God and when we kneel it should be to Jesus, the true God in a Tabernacle on the Main Altar.   Maybe I am being arrogant, but that sounds just like common sense to me.